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Have you always wanted to expand your culinary repertoire? Here's your chance. The Culinary Research and Education Academy (CREA) is hosting its inaugural 3-day sous-vide introduction at the CREA U.S. Test Kitchen in Washington, DC. Established in 1991, CREA has trained, through Chief Scientist Dr. Bruno Goussault​, 43 three-star Michelin chefs around the world with their innovative technique. Their seminars are geared toward professional chefs and they supply all equipment and materials. By the end of the seminar, CREA promises that you’ll have experience...
Summer 2015 may seem a long time away, but we need you to sign up now to be part of one of the largest multi-sport, multi-venue events in the world (second only to the Summer Olympics!). The 2015 World Police and Fire Games will welcome more than 30,000 visitors (including athletes from police, fire, and other public safety agencies) from more than 70 countries to compete in 1,600 medal events across 60 sports. This is a unique opportunity to gain exposure, promote your brand and gain repeat business through more than 4,000 local volunteers that will a part of this event. ...
National Restaurant Association
WASHINGTON, Aug. 21, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- As part of its strong commitment to food safety, the National Restaurant Association today announced this year's National Food Safety Month (NFSM), held annually in September, will mark its 20-year anniversary by featuring the top 20 food safety tips from the past 20 years. NFSM was created in 1994 to heighten awareness about the importance of food safety education. NFSM offers free resources for foodservice industry professionals at FoodSafetyMonth.com and will highlight tips for a number of food safety...
WATCH: Nizam Ali of Ben's Chili Bowl talks about healthcare solutions for restaurants and small businesses. "It's not a business decision, it's just the right decision."  Video Link: Nizam, Ben's Chili Bowl
Restaurant professionals agree: Hard work and a smile can carry a restaurateur from hand towels and busing to handshakes and board rooms. Find out how eight industry leaders from Washington, D.C., turned their first jobs into their life’s work.  Read more
Pub crawls, the wildly popular events that encourage people to travel from bar to bar for drink specials, will not be banned in Arlington County’s retail corridors as a result of a vote by the County Board to scrutinize them more carefully. But those who sponsor the events soon will have to start picking up the tab for police and cleanup crews, which some bar owners and promoters say could kill the crawls nonetheless. County Board members, while loath to discourage the free-spending young adult demographic, voted unanimously Saturday to make organizers of pub crawls pay costs...
Events DC
Washington, DC—Events DC and the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington (RAMW) along with its members are thrilled to officially welcome the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2014 to the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, and to the region overall July 13-17, 2014. As a partner of Events DC, RAMW’s restaurant members are extending their hospitality and services to Microsoft World- wide Partner Conference attendees and are available to assist with dining needs, reservations, large party requests, and last-minute private dining needs. All RAMW member restaurants (...
By Betsy Craig, CEO and co-founder of MenuTrinfo® We've all read the headlines about restaurant patrons having an allergic reaction after being served food items contaminated with the cause of the reaction. While in a majority of cases these reactions have not been fatal they can be life threatening. According to a 2007 study by the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN), there were 63 food allergy–related fatalities between 1996 and 2006, with half involving restaurants.   While it's true that much has been done to educate kitchen and wait staff on safe food-...
MenuTrinfo
By Claire Willis, Director of Culinary Nutritionists at MenuTrinfo® Recently, the RAND Corporation (“a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decision making through research and analysis,” according to their website) has proposed implementing healthy dining standards for restaurants. This would require foodservice establishments to have a percentage of their menu items (on both adult and kids menus) meet certain nutritional criteria. Their reasoning behind this would be to help curb the obesity epidemic in the US by having healthy options at each and every...
The 2014 RAMMY Awards
Washington, DC (May 12, 2014)—On May 8, Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington (RAMW) brought together over 80 leaders from the region’s foodservice and business communities for a conversation about the state of the industry in the nation’s capital. The discussion, moderated by Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor of Nation’s Restaurant News, offered insights into operator success in an ever more competitive market.  Panelists included 2014 RAMMY Awards nominees for Service Program of the Year including Adam Sanders (General Manager, BLT Steak), Joseph Cerione...
Rossman Hurt Hoffman, Inc. Insurance
Do You Have All The Coverage You Need? Your restaurant insurance policy includes hundreds of pages of coverages, exclusions and endorsements. Unless you’re an insurance expert, it can be tough to know which ones are most important for your business. With the Restaurant Insurance Package, everyone is aware of their required property, general liability, crime and spoilage coverage. Here are some additional coverages that restaurateurs often overlook: What Other Types of Insurance Do I Need? General Liability and Property Insurance typically only cover the basics, but most restaurants...
Foodem
Baltimore, MD -  April 30, 2014 - Foodem, an innovative B2B online food procurement marketplace and business intelligence solution for the $650 billion U.S. wholesale food distribution industry, and the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington (RAMW), are pleased to announce the establishment of their new strategic partnership. Launched in late 2013, Foodem facilitates relationships, automates foodservice procurement processes and connects wholesale food buyers with small to mid-sized food distributors, local farms and specialty food manufacturers. The new partnership with RAMW...
Do More 24
United Way of the National Capital Area is gearing up for Do More 24 – a one day online fundraiser that will be held on June 19th to support area nonprofits.   Give back to your community and participate as a Do More 24 restaurant sponsor. Team up with local nonprofits and donate a portion of your sale proceeds to Do More 24. Participating restaurants will be recognized on the Do More 24 website.   Be a part of something bigger and let’s show how generous the restaurant community can be! For questions or to learn more, contact restaurants@domore24.org.  
Updates on the Green Dot Money Pack/Pepco Scam RAMW has been in touch with Pepco and they are aware of the Green Dot Scam.  If you receive a call from a person claiming to be from Pepco or any other service provider it is important that you: take precautions to verify the person is affiliated with the company, especially if that person is requesting an immediate credit card or cash payment.  Pepco will never ask a customer to provide a specific form of payment and always offers customers multiple payment options. ask for official photo identification from any person who shows...
Cohn Reznick
In the restaurant industry, success depends on a strong brand concept that is successfully executed, tightly managed for profitability, and delivers a consistent customer experience. The challenge facing the leaders of food and beverage operations is how to successfully align leadership, management, and staff in accomplishing these objectives. In our experience, the most successful organizations have maintained competitive advantage and realized profitable revenue growth by establishing core values that help everyone make decisions that best support the brand.   Core values are the...
Restaurants consume five to seven times more energy than other businesses. From long operating hours to energy-intensive food preparation, it’s easy to see why restaurants use such a high amount of energy. Unfortunately, this means that restaurants also waste more energy than a typical business. In fact, according to Pacific Gas and Electric, the food service industry wastes around $8 billion in energy every year. In the District, the DC Sustainable Energy Utility (DCSEU) offers rebates on everything from energy-efficient stoves and fryers to refrigeration and HVAC upgrades that can...
Ballston Restaurant Challenge
The Ballston Business Improvement District (BID) has launched the next level of its campaign to showcase Ballston as the ideal place to start up and grow a business. With Top Chef Mike Isabella, a DC chef and restaurateur, at the helm of this new campaign, the Ballston BID is thrilled to begin the search for Ballston’s next big restaurateur. What you when you win: a lease with first year free, below market rates after and a $245,000 interest free loan. Brookfield Office Properties, which owns building space Ballston, has offered to donate a year of free restaurant space and a fully...
This is a guest post for MenuTrinfo® by Alison Baumgartner, a former waitress. For a long time, I was a career waitress who worked pretty much everywhere in the United States. I worked for high-end, local, and chain restaurants, and while they were all very different, I found that they had one similarity: inefficiency when it came to knowing exactly what was in the food. And by that, I mean there was too little nutritional labeling, no awareness of potentially allergenic ingredients and no information on what foods that contain gluten for all levels of the staff. In the end, it was...
One hour.  Sixty minutes. 3,600 seconds.   Lunch break. Pilate’s class. An episode of The Bachelor (don’t pretend you don’t watch).   In one hour you can get a haircut or pedicure, take a nap, or ride the metro from Franconia-Springfield to Silver Spring. In sixty minutes you can bake a cake, write a letter, or (start to) work on your taxes. Or, in one hour you can save up to three lives.  That’s right.  For a simple one-hour investment you can make a life-giving difference to those in need.  January is National Volunteer Blood...
By Julian Hattem, The Hill The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is backing down from a fight over a contentious regulation that would have required most businesses to display posters about union rights.   Two federal appeals courts struck down the rules in separate cases last year, ruling that they amounted to an overreach from the labor rights agency. The NLRB’s last recourse to save the rules was to appeal to the Supreme Court. On Monday, it declined to take that step, effectively killing the regulations for good. Read More.    
  RAMW is pleased to announce that the state’s pending happy hour legislation has been signed and will be published on December 30, 2013. The new law, which will allow restaurants and bars to advertise happy hours through print, digital and social media, will be effective January 29th, 2014.   To be clear, the law does not allow for the advertisement of specific happy hour beverages and beverage prices (outside the restaurant or bar). However, once the law goes into effect in late January, establishments will be able to advertise “Happy Hour” or “Drink...
The season of giving is quickly winding down.  Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or Festivus – it’s likely you made your lists, checked them twice, and set out to secure gizmos, gadgets, thing-a-ma-jigs and whatcha-ma-call-its for those you know and love.  Gifts are tokens of appreciation designed to convey value and worth, but sometimes they fall a little short of that goal.  No doubt you have opened an ugly sweater, tacky tie, box of fruitcake, or other gift that has forced you to smile politely and remind yourself that it’s the thought...
Are your GAS and ELECTRICITY costs hurting your bottom line?  Let's see if we can help you reduce your costs, increase profits and potentially earn FREE ENERGY. As Independent Consultants with Ambit Energy, we offer you the opportunity to reduce your cost with competitive rates and potentially FREE ENERGY.  There is NO COST to taking advantage of the savings we offer.  Our goal is to help you save money and earn FREE ENERGY! For a free evaluation of how much you can save, e-mail Clayton or Alva Bourges at usave12@gmail.com.  You may also call us at 703-863-4086 or...
What would you do if someone who had been drinking excessively picked up their car keys and headed for the door? If you are a good bystander, you would intervene to help the person get home safely without risking injury to self or others. Cities and states, colleges and branches of the military are using that same bystander approach to prevent sexual assault: teaching professionals and friends how to offer assistance and intervene to prevent alcohol-facilitated sexual assault. In Arlington County, police are seeing an increase in reports of alcohol-facilitated sexual assaults of young...
Rebecca Cooper, Washington Business Journal The Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control has stepped up enforcement of a law that limits wine tastings and wine dinners at restaurants that serve wine on site, surprising many restaurateurs who have been offering them for years. The law prohibits wine wholesalers and distributors from participating in tasting events held in restaurants. Winemakers or winery representatives are allowed to participate in these types of events, and the law does not prevent wholesalers from offering tastings at shops that do not serve on premises. Read...

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