Sep 12, 2017
Fran Spielman | Chicago Sun-Times | September 11, 2017
The City Council’s Zoning Committee on Monday down-zoned the property that once housed the now-shuttered Double Door music venue in Wicker Park over the property owner’s strenuous objections.
Local Ald. Proco Joe Moreno (1st) used his iron-fisted control over zoning to muscle through a change that will strengthen his hand in determining the future of the property at 1572 N. Milwaukee.
“It’s a planning tool. We want the community to have a say. We don’t want anyone to lose money,” Moreno said after the vote.
“We don’t make zoning changes based on how much money people are going to make or lose. That’s for the market to decide — not me. What we want is a planning tool so we have a responsible business that contributes to the community. And I hope he makes a lot of money when he sells it.”
Moreno noted that the down-zoning approved Monday was not as drastic as the original version.
It would have gone from B3-2 to B1-1. Instead, it’ll be reduced to B2-2, giving the property owner a bit more leeway.
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Sep 8, 2017
Daniel Gerzina & Ashok Selvam | Eater Chicago | September 7, 2017
More often than not, tipsters, readers, friends, and family of Eater have one question: Where should one eat right now? Restaurant obsessives want to know what’s new, what’s hot, which favorite chef just launched a sophomore effort. And while the Eater 38 is a crucial resource covering old standbys and neighborhood essentials across the city, it is not a chronicle of the “it” places of the moment. Thus, the staff offers the Eater Heatmap, which will change on a regular basis to always highlight where the crowds are flocking to at the moment.
Labor Day has come and gone so summer’s unofficially over in Chicago, but new restaurants continue to sizzle around the city. The September Heatmap update features five new entries: world-renowned Italian import Bonci Pizzeria, jamming Jewish deli Steingold’s, LA Japanese expansion Katana, NYC burrito specialist Dos Toros, and all-day swanky-yet-casual spot The Heritage Restaurant and Caviar Bar. Meanwhile, someone has to come off to make room, so Quiote exits after eight months on, Noyane as well as rooftop season sadly winds down, and Clever Rabbit, Nutella Cafe, and Ella Elli take bows too. Happy eating.
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Sep 1, 2017
Karen Stabiner | New York Times | August 25, 2017
The early diners are dawdling, so your 7:30 p.m. reservation looks more like 8. While you wait, the last order of the duck you wanted passes by. Tonight, you’ll be eating something else — without a second bottle of wine, because you can’t find your server in the busy dining room. This is not your favorite night out.
The right data could have fixed it, according to the tech wizards who are determined to jolt the restaurant industry out of its current slump. Information culled and crunched from a wide array of sources can identify customers who like to linger, based on data about their dining histories, so the manager can anticipate your wait, buy you a drink and make the delay less painful.
It can track the restaurant’s duck sales by day, week and season, and flag you as a regular who likes duck. It can identify a server whose customers have spent a less-than-average amount on alcohol, to see if he needs to sharpen his second-round skills.
So Big Data is staging an intervention.
Both start-ups and established companies are scrambling to deliver up-to-the-minute data on sales, customers, staff performance or competitors by merging the information that restaurants already have with all sorts of data from outside sources: social media, tracking apps, reservation systems, review sites, even weather reports.
They have an eager audience. The NPD Group, a market research company, is predicting “flat” growth in 2017 restaurant traffic, with a 2 percent decline among full-service restaurants and no growth for quick-service restaurants. A 2016 National Restaurant Association survey reported that four out of five restaurateurs believed that business would improve if they embraced technology, and a third worried that they were lagging in those efforts.
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Aug 23, 2017
Phil Vettel | Chicago Tribune | August 21, 2017
Fred’s Mobil Station, which served Winnetka motorists for decades, is about to become a filling station of another sort.
Joe Krouse, Robert LaPata and Fred Gale, the owners of Ten Mile House restaurant in Evanston, are putting the finishing touches to Fred’s Garage (574 Green Bay Road, Winnetka), aiming for a mid-September opening.
“Fred (LaPata) was really bummed,” Krouse joked. “He thought we were naming it after him.”
The partners have expanded the original building, which has been gutted. When finished, the restaurant will be “an homage to the service station,” sporting two working garage doors (for open-air dining) and a large outdoor space that mimics the look of a gas-station canopy.
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Aug 18, 2017
Lewis Lazare | Chicago Business Journal | August 11th, 2017
ConsumerProtect, a San Diego-based consumer protection organization, has done the dirty work of examining City of Chicago health department inspection reports for restaurants and other food-related business throughout 2016 to produce a collection of findings it is calling — provocatively enough — “Dirty Dining.”
For those who eat out or visit their neighborhood pubs frequently, the information ConsumerProtect gleaned from the health department reports may not be especially comforting — particularly depending on what neighborhood you live and dine in and what kinds of restaurants you like to frequent in Chicago.
Residents of the Chicago’s Riverdale neighborhood (ZIP code 60827) may want to be especially vigilant when opting to dine out near where they live. Per the ConsumerProtect data, more than a third of food-related businesses in that zip code failed food service inspections in 2016.
But Riverdale isn’t the only neighborhood singled out. Others, including affluent Lincoln Park, Rogers Park on the city’s far north side, and West Garfield Park on the west side, all had businesses that received more than 10 health code violations each in 2016.
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