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Ashok Selvam | Eater Chicago | January 14, 2019 SVN Restaurant Resource Group’s Marcus Sullivan and Tim Rasmussen represented the landlord in the transaction. Holidays will get special attention when Vajra, a new South Asian restaurant serving Indian and Nepalese food, opens in West Town. Imagine special tasting menus for Christmas, Mother’s Day, and holidays observed in South Asia

Anthony Todd | Chicago Magazine | January 11, 2019 River North dining can get, well, a little repetitive. As Robbie Schloss, owner of the forthcoming JoJo’s Milk Bar (23 W. Hubbard St.): “You get a lot of the same stale concepts that are copies of each other, plus transplants from Miami and Vegas. We don’t want to fit

Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz | Chicago Tribune | December 15, 2018 New Years Eve last year found Mary Mastricola in a bind. She had booked 80 people for a four-course prix fixe dinner at La Petite Folie, her French restaurant in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. But with two employees recently resigned and others unavailable to work the holiday, there was almost

Meredith Melland | WGN Chicago | December 10, 2018 CHICAGO — Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that the James Beard Awards, the “Oscars of the food industry,” will extend its run in Chicago through 2027. Emanuel joined WGN Morning News in studio Monday morning to talk about the impact of the Beard Awards on Chicago, the city’s growing food and entertainment sectors

Ravi Baichwal | ABC 7 Chicago | December 3, 2018 Watch for more pop-up restaurants, stores and services across Chicago. The city unveiled a new licensing system Monday to make it easier for micro-businesses to open. It’s a way to cultivate entrepreneurship in the city’s diverse neighborhoods. At the corner of 79th and Woodlawn sits a community hub bursting

John Pletz | Crain’s Chicago Business | November 28, 2018 Tock, a Chicago maker of restaurant-reservation software, is sticking around for a third course. Even as consolidation has claimed other rivals to OpenTable—such as Reserve, which recently was acquired by Resy—Tock marches on. The four-year-old company raised $9.5 million in its third round of funding. The deal was

Phil Vettel | Chicago Tribune | November 12, 2018 Le Sud is only 7 weeks old, but already looks like a hit. It has a veteran management team, a chef who cooks with intelligence and purpose, an interesting and highly affordable wine list, and bright, attentive service. Good night, everybody! OK, details. Le Sud (“the south”)

Pedanco | November 2018 Think about how much it costs to acquire a new customer. You put up expensive signage inside and outside the restaurant. Your website itself (not to mention the management of it) comes with a monthly cost. You run promotions in-house and offer discounts online to lure customers in. You try to maintain a

Ashok Selvam | Eater | October 25, 2018 Yes, for yet another year Gibsons Bar & Steakhouse in the Gold Coast is the top-grossing independent restaurant in Chicago, according to the latest Restaurant Business Online top 100 list. This year, Gibsons made $25.5 million in sales, a 2.9 percent increase from 2017’s numbers. Gibsons also moved up one spot nationally, from No. 10

Carla Vianna | Eater New York | October 23, 2018 Restaurants struggling to cope with pricey rent hikes may benefit from a proposed bill — discussed Monday in City Council — that seeks to level the playing field between landlords and commercial tenants in NYC. The bill, dubbed the Small Business Jobs Survival Act, gives tenants a right to a lease renewal, including