I learned two lessons at the 90th National Restaurant Association Restaurant, Hotel-Motel Show, which was in Chicago from May 16 to 19. First, I got to physically see just how huge the restaurant industry is. Conceptually, of course, the size of the industry is fairly obvious, but knowing it and trying to take in the scope of products being sold at the thousands of booths at the NRA Show are two very different things. Second, food quality lags far, far behind profit as the primary concern of most in the industry. Again, probably a lesson most of us intuitively understand, but one that was really slammed home as I spent about five hours making my way around the NRA...
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