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Kyle Bailey is Andrew Crush's pro-bono pig broker.Sgt. Major is a big player. The enormous pig with proportionally enormous balls is the male hog responsible for fathering the majority of the pigs at Spring House Farm in Lovettsville, Virginia. The property, run by farmer Andrew “Boss Hog” Crush, spans 400 acres in Loudoun County’s wine country. Goats, rabbits, chickens, cattle, and honeybees are also integral to the operation, but Spring House Farm is a true pig paradise. Pigs there are raised on pasture land feeding on grubs, grass, and supplemental feed until they reach 100 pounds. “When they’re big enough...

On October 3, Garden Fresh Restaurant Corp., which owns Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes, filed for bankruptcy. The company, owned by private-equity firm Sun Capital Partners, said it will close 20 to 30 of its 124 locations and put itself up for sale. On September 30, Restaurants Acquisitions, the operator of Black-eyed Pea and Dixie House restaurant chains, converted its Chapter 11 filing to Chapter 7 liquidation. The bankruptcy court order noted the company had shuttered its restaurants and management had resigned. On September 29, Cosi Inc., a fast-casual chain with 1,100 employees filed for bankruptcy. It closed 29 of its...

They dot the landscape in this working-class New Jersey city, popping up every few blocks with names like US Fried Chicken, Royal Fried Chicken and New York Fried Chicken and Burger and giving immigrants a foothold in a new country. One of these fried chicken restaurants, First American Fried Chicken, was thrust into the international spotlight on Monday when authorities arrested the owner’s son, Ahmad Rahami, after a shootout with police. Rahami is suspected of planting several explosives in New York City and New Jersey, including one that blew up on Saturday night in Manhattan and injured 29 people and...

Logan's Roadhouse restaurant chain has filed for bankruptcy. The filing was made Monday with U.S. bankruptcy court in Wilmington, Delaware. The plan, according to the company is "designed to restructure the company's balance sheet" while providing it with the "capital needed to turnaround operations." The Nashville, Tennessee-based steakhouse chain best known for its western flair and peanuts on the floor will close 18 restaurants as part of its restructuring. The chain operates 250 locations nationwide, including 23 in Alabama....

Ruby Tuesday plans to close 95 restaurants throughout the country, the company announced. The locations of the restaurants to be closed have not been released, but the restaurants will be shutting down quickly. According to the company's press release, the under-performing locations will stop operations by September. Ruby Tuesday's had 724 restaurants as of May 31, and 646 of those were company-operated.

A fresh food lawsuit has emerged in Massachusetts following an incident at Panera. Boston Magazine reports that back in January, a New England family placed an online order for a meal from the chain's location in Natick. They ordered a grilled cheese sandwich for their six-year-old daughter, noting that it was for a child with a peanut allergy. The parents claim that after taking a bite, the young girl suffered a reaction that sent her to the hospital, and they discovered a dollop of peanut butter inside the sandwich. Luckily an epi pen saved the girl's life, but the family...

Chick-fil-A is rolling out a new app that will let customers avoid waiting in line at the register. The app, called Chick-fil-A One, will allow customers to order and pay for their food in advance, then pick it up at a counter designated for online orders. That's big news for fans of Chick-fil-A, which is typically slammed with customers during regular meal times, making long lines inevitable. The app will also allow users to customize and save their favorite orders. Michael Lage, a veteran of Facebook and Google who helped develop the app, says it will change how customers, particularly...

The restaurant world in Los Angeles is rapidly changing, and it seems that no matter how old the eatery there’s always something new to try. Case in point: Philippe The Original’s plan, as of today, to start offering delivery. The plan, says popular delivery app Caviar, is to bring Philippe’s in as a full-time partner, which means customers will be able to enjoy their own French dip sandwiches without leaving the office. The new delivery option kicks off today , with Philippe’s also turning out soups. sides, salads, and desserts to help complement the iconic sandwich. It’s just the latest...

Let’s finish out the weekend with a story about Californians being Californians, because… California. Terces and Matthew Engelhart have made quite the life for themselves out on the left coast over the past decade, having established a small chain of “organic, plant-based” restaurants which specialize in completely vegan food. They apparently attract Hollywood celebrities who are impressed not only by the business ethic of their eateries, but the “Love Farm” where they raise much of their produce, presumably in a Gaia approved fashion. They’ve published a book which explains the tenets of their “sacred enterprise” which is a must read...

On Tuesday, Dallas lost a hamburger legend. Jack Keller, who spent over half a century selling burgers at Keller's Hamburgers, died at the age of 88. "My dad was the smartest, coolest man I ever met," Jack Keller, Jr. told NewsFix. "He was my hero. Dad always wanted to give a consistently very good product, at a very good price. He loved being a hamburger man." "He was good to me," said Vicky Cobb, who's worked at Keller's for the last 35 years. "I have nothing bad to say about him. It's a sad day for all of us." Keller's...

A deal that would raise California's minimum wage to $15 an hour was met with a mixture of joy and anxiety across the state Sunday. Some workers and labor officials hailed it as a breakthrough in providing higher-wage jobs in fields where it's a struggle to make ends meet. But some business owners feared the shift would hurt their bottom lines -- and perhaps even put them out of business. The debate is likely a preview for the weeks ahead as the minimum wage proposal works its way through Sacramento. Selwyn Yosslowitz said that minimum wage hikes add increased pressure...

Looks like the city is spoiling for a new fight with restaurateurs: A bill being introduced today by Brooklyn city council member Inez Barron would force them to warn customers that foods with too much sugar and carbs are dangerous to people with diabetes. If it’s passed, restaurants would be required to hang a poster created by the Department of Health that spells out the “risks of excessive sugar and other carbohydrate intake for diabetic and pre-diabetic individuals.” Barron says the city has “an obligation” to provide consumers with this information just like it has with calorie counts. …

Technology is killing off independent pizzerias in the United States at the rate of roughly 2,549 locations per year (in 2015 alone). The pizza category is being reshaped by both big new tech deployed by chains and fresh threats from sophisticated emerging brands that are taking slices of the pie from tens of thousands of ill-equipped and low-tech independent pizzerias.

In America, chain restaurants get a bad rap. We blame them for the spike in obesity and the death of the family dinner. We demonize them as “the core of what is wrong with our food system.” No wonder our bougie, West Coast friends shun Bloomin’ Onions and Big Macs in favor of meals from farm-to-table gastropubs and “undiscovered” ethnic food joints. And it’s not just them. Food — obscure, locally sourced, painstakingly chef-crafted — has become a defining obsession, a “measuring stick of cool,” as New York magazine put it. Today, a quarter of Americans eat organic products on...

There are no Michelin stars on the door, but you will not find a better breakfast in New York City than at the Bel Aire Diner in Astoria, Queens. The coffee, a lighter roast than Starbucks' and brewed three gallons at a time, is always fresh because just about every customer gets a refill or three. The Greek Breakfast entrée is a masterpiece of the line cook's art, a combination of eggs (any style), feta cheese, soft black olives and grilled fresh tomatoes whose juice seasons the toasted pita. The Bel Aire is run under the glare of Argyris "Archie"...

This intervention is not aimed at those with life-threatening food allergies or similarly grave medical conditions. I would never question people whose faces will balloon if they ingest trace amounts of shellfish. Or people who risk going into anaphylactic shock with a whiff of peanut dust. Those problems are very real, and everyone who is afflicted with them has my sympathy. I’m talking about the rest of you. Those of you who don’t eat garlic because you detest its smell or avoid cauliflower because it makes you fart or have gone gluten-free because you heard it worked wonders for Jennifer...

A coupon is a menu New federal guidance meant to help businesses comply with the Obamacare calorie posting regulation has not made the rule any less “complex and burdensome,” a group critical of the regulation says. The 53-page document released by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) this week says a coupon can be a menu and offers a 109-word definition of “restaurant-type food.” “FDA’s recent disclosure of guidelines regarding the menu labeling rule does not change the fact that the regulation remains expensive, ineffective, and unworkable,” the American Pizza Community, which represents Domino’s, Papa John’s, and Little Caesars, said...

Restaurant owners, customers and staff have long railed against the tyranny of tipping, but like a love affair gone bad, it has proved difficult to quit.Now, prompted by a spurt of new minimum wage proposals in major cities, an expanding number of restaurateurs are experimenting with no-tipping policies as a way to manage rising labor costs.Here in Seattle, where the first stage of a $15-an-hour minimum wage law took effect in April, Ivar’s seafood restaurants switched to an all-inclusive menu. By raising prices 21 percent and ending tipping, Bob C. Donegan, the president and co-owner, calculated he could increase everyone’s...

According to a report released Sunday by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the $15 minimum wage has caused Seattle restaurants to lose 1,000 jobs — the worst decline since the 2009 Great Recession. “The loss of 1,000 restaurant jobs in May following the minimum wage increase in April was the largest one month job decline since a 1,300 drop in January 2009, again during the Great Recession,” AEI Scholar Mark J. Perry noted in the report.

According to a report released Sunday by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the $15 minimum wage has caused Seattle restaurants to lose 1,000 jobs — the worst decline since the 2009 Great Recession. “The loss of 1,000 restaurant jobs in May following the minimum wage increase in April was the largest one month job decline since a 1,300 drop in January 2009, again during the Great Recession,” AEI Scholar Mark J. Perry noted in the report.