Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen Co. is having a good year. In its just-released second-quarter results, the Atlanta company reported 2,443 restaurants, a jump of 8% from its 2,262 store count for the comparable period in 2014. In the most recent quarter, the Popeyes system opened 37 restaurants, including 18 domestic and 19 international restaurants. The chain…

Food Management Partners has acquired Ovation Brands, owner of five buffet brands and casual-dining Tahoe Joe’s Famous Steakhouse. Greer, S.C.-based Ovation Brands has 328 restaurants in 35 states; its concepts include Ryan’s, Fire Mountain, Country Buffet, Old Country Buffet and Hometown Buffet. With the acquisition, San Antonio-based FMP’s portfolio has expanded to 500 restaurants. Terms…

The nearly server-free restaurant of the future just got a little more real with some news from The Wasserstrom Co., the country’s third-largest foodservice E&S dealer. The century-old dealer, which reported 2014 sales of $610 million, has partnered with Creating Revolutions, a maker of mobile technology for restaurants and retailers, to distribute its service pager…

Private-equity firm NRD Partners has finalized its acquisition of Frisch’s Restaurants in a $174.5 million merger deal. The Cincinnati-based restaurant company, which operates Frisch’s Big Boy units in the Midwest, agreed in May to the sale. Craig Maier, whose family has been at the helm of the company since its founding in 1939, will step…

The Middleby Corp. will acquire AGA Rangemaster Group, a British manufacturer of residential kitchen equipment including ranges, ovens and refrigeration, for about $200 million. The AGA portfolio includes AGA, Rangemaster, Mercury, Falcon, Marvel, Stanley and La Cornue. Headquartered in Leamington Spa, the firm has approximately $400 million in annual revenue and more than 2,500 employees…

Winsight, the business-to-business media company, has bought Technomic, the Chicago-based research and advisory services firm. Technomic was acquired from its founder, President and CEO Ron Paul, who is leaving the company to spend time with family. Terms of the August 31 transaction weren’t disclosed. Technomic will continue to operate under its brand name, and will…

American schoolchildren might be getting healthier lunches, but only a third of the nation’s schools have set up salad bars or invested in the kinds of foodservice equipment that could lead to more meaningful improvement. The numbers come from a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which investigated school data from 2000,…

In a long-awaited ruling reverberating throughout the franchising world, the National Labor Relations Board last week upheld the idea of joint employer status, marking a controversial shift in the standard for determining who is liable for hiring practices and employment policies. The ruling came in a case before the board about the former Browning-Ferris Industries…

Driven by stronger same-store sales and customer traffic levels, the National Restaurant Association’s Restaurant Performance Index posted solid improvement in July.  Showing its first gain in three months, the RPI stood at 102.7 in July, up 0.7 point from June. In further good news, July represented the 29th consecutive month in which the RPI stood above 100,…

The nine publicly reporting foodservice equipment and supplies companies posted combined revenue growth of 3.6% in the second quarter 2015 versus the same quarter last year. While overall growth was moderate, it was the best quarter since Q3/2014, when sales rose 6.7% and more than a full point ahead of first quarter combined growth of…