Welcome to a new age

Welcome, readers of Foodservice Director and other visitors, to foodservicedirector.com and Web 2.0. We have spent the last several months developing a website that would complement FoodService Director magazine by providing readers with information they can't find in the magazine, while also compiling our most popular segments into easy-to-navigate sections called widgets.

We want foodservicedirector.com to become your one-stop shop for information that will help you do your job more effectively. To that end, our site can be built around the information you find most valuable. You can move and organize the home page widgets to reflect which sections you like the most. Just click the top of the widget and drag it where you want it. You can also add widgets to the home page (by pressing the "add content" button in the upper right hand corner) if you don't see your favorite section. Your customized home page will be saved so that every time you visit, you see the information you want to see, where you want to see it. 

Among the new sections you will find on foodservicedirector.com are:

In The News: Because monthly magazines can never really be considered "news" magazines, we have taken this opportunity to transition news from the magazine to the Web site, where it can be disseminated while it is still "fresh." In The News will have two components, news gathered and written by FSD staff and foodservice-related news items collected from other sites. Our hope is that foodservicedirector.com becomes your primary source for "breaking" news from around the market segments.

Promotion of the Day: This widget will offer operators suggestions for historic, ethnic, fun, quirky and off-beat theme meals, special events, contests and giveaways, all designed to draw more business and improve your top line.

Five Questions: Each week, foodservicedirector.com will address an important industry issue by posing five questions about that issue to a foodservice director. Among the topics we will explore will be food safety, marketing, human resources, sustainability, waste reduction, the economy and menu development. If you have a topic you'd like to see us ask five questions about, drop me a note at [email protected].

Ingredient of the Week: This widget will provide operators with interesting and valuable information about common and exotic ingredients that are essential elements of most menus. Included will be information about the products' history, varieties, handling, use and recipe ideas.

Editor's Blog: In this section, I will provide information about our magazine and Web site, weigh in with my thoughts on some of the top issues and challenges facing the industry, and occasionally venture into some of the more quirky or interesting sidelights of the industry. As I do on my Opinion page in FSD, I invite reader feedback and discussion.

foodservicedirector.com has taken shape over several months, complete with all of the growing pains associated with any new project. And the growing—and pains—will not stop with this launch. Indeed, this site will continue to grow and evolve in the coming months and beyond. Already there are more widgets planned and content being gathered. We hope that you will become frequent visitors to the site, not only to see what new items we have planned, but because you always expect to find new content, new valuable information you can use. That is our goal. We hope we meet it, and we want to continually be open to new ideas. So, if you think of something you'd like to see us provide, let us know and we'll do our best to satisfy your desires.

For more than 20 years now, FoodService Director has been your go-to source for foodservice information and innovation. We hope that foodservicedirector.com will serve the same purpose, making these two resources the two you won't want to be without.