WIRTZ BEVERAGE NEVADA DEBUTS SUCCESSFUL BEVERAGE MANAGEMENT PROGRAM

Source: BarMedia

March 31st

In response to the slumping economy, Wirtz Beverage Nevada will present an educational program on April 27th designed to teach restaurateurs and bar owners ways to become more profitable.

The full-day seminar - Successful Beverage Management-Profitable Strategies for the On-Premise Operator-is presented by industry notables Jack Robertiello, beverage writer and former editor of Cheers magazine, and Robert Plotkin, author and beverage consultant.

Read more: WIRTZ BEVERAGE NEVADA DEBUTS SUCCESSFUL BEVERAGE MANAGEMENT PROGRAM

Restaurants face big changes with health care reform

Source: NRN

By Paul Frumkin

Mar 22nd

As President Barack Obama prepares to sign a sweeping health care reform bill into law, the foodservice industry faces changes of historic proportion.

In addition to requiring many restaurant operators to contribute to health care coverage for their employees, the newly passed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act also makes menu labeling the law of the land.

The bill, HR 3590, which is expected to expand health insurance coverage to most Americans by 2014, was passed Sunday night in the U.S. House of Representatives by a narrow margin of 219 to 212. Obama has said he will sign it into law Tuesday.

"The National Restaurant Association opposed the bill that passed the House because it includes provisions that will impose tremendous burdens on America's restaurants and hurt our industry's ability to create and sustain jobs," said Scott DeFife, the NRA's executive vice president of policy and government affairs.

The International Franchise Association also voiced opposition to the measure.

"We support health care reform, but this bill does not reduce the long-term costs of health care and puts more regulatory burden on small businesses," said David French, the IFA's vice president of government relations. "The House-passed bill imposes a costly employer mandate, offers inadequate and unworkable tax credits to subsidize the mandated coverage and hides the true cost with an array of new taxes on small-business owners."

Certain key details contained within the measure are subject to change if the Senate passes the House-passed budget reconciliation bill, which includes several final revisions to the law. And while Senate Democrats appear confident that they have the votes to shepherd the reconciliation measure through the chamber, observers in the foodservice industry acknowledge that Republican opponents could delay the process.

"It's a very complex process, and there's no guarantee it will pass," said Scott Vinson, vice president of the National Council of Chain Restaurants in Washington.

The NRA said it would continue to press its case before the Senate with respect to provisions affecting the restaurant industry. The IFA also said it would continue to press for a rejection of the reconciliation bill.

"The reconciliation bill further increases taxes on small businesses and includes additional burdensome regulatory hurdles and costs," the IFA's French said. "We urge the Senate to reject the reconciliation bill."

The measure Obama plans to sign would impact businesses with 50 or more full-time employees. The law states that employers would receive a 35-percent tax credit if they helped to insure their employees. However, they would have to pay a fee of $750 per full-time employee if they chose not to insure them.

Massachusetts: Curious About Revenue From Sales Tax, Alcohol Tax Reporting

Source: WBZ 38

David Wade

Mar 23rd

It has been nearly eight months since the state made a move to bring in more money by raising the sales tax from 5 percent to 6.25 percent and charging a tax on alcohol.

Philip from Sudbury Declared his Curiosity:

"How do the sales tax revenues compare to a year ago?"

David Wade takes a look at the numbers.

For 65 years, John Harrington's family has owned a liquor store in Chelmsford. He had seen it all, until last August when for the very first time, he saw a sales tax on alcohol.

"Our numbers are down, our customers are down and our percentages are down," he said.

For liquor stores, the jump to 6.25 percent was like going from zero to 60, and Harrington says people started speeding to tax free New Hampshire. "The sales tax has a major impact on people."

But what kind of effect is it having on our cash-strapped state? "The amount we've been getting in exceeds what we expected to be getting in."

Navjeet Ball is the head of the Department of Revenue. She says in a perfect world, a 25 percent sales tax increase would bring in at least 25 percent more revenue, but revenue is up 14 percent because people are buying less.

"I think the larger issue is the economy quite frankly more than the sales tax rate," said Ball.

Jon Hurst from the Mass. Retailers Association says his clients are telling him they're losing people. "We're still lagging. Part of that is the sales tax. We are also very tech savvy in Massachusetts and are more likely to go online. It's been a struggle."

The state does not keep track of revenue by location, but they think less people have headed north and to the Internet than they expected, though some shoppers told WBZ they've don't it. "More and more taxes are being taken out every week, every month and sometimes you have to look our for number 1," said one person who admitted to traveling to New Hampshire for alcohol.

And for Harrington, if people continue to go north, his numbers will go south. D"oes it feel like it's getting a little harder to do business every year?" David Wade asked.

"In this state, absolutely it is," Harrington said.

The Department of Revenue also tells WBZ that month-by-month, the numbers have been getting much stronger, showing signs that Massachusetts shoppers are starting to return to stores.

Moderate alcohol consumption is good for sick hearts

Source: DNA

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Regular and moderate alcohol consumption is beneficial for people who had a previous heart attack or other ischemic vascular events, a new study has concluded.

The study was performed by the Research Laboratories at the Catholic University of Campobasso, Italy. It claimed that moderate consumption, defined as one or two glasses of wine a day or the equivalent amounts of beer or other alcoholic beverages, significantly reduces the risk of death from any cause in those who already suffered from ischemic vascular disease.

The research, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC), was performed using the statistic procedure of meta-analysis which allows to combine different studies conducted worldwide to achieve more precise results.

Researchers analyzed the most important scientific studies performed during the last years. Eight in total in four Countries: United States, Sweden, Japan and Great Britain. Each study took into account patients already affected by an ischemic vascular event. During the years following the disease onset, patients were followed by researchers to know which were the lifestyle habits, including alcohol consumption, able to avoid a new clinical event. The meta-analysis allowed to pool all those studies for a total of 16,351 people examined.

"We observed," says Simona Costanzo, epidemiologist and first author of the study, "that regular and moderate consumption has beneficial effects even for people already affected by heart attack, or stroke. Not only they are less likely to be affected by similar diseases again, but all-cause mortality too resulted to be lower than in those who did not consume any alcoholic beverage".

The effect is very similar to that observed in healthy people. "Risk reduction", Costanzo argues, "is about 20 percent. This means that one event out of five can be spared. It is a huge advantage, comparable to the one already recorded for healthy individuals".

"When we talk about moderate alcohol consumption, we mean something quite far from what we use to see in TV fictions," says Licia Iacoviello, Head of the Laboratory of Environmental and Genetic Epidemiology and responsible of the Moli-sani Project. "We refer to moderation as drinking regularly, at low doses, within a healthy lifestyle, such as the Mediterranean diet. A glass of wine or beer during meals has always been an integral part of the Mediterranean way of eating. Our research highlights another crucial issue: drinking has not only to be moderate, but also regular. A moderate consumption spread along the week is positive. The same amount of weekly alcohol, concentrated in a couple of days is definitely harmful".