There's more profit poured at the bar than cooked in the kitchen. That's what Perlick Regional Sales Manager Corrinne Ward said on a recent episode of Foodable's Rock My Restaurant. The episode was filmed at the FCSI The Americas Biennial Conference and was focused on key trends that are helping drive profits in the food and beverage industry.

The farm-to-table movement of sourcing food locally in the restaurant industry promotes the use of fresh ingredients and the local farms those ingredients come from. Another movement is becoming increasingly more popular, this time in the beverage industry. The farm-to-keg trend – or farm-to-glass – is being tapped into by many small craft brewers across the country.

India Pale Ales, or IPAs, are an enormously popular aspect of the current craft beer movement. From West Coast "hop bombs" to "big beer" Imperial IPAs, there's a wide range of options from which IPA lovers can choose. Here's a brief rundown of the different characteristics of IPA beers. For starters, it's important to know that all IPAs are part of the pale ale family. Pale ales were aptly named because they were brewed "lighter" due to pale malts. Current pale ales are certainly brewed with their fair share of hops, but they are much lighter on the IBU scales used to measure bitterness.

It started last year, and the trend is continuing to grow. Hard root beer and other hard sodas are taking the country by storm. But what is hard soda, and how does its popularity translate to profitability for bar and restaurant operators? The hard soda category includes standard cola flavors and derivatives like cherry cola, but the true leader in the category is hard root beer. Hard root beer exists as an anomaly somewhere between a fascination with American nostalgia and the ever-popular craft beer craze.

The look and feel of your beer tower can enhance the aesthetics of your bar or foodservice establishment and can even increase sales. As part of our vast portfolio of Century Dispensing Towers, Perlick is proud to announce the addition of our Falco design. Created in a sleek and modern style that comes in both illuminated and non-illuminated models, there are 12 different tower options with the Falco beer tower design.

Nothing says the arrival of summer like a crisp bottle of rosé. And according to a report from Beverage Dynamics, this trend is growing exponentially across the United States. The report states that rosé wine sales increased more than 30 percent in 2015, and wines priced at more than $11/bottle gained nearly 60 percent in volume. Even trend-setting and reporting publications like Vanity Fair are claiming rosé as the "next thing" in wine.

Wines by the glass are an important part of any beverage program, particularly because they don't require customers to make full commitments to a bottle. But what are the benefits received by the restaurant or foodservice operation, and what are the challenges? For starters, the mark up on wines-by-the-glass is greater than the markup an operation typically sees on the whole bottle. This means wines-by-the-glass can be more profitable. But they also come with a plethora of challenges.

Getting your beer system right on the first try is critical. And to get it right, beer system engineers have to consider all the hard questions and not gloss over the details. But what are those questions, and what are some of the correct answers? To begin, it's important to ask what kind of pressure source do you need? This is determined by the distance of your beer run, as well as the changes in elevation when comparing your cooler to your dispensing station.