First Time Is The Charm!

For the inaugural Restaurant Development Summit, it was a touchdown!  Kicking off the summit at the Turnberry Isle & Resort in Miami we had the winningest coach in NFL history, Don Shula, address the national delegation of restaurant executives on how “Everyone’s a Coach”. Shula shared insights from his historic career as well as candid thoughts on the state of professional sports and leadership today.

As a spin-off of the highly successful Retail Facilities Summit, the Restaurant Development Summit was met with great enthusiasm and attendees were engaged from the second they arrived.  Delegates, Speakers, and Suppliers alike were able to network and exchange effective information in the relaxed setting of the resort.  Many were able to find solutions to some of the critical issues facing their organizations as well as discover new approaches to better their business.  It’s one thing for us to tell you, but quite another to hear it from the attendees:

• “Overall a great experience.  Talented, knowledgeable people…very useful information that we can apply” Bill O’Keefe – Applebee’s
• “Overall very positive experience.  Great venue, good scheduling balance of the meetings and sessions.  Very good content in sessions.  Keep[s] the atmosphere intimate so you can have informal discussions during breaks.”  Bobby Speir – Krispy Kreme
• “Wonderful networking event!  Interesting & relevant speakers” Lauren Taliaferro – Focus Design/Moe’s
• “This was the best CraigMichaels event I have attended.  I’ve made some great connections with potential clients” Laura Hodge – Glidden Professional

If you couldn’t quite make it to this year’s summit, check out pictures from the event to see just how engaging it was at our SmugMug page.

As always, we want to extend a very special thank you for everyone taking the time out of their busy schedules to join us this year.  We couldn’t have done it without each and every single one of you and we hope to see you at the 2012 Restaurant Development Summit which will take place October 28-30^th at the Hyatt Grand Champions Resort & Spa in beautiful Palm Springs, CA.  

Also we are excited to be launching another new event called StoreTech which will take place June 10-12th at the Loews Lake Las Vegas Resort & Spa in Henderson, NV.  This summit is geared specifically for CIOs and VPs of Information Technology at the nation’s leading retail companies.  If anyone is interested in perhaps sharing the information with your peers in IT, you can direct them over to our minisite at storetechsummit.com.