This is the final issue of RH Extra. Watch your inbox on Jan. 10, 2012 for the first installment of Eat Beat, a new weekly newsletter from Restaurant Hospitality and Nation's Restaurant News that will explore the latest food and beverage news and trends.

Some 1,800 professional chefs surveyed by the National Restaurant Association identified locally sourced ingredients and healthier choices for kids as key trends for 2012. The American Culinary Federation members who participated in the annual survey also expect smartphone apps and tablet computers to make further inroads at restaurants.

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Yes, the majority of your potential customers use the Internet to look for information about your restaurant. But only a tiny fraction uses social networking sites or Twitter to do it. The marketing implications of the in-depth study that discovered this pattern are huge.

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You know a restaurant is in trouble when it needs a security guard to keep irate customers away from the 10-foot-high statue of its namesake owner that stands out front. That’s what they had to do in St. Louis when hometown baseball hero Albert Pujols, name partner in Pujols 5 Grill, left town to take a big-buck offer from the California Angels. Where does this leave his restaurant?

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