This article was released by the Associated Press and is so much on-target.  I personally have seen this type of concept popping up in the Baltimore/Washington area. This is another case in point of what I have always said - food is here to stay!  In America people will always eat out.  They may not get on an airplane and stay in a 5-star hotel, but they will go out eat. There may be more items on the $1 menu or more on the Happy Hour menu – but this industry will always rebound. Adults don’t pack their lunch to go to work and most of the time kids don’t even take their lunch to school. Curbside Service – Outback Steakhouse, Chilis, Chevys – you don’t even have to get out of your car for carry-out anymore. The Hospitality Industry is the largest private sector employer in the country second in size only to the Federal Government and is the best place to be for a recruiting career!

Article Written by Michael Hill, AP

Just beyond the canned goods and produce aisles where he usually grabs his groceries, Jack Curtin recently grabbed a pub lunch. He started with the chicken breast sandwich special and a nice Belgian ale. His ex-wife had the crusted Atlantic salmon fillet. And they did it without ever leaving the store. They were in “The Pub at Wegmans” in Collegeville, Pa. And the pub was in a Wegmans supermarket.

And it was all pretty good.

“Let’s put it this way,” says Curtin, who writes professionally about beer, “if I were shopping and a felt like having a beer, I would have no compunction about walking over there, sitting at the bar and having a beer.” And he can largely because the hugely popular grocery store salad bars of the ’80s and ’90s have given way to a more sophisticated approach to prepared foods. Shoppers now can dine in on sushi and chardonnay, or grab crusted salmon and grilled chorizo to go.

The grocer-as-quick-serve-restaurant model has done well in the recession, in part because the convenience is good and cost is low. But even as the economy upticks slightly, ready-to-eat food continues to drive more traffic to grocery stores, increasingly blurring the traditional boundaries between supermarkets and restaurants.

“We don’t want you coming to the store once a month, or once a week,” says Jim Berndt, Wegmans Food Markets senior vice president for prepared foods, deli and specialty cheese. “We want you coming three or four times a week.”

The prepared supermarket food available today is a far cry from the modest offerings of fresh coffee, potato salad and rotisserie chickens of years past. Many supermarkets now even make their eating spaces as inviting as possible with cozy chairs, faux-wood floors and unsupermarket-like soft lighting. They are hiring chefs, and the variety of supermarket eat-in or takeout food is unprecedented.

Wegmans, a five-state chain based in Rochester, N.Y., runs its full-service pub north of Philadelphia inside an existing sit-down area called the Market Cafe. Market Cafes are common in Wegmans stores and feature pizza, sushi bars, burrito bars, Thai food and vegetarian options to eat in or takeout.

Kroger, the nation’s largest traditional grocer, has been removing underused salad bars to make space for prepackaged foods like sushi and carnitas. They also have The Bistro at Krogers featuring the likes of tilapia and pork loin. Roche Bros. stores in the Boston area offer meals like steak tip dinners ready for the microwave. If customers don’t want to leave home, they can get it delivered.

Whole Foods Market, the natural and organic foods grocer, has pushed the prepared foods concept as far as any chain. Stores offer chicken fried tofu, press-to-order paninis and wheatberry quinoa Waldorf salad. Its flagship store in Austin, Texas, has wine for drinking either in or out of the store, a barbecue station and a place to have food enrobed in chocolate. Shoppers there also can buy a fresh fish, take it to the seafood restaurant 20 feet over and ask them to cook it for takeout.

Industry analysts say prepared foods are a growth area for many chains. Supermarkets saw a 1 percent increase in sales of takeout eaten at home for the year ending in March, even as total restaurant industry traffic was down 3 percent during the same period, according to The NPD Group, a Port Washington, N.Y.-based market research firm.

Peter Romeo, a restaurant trade publication veteran and blogger at Restaurant Reality Check, says industry executives have been looking over their shoulders for decades at the looming threat posed by supermarkets. But he says it never really came until the recent profusion of more sophisticated fare.

In December, Bob Evans opened a “Taste of the Farm” retail area connected to its restaurant in Westerville, Ohio, where customers can pick up a hot spaghetti dinner, a salad or — talk about blurring boundaries — Bob Evans-brand grocery products.

Despite the recent trends, a spokeswoman for the National Restaurant Association says she didn’t expect customers to abandon restaurants any time soon. Maureen Ryan says the industry group’s research shows that more than a third of adults say they don’t eat out as much as they’d like too.

“What the restaurant industry has to offer that the supermarkets don’t is the experience of excellent service, in many case a wide variety of menu options,” Ryan says. “And that’s something you can’t get in a supermarket.”

I hear stories all the time and receive testimonials from people that the recruiters at P&A have helped find jobs.  There are lots of recruiters out there calling you, wanting to work with you, acting like they have your best interest at heart. There are recruiters that tell you they are the best. There are recruiters that say you should only use them because they have some sort of recruiter certificate.

What should you really look for in a recruiter? The bottom line is simple – you want someone that cares. They don’t need to be slick and a certificate is just a piece of paper. What they need to do is care about YOU. Care about how looking for a job is one of the most stressful times of your life. Care about how your job, or lack of a job, impacts your entire family.  Cares that their actions could determine whether or not your job search is successful.

What prompted me to write this blog is an email I received from someone that just got a job through Taylor Clark at P&A - whose blog testimonial coincidentally is the post below.  What happened to this candidate is pretty scary and sad. When you work with a recruiter you should interview THEM. You should develop a bond with them and feel that you are partners in your job search.  You should get a sense that they truly want to help you find the best job possible.  If you do not feel that they are working with you because they want to help you not because you are a paycheck – RUN. There are many great recruiters out there. Do not let your chances be ruined because a recruiter does not do their job.

Below is the letter I received that prompted me to write this blog:

I just wanted to thank your establishment for the recent assistance I was provided.  I recently had my resume on line and it fell into the hands of another recruiter.  Initially I was excited to know that there was someone out there that was willing to assist me with my career advancement.  Shortly thereafter, I was left with the impression that I was inevitably, still on my own.       

 Basically after our initial consultation what I got was a go between.  We had a brief discussion, this recruiter ran through a few different companies who were looking for staffing.  He asked me if I was interested in any of them. I chose three.  He told me that I should expect to start hearing  from them in the next few days.  Two or three days later I got a call from Cracker Barrel.  Awesome!…  Kinda. I totally bombed the phone interview.  Same deal with Boudreaux’s Cajun Kitchen.  I could feel the exasperation in the recruiters tone when I recounted the situation with him.  By the time I heard from Fox & Hound, I was so discouraged that I had pretty much resigned myself to staying where I have been for the last three years.  Although I did get a scheduled face to face interview with them, I was petrified.  What are they looking for? What do they need to hear?  Will they be a good fit?  It was pitch black! 

     I can’t describe his assistance as anything less than a God Send!  Taylor was constantly asking questions and giving answers to anything I was concerned about.  He re-wrote my resume with me!  He sent me no less than 10 pages of E-mails describing what I needed to know about the company I was interested in. What the company was looking for, What not to say. What to say.  You name it, he did it, and then some.  By the time he was done with me, I WAS THE KING!  I knew everything I needed to know. Every contact I had through-out my next four interviews was a slam dunk.  I have been in the restaurant industry for about 20 years. Alot of that time spinning my wheels. Finally with Taylor’s help,  I’ve been able to hook up and put the rubber to the road!