Editor's corner

Welcome to our first Leisure eNewsletter of 2018.

As you read this, I'm on my way back from a trip to Italy where I visited the newly opened FICO Eataly World, a celebration of Italian food and drink. You might describe it as an all-food theme park. We'll have coverage of it in our next issue.

Speaking of food and drink. It has now moved to the forefront at community leisure venues (CLVs), including FECs. The formula used to be that the entertainment was the anchor and food and beverage an impulse purchase. Today, at the most successful CLVs, food and drink has moved to an anchor status. Food and drink generates the majority of revenues at the most of the new concepts.

Our company is now very involved in developing the food and drink for our clients' projects. Many of the projects have individually branded destination restaurants. We work with our alliance kitchen designer, interior designer and executive chefs on creating unique food and drink concepts and brands for the projects. Around half of all our time and work is now devoted to the food and drink components of projects.

As you'll notice, due to the importance of food and drink to the success of CLVs, we are devoting more and more coverage to it in our Leisure eNewsletters. You'll find four articles in this issue.

A significant portion of our work is with the agritainment segment of the CLV industry. Next week I'll be presenting a seminar at the North American Farmers Direct Marketing Association called: It's a foodie world, is your farm taking advantage of it?

We have 11 great articles for you in this issue. I hope you enjoy reading them and they give you some insights and information you'll find useful.

By the way, in addition to following me on Twitter, you can also follow me on Google+ and Linkedin. I post links to news, articles and information that are relevant to the CLV industry roughly five different times on weekdays.

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