Emily Williams Knight—the newest of three educators on the NRAEF’s board—is committed to helping more Americans achieve meaningful, fulfilling careers in the restaurant industry via a respected national industry platform.

Emily Williams Knight, president of Kendall College, Chicago, is among the newest members elected to the Board of Trustees of the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation (NRAEF), the philanthropic foundation of the National Restaurant Association (NRA).  Knight was welcomed to the board at the NRAEF’s annual meeting on Jan. 30 in Orlando, Fla. She will serve a two-year term with the possibility of serving two additional two-year terms. Knight is the first representative of Kendall College to serve the NRAEF in this capacity in the foundation’s 28 years.

As a new trustee of the 35-member board, Knight represents not only Kendall College’s Schools of Culinary Arts, Hospitality Management and Business to the NRAEF, but also the farther-reaching role of higher education in supporting the NRAEF’s strategic initiatives. These include creating educational programs that provide pathways to employment in the restaurant and foodservice industry and supporting an effective communications program that conveys opportunities for advancement in the industry, as well as the impact of community engagement.

Familiarity with cooking and incorporating lentils into various menu applications can help your students meet nutrition regulations, budgets and consumer demands when they become foodservice professionals.

Foodservice educators not only need to prepare their students to meet expanding nutrition regulations in schools and healthcare settings, but to simultaneously cater to increasing consumer preferences for healthy, affordable and sustainable ingredients that—above all—still taste good. Allow us to introduce a dark horse in helping foodservice educators rise to meet this challenge: lentils.

Top 10 Facts Your Students Need to Know About Lentils

1. Lentils are nutritional powerhouses. They are cholesterol-free and sodium-free, and loaded with potassium, folate, iron and fiber. One serving of lentils boasts nearly half as much protein as a serving of pork, and two times as much proteinas a serving of quinoa.
2. Lentils naturally cater to a variety of specialty diets, including gluten-free, vegetarian and allergen-friendly. Lentil flour can even be used as a wheat-flour alternative to make gluten-free baked goods (like the cookies pictured).

Two decades ago, dining out was primarily a special occasion. Today, it’s part of daily life for all Americans. But what differentiates the prepared-food-away-from-home choices of a “foodservice hobbyist” and an “affluent socializer”? Technomic offers an in-depth view of the current consumer foodservice landscape.

Technomic’s New Consum4Sight Group gathered data points from 81,870 consumer foodservice occasions over one full year to reveal a look ahead at the 2015 landscape. One surprising pattern: More than half of eating-out occasions are unplanned or decided on impulse. At 53% of all dining occasions, the frequency of “eating on the fly” accounts for more than twice as many routine occasions (25%); special occasions account for just 22% of dining occasions.

Although they represent nearly a quarter of all restaurant visits among Americans, Millennials’ visits and dollars spent are down considerably from several years ago. Why? Chiefly, they find it’s cheaper and healthier (and enjoyable) to cook at home. So, what can operators do to earn greater patronage from this highly desired demographic?

Millennials are the chosen generation for many marketers because of their sheer number and perceived buying power, but they are not a homogenous group. Depending on their age and lifestyles, they use restaurants differently, according to a recently released report by The NPD Group, a leading global information company.

For U.S. restaurants and foodservice outlets, Millennials as a group currently represent about 14.5 billion visits and $96 billion in spending, which is 23% of total restaurant spend. But the group has cut back in both visits and spending, finds the NPD report.

The new International Council on Hotel, Restaurant, and Institutional Education Penn State Research Report, entitled “University Lodging Demand: An Analysis of its Stability and Guidance for Estimating its Growth Potential at the Market Level,” reveals the demand for college and university lodging is more stable than the typical lodging demand, and that markets dominated by a college are more stable in terms of not only occupancy rates, but also average room rates.

“At many recent hotel-investment conferences and in recent issues of hotel-trade magazines, hotel developers have proposed that a hot prospective location for hotel development is near colleges and universities,” said School of Hospitality Management director John O’Neill, who conducted the study. “The primary reason often cited for this optimism is the relative stability of lodging demand generated by colleges. However, until now, this proposition has never been empirically tested, and no empirical research has shown hotel developers what variables about colleges they should study to determine the feasibility of hotel development in any given college marketplace.”