Helping Foodservice Businesses Enhance Front-of-House Presence
while Improving their Operations, Brand, and Profits

If you’re in the foodservice business, especially as an operator of a casual or full-service restaurant, bar, lounge, or hotel, you know that the marketplace is as crowded as ever, making it a challenge to stand out from competitors.

A great way to stay relevant, earn new customers, and retain existing ones is to make sure you don’t fall behind the current trends. Here at G.E.T., we’re here to help you set the standard with insight on the 2018 trends for barware so you can:

• Differentiate yourself from your competitors, strengthening your brand equity
• Increase perceived value from your guests’ point of view with beautiful presentations
• Even be able to charge a bit more for the same beverages, padding your bottom line

Let’s see what the future has in store for your barware style. 

All foodservice establishments need drinkware for guests, regardless of the style or volume of service. If you’re a foodservice operator, you may have been faced with the decision of whether to purchase glass or plastic drinkware. But with so many options, the choice can be difficult to navigate or even know where to start.

You have your bottom line to consider, as always, but what other areas of operation might be impacted by the material you choose? Most importantly, how will your decision impact your bottom line beyond the initial investment?

Here at G.E.T., we’re big fans of our customers getting the best bang for their buck, but also finding the perfect product to fit brand and service style needs. We’ve put together some key cost points to consider when deciding between plastic or glass drinkware.

As a foodservice operator, you may not have given much thought to which kind of plastic your drinkware is made from. Considering the tight margins in this industry, you've probably focused more on price than anything else. But what if we told you that focusing on the material your plastic drinkware is made from can have a bigger impact on your overall bottom line than just looking at the price? 

It's true. Depending on your operational needs and brand positioning, you may be spending more than you need to on your drinkware. Or you may not be spending very much, but replacing your drinkware more often due to chipping, cracking, or breaking, which costs you more in the long run. 

We're going to give you an overview of three different kinds of drinkware plastics - Tritan™, SAN, and PC - to see how they compare in terms of durability, replacement rates, and segment use cases. 

Whether you're a first-time foodservice operator opening your premier location, or you're a 30-year veteran  who's interested in overhauling your drinkware program, taking a few key attributes into consideration can help you make the best drinkware purchase for your establishment. Generally, knowing what you want in terms of ounce capacity, material (PC, SAN, or Tritan™ plastics, or glass), and segment use cases will help guide you to the best products for your needs. 

Plastic tumblers are the go-to drinkware selection for an array of high-volume foodservice providers. But do you know why you order the plastic tumblers you do? Is it because that’s just the way things have always been done? Or is it because you’re well informed about the material they’re made from and you know it’s the best option for your establishment?

If you answered, “Because that’s the way it’s always been done,” you’re probably in good company. It’s hard to change habits, after all. Here at G.E.T., we believe in arming you, the foodservice operator, with the knowledge to select the best products for your specific needs.

Follow us through this post as we compare the two most popular kinds of drinkware plastics, PC and SAN, foodservice operators use for their tumblers. By the end, you'll know whether you want to stick with your usual purchase or if it's time to switch. Better yet, you’ll know why.

Whether it's summertime in your neck of the woods, or you're lucky enough to have a tropical climate year-round, guests will travel far and wide seeking out hotels and resorts with excellent poolside and patio amenities. Operators want to offer their guests the very best in terms of food and presentation, but glass in pool and patio areas is almost universally prohibited. This can limit the kinds of materials available to operators of mid- and upper-tier hospitality establishments.  

That's why we at G.E.T. curated photo ideas showing all the beautiful ways you can achieve higher-end brand positioning using outdoor-friendly serveware. Float on down the page and drink in some inspiration!

From intimate dining rooms to service for thousands, every foodservice establishment needs beverage service to accompany their menu. Drinks can be as commonplace as tea and water or as complex as craft cocktails. Regardless of your beverage service style, you can't serve drinks without drinkware. 

But do you go with plastic or glass? These days plastic drinkware often looks just as sharp, shiny, and clear as their glass counterparts. And it's super easy to add custom branded logos and designs to plastic drinkware. So how do you choose? 

Both excellent choices, these two materials can impact service flow and your bottom line in different ways. We're going to take a look at plastic and glass drinkware to see how they stack up. We'll cover a few key areas that can have the most impact on foodservice operations: costs, aesthetics, and broken glass' affect on operations. 

It’s no secret that plastic drinkware is one of the most popular items used by foodservice operators. They’re available in a range of styles and sizes, well priced, and typically have a long service life. Regardless of how much love they get from operators and guests alike, there’s still one thing infinitely more attracted to plastic drinkware than people: protein buildup. 

Protein buildup, as much as it loves plastic drinkware, is really a bully in your kitchen. It dulls formerly shiny drinkware, or can make crystal clear plastic drinking glasses appear dingy. From a food safety standpoint, this is not an issue. But from a branding and budgeting standpoint, it absolutely is. 

While there seems to be a natural attraction between protein buildup and plastic glasses, it’s not a match made in heaven. The good news here is that these two are pretty easy to break up if you follow industry-accepted best practices. We’ll show you some easy ways to avoid protein buildup in your plastic drinkware in the first place, and remedies if it happens anyway.

Our customers at G.E.T. are smart - they know they can elevate their foodservice operation by adding custom branding to the plastic tumblers they use for water, iced tea, and fountain drink service. They know that the high visibility of these drinking glasses, which are almost always in front of their guests, is the perfect opportunity to visually reinforce their brand. 

What they don't know, however, is the cost, including fulfillment time and minimum order quantities, and the different customization options they have. That's where G.E.T. comes in! We're going to take a look at the different ways you can customize your plastic drink cups so you can take your brand to the next level. 

Plastic tumblers are a popular drinkware option in foodservice because of the operational benefits of durability, which is a cost-saver, and because there are plenty of new designs to elevate tabletop presentation. We're going to unpack two common types of plastic used to manufacture tumblers, PC and SAN (polycarbonate and styrene-acrylonitrile, respectively), to help you understand their differences and similarities so that you can find the right material for your operation.