The coming of spring is always exciting, especially here in the Northeast. It brings new life and the promise of change for the better after a cold and dark winter.
This spring, however, has brought change to more than the weather for the staff at FoodService Director. Last Thursday, FSD and its sister publications, Restaurant Business and ID Access, agreed to merge with CSP Information Group.
CSP Information Group, based in Oak Brook, Ill., is the publisher of several print and online products, including CSP and Fare, as well as the producer of food-related conferences and seminars, such as Foodservice At Retail Exchange, the Restaurant Leadership Conference and Convenience Retailing University. (See story here.)
We already had a relationship with the people from CSP before this merger. Restaurant Business is the media partner for CSP’s RLC, and RB and FSD helped CSP launch its FARE conference in 2008. So both parties were aware of each other’s success and innovative nature.
This is a marriage based on strength, rather than need. We recently became the No. 1 foodservice media group, based on advertising pages and market share, and CSP is the top company in convenience retailing media. When you take two top entities in anything, the resulting force can only be stronger, and that is what we anticipate with this merger.
Readers of FSD and visitors to foodservicedirector.com should see no outward changes, other than a new email address for our staff. We have been working on several additions to both products—including The Goldies, our new award program in partnership with the Culinary Institute of America—and we will be moving ahead with those plans. More on these enhancements as we move into the summer.
Exactly what the future holds, I can’t say. But I know this much: It was our strength in the marketplace and our reputation for innovation that attracted the attention of the executives at CSP. We hope to be able to build on that value with this new partnership.
Our group publisher, Scott Allmendinger, perhaps put it best. In a conversation I had with him Friday morning, he said, “Change is never easy, but it is almost always exciting.” As I do every spring, I look forward with eagerness to what lies before us.