Have you ever wondered how today’s award-winning restaurateurs and chefs build their renowned brands and restaurants groups? We’ll give you a hint: marketing and communications are key to successfully scaling any business. Learn how people like Danny Meyer, David Chang and Christina Tosi or April Bloomfield and Ken Friedman use marketing to grow from single outposts to iconic brands. Get an inside perspective in this 90 minute workshop with Felicia Stingone, formerly Senior Managing Director of Brand and Marketing at Union Square Hospitality Group, who will share how you can use marketing to develop memorable, scalable brands.

Overwhelmed with how to choose the POS system that's right for your restaurant? Need to get more customers in the door, and to keep them coming back for more? Not sure how to budget for your restaurant IT?

Meant for everyone from restaurant startups to established brands, this class will teach you how to create a technology strategy that you can use to cut through the noise and save yourself time and money. Taught by tech and restaurant veteran Mike Dulle, this 90-minute class will give you the tools to prioritize your technology investments.

Food+Tech Connect, in partnership with Applegate, Google, Chipotle, Batali & Bastianich Hospitality Group and Studio Industries, brought restaurant and foodservice rabble-rousers together with tech and design nerds to hack a better future for food at Hack//Dining NYC - June 27-29 at General Assembly.

It was a weekend of open food innovation, technology hacking and farm-to-fork eating. Nearly 200 hackers came together to see how we might use technology to re-engineer the future of dining. Twenty four teams created hardware and software solutions to industry-wide challenges, and four teams went home as winners. But we all went home excited about a very bright future of food.

Come on down to the East Village for another great evening of drinks and networking with the food tech community. There won't be any formal programming this month, but you'll have a chance to catch up, discuss your projects and maybe even find some talent.

From diet and fitness trackers to food allergy sensors and fresh food vending machines, a new wave of hardware startups are working to transform the way we eat, move and live. At this Meetup, you'll get a behind the scenes look at some of the of the leading startups' missions, business models and technologies. Each startup will have 5 minutes to present and 5 minutes for audience Q&A. Presenters include MyFitnessPal, Jawbone, The Orange Chef Co, Pantry and 6SensorLabs.

Bring your business cards, tech & ideas for another great evening of drinks & networking with the food tech community. There won't be any formal programming this month, but you'll have a chance to catch up, discuss your projects and maybe even find some talent.

It looks like a lot of us will be at Expo West this week, so we're organizing a happy hour so we can all hang out in Anaheim. It will be super informal, so feel to drop by for 10 minutes or for two hours. We just want to see your faces!

Customer-facing and back of house technologies are revolutionizing the foodservice industry. From payment products that aim to boost check averages, to services that increase user engagement, to platforms that help minimize food waste, a bevy of tech startups are working to optimize customer experience and restaurant operations. Join us for an inside look at how a handful of these startups operate and make money. Each of the startups will have 5 minutes to present and 5 minutes for Q&A.

Bring your business cards, tech and ideas for another great evening of drinks and networking with the Food+Tech community. There won't be any formal programming this month (we're working on a plan for next month), but you'll have a chance to catch up, discuss your projects and maybe even find some talent. Hope to see you there.

In the last year there's been a wave of startups that have launched to make home cooking and delivery easier and healthier. Order a dinner kit or meal online, and you get a box of fresh ingredients and recipes delivered to your doorstep. Join us for an inside look at how these startups operate and make money. Each of the startups will have 5 minutes to demo and 5 minutes for Q&A. There will be networking after the presentations.

Food+Tech Connect, in partnership with the GRACE Communications Foundation and Applegate, is bringing together technologists, entrepreneurs, creatives, policy experts, non-profit leaders and industry executives to develop technologies and tools that help create a better future for meat.

From December 7 – 9, Food+Tech Connect, GRACE Communications and Applegate are bringing together technologists, entrepreneurs, creatives, policy experts, non-profit leaders and industry executives to develop technologies and tools that help democratize meat.

IdeaCOMM: Interactive farm-to-table lunch at SXSWi that brought together food and tech’s most innovative entrepreneurs, investors, government officials, technologists, and farmers to celebrate the birth of the food and tech community. Attendees and chefs used featured web platforms and applications to crowd source and build a food community that connects people at each stage of the process from farm-to-fork. Participating organizations included: Consmr, Greenling, Grubster, Lovefre.sh, The Wine Agent, and the USDA.

Food+Tech Hackathon: The first-ever Food+Tech Hackathon, brought together 70+ developers,designers, statisticians, urban farmers, public officials, and researchers came together for a 12-hour hackathon that used open government data to help citizens connect with and understand their food. Visit our wiki to learn more about the 9 projects that were developed that day.

The Feast Feast : Farm to table dinner for 250 of NYC’s greatest artists, changemakers,government officials, creatives and food innovators as part of the Feast Conference. The event featured guest chefs and sommeliers from: Highlands Dinner Club, Bobo, Studiofeast, Mosefund Farm, Not Eating Out In NY, Brooklyn Grange, The Noble Rot, and San Honesto Mezcal.

FOOD 2.0: Official Internet Week 2011 day-long series of panels that explored food data sharing and standards, the future of food reviewing, open source food, and the social kitchen. Notable panelists included: Amanda Hesser, Nick Fauchald, Stowe Boyd, and Natalie Jeremijenko.

Food+Tech Connect Anniversary Party: We brought together 75 of the most talented food and tech innovators- stuffed them with great food- and asked: How could you use information and technology to hack the food system? Event featured guest chefs from: Food52, Cross(x) Species Adventure Club, a razor, a shiny knife, Studiofeast, and Highlands Dinner Club.

Farm Bill Hackathon: We brought together journalists, technologists, designers, policy makers, and food data specialists to develop tools and visualizations that will help the public better understand how the Farm Bill impacts our lives. The hackathon took place as part of the International Open Data Hackathon.