And if you look at beef costs and you look at labor costs and you look at all of the

drivers of costs and everything right now in the restaurant industry is going up right so margin you

I've said this publicly I've been at Technomic 28 years and it's I believe harder

today to profitably run a restaurant than it ever has been in my entire career doing this type of work.

I'm Ricky Malti and that's David Hankis, a senior principal for Technomic and a global food and beverage trend watcher.

You may have noticed that restaurants today are trying to offer more value to get you back in the door

and some are finding tremendous success.

That's why Chile's parent company Brinker International

has seen its stock more than double in just the last year. Hank has joined me for a

conversation about the state of the Value Wars, the winners, the losers, and some ideas for your next meal out. The Value Wars at restaurants are in full swing when you you watch a college football game, you're going to see the appeals from restaurants,

like McDonald's, Dunkin' Donuts.

Please come back.

We'll give you a full meal for five to six bucks.

And Dave, I'm even seeing this on the higher end where this Brazilian all you can eat steakhouse, Fogo to Chow, is offering a $39 deal for meat presented on swords, all you can eat

minus the expensive cuts for the investors listening.

This is Peter Lynch style at its tastiest.

As we get into the value wars, though, it seems like it's heated up a lot lately, even though restaurants have always been promising a good deal for a meal.

What do you think the starting flare was though? When did this really start? I think you've got to go back

probably six to 12 months to look at overall restaurant industry traffic patterns

because that's really traffic is the lifeblood of the industry and if you look at fast food or limited service traffic patterns

they started to decline roughly kind of the beginning of the year.

They started to decelerate and actually over the last four to five months traffic patterns

...