What We Cover

Excellence in Business publishes original reporting on the restaurant, bar, and hospitality industries across the Northeast. Our beat encompasses industry trends, local dining scenes, hospitality standards, and the people and businesses shaping the region’s food culture. We focus on what makes establishments worth recommending — the research, the standards, the commitment to craft.

Our beat is grounded in industry knowledge. The National Restaurant Association reports that the foodservice industry drives nearly $800 billion in annual sales and employs 15.6 million Americans. Understanding that scale — the workforce, the regulatory landscape, the economic pressures — informs how we evaluate establishments. What looks like “a good bar” from the outside reflects deep operational and staffing decisions that merit inspection.

Our Standards

We evaluate establishments against three criteria: operational excellence, consistency, and commitment to the craft. A quality establishment doesn’t just execute well on the day you visit — it maintains those standards through staffing practices, ingredient sourcing, training, and the kind of attention to detail that only becomes visible over time and research.

The Massachusetts Restaurant Association has been advancing the state’s foodservice industry since 1934. Their advocacy around labor standards, food safety, and industry regulation sets the benchmarks we reference when evaluating local establishments. A bar or grill that aligns with these standards — in how they treat staff, source ingredients, and handle operations — is one worth covering.

Our coverage favors depth over breadth. Rather than a rotating list of “new places,” we return to establishments that merit it, tracking how they evolve, how they respond to industry pressure, and whether they maintain the standards that made them worth covering initially.

Next Steps

Our beat evolves with reader feedback. If you have recommendations for establishments worth covering, or if you spot inaccuracies in our reporting, we want to hear. The hospitality industry is dynamic — what we cover reflects both our research and our commitment to staying current with the regional scene.