Matthew Liedke

1 week ago | foodondemand.com | Matthew Liedke

The year ahead may be a challenging one for restaurants, as macroeconomic variables indicate less than promising forecasts. Victor Fernandez, chief insights officer at Black Box Intelligence, shared predictions with an audience at the 2025 Food on Demand Conference Monday. Fernandez was joined on stage with consultant Lisa Miller to break down their findings on where the restaurant industry is going based on their surveys and data analysis.

1 week ago | liedkeonfilm.com | Matthew Liedke

The most traditional ways movies and sports collide is in a sports movie. Often about underdogs overcoming tremendous odds. However, other times, it just so happens that big movies are released around the same time major sporting events take place. That’s what occurred in the first weekend of May, 10 years ago, and there was definitely no underdog. These were heavyweights going at it across the world of entertainment, with screens of all sorts filled with events.

2 weeks ago | franchisetimes.com | Matthew Liedke

New leadership at the United States Small Business Administration have implemented a number of lending rule changes, reversing decisions made during President Joe Biden’s term. Notably, the SBA will reinstate its Franchise Directory, after the agency previously ended it in 2023. Two years after it published a new rule eliminating the Franchise Directory, the United States Small Business Administration is reversing course.

2 weeks ago | franchisetimes.com | Matthew Liedke

Since selling their healthy food concept Freshii in 2023, a Toronto-based group of entrepreneurs have become multi-brand master franchisees with several concepts. Their goal is to introduce markets all over Canada to brands that have established strong customer bases in the United States, such as the dirty soda concept Fiiz Drinks. When the founders of Freshii established their restaurant concept in 2005, they quickly became first-movers of the healthy food category in Canada.

2 weeks ago | liedkeonfilm.com | Matthew Liedke

It’s probably not a great sign that throughout this experience I was wishing the movie was about Laurence Fishburne’s character rather than the protagonist. That protagonist is Charlie Heller (Rami Malek), the titular Amateur who works as a cryptographer with the CIA. Rather than conducting missions in the field, he works at the agency’s headquarters in the digital space. That is until his wife is killed in a London terrorist attack. Following the incident, Heller sets out on a path of revenge.