Restaurant Association Announces New Services for Member Business Owners

[Wilsonville, OR] – The Oregon Restaurant Association today announced several new service offerings for its restaurant members designed to offer employees access to discounted health services, provide discounts on music licensing fees, and add to business bottom-lines through the paid recycling of waste vegetable cooking oils.

ORA Member Service President Bob Petow made the announcement today following negotiations and a member review of each service based on value offering to member restaurants. "In addition to the range of current services offered to ORA members that provide business savings or operational efficiencies, we're pleased to add three new offerings for member consideration," Petow said.

The three new services include:

• ORA Discount Health Services Program by Careington International for ORA member businesses. The program provides for discounted medical services to employees for dental, vision, hearing, prescription drug, lab/x-ray and diabetes management services, at no cost to the employer. Savings of several hundred dollars on medial services can be realized by program participants. All registration and service information is conducted online for employee convenience.
• Discounted music licensing fees via BMI, Inc. are available for those member food and beverage establishments who provide music as a part of their business. The discount of 12% off regular licensing fees can save businesses more than the cost of membership in the Association. Members can also receive an additional 10% timely payment discount.
• Compensation for recycled waste vegetable cooking oils via Standard Biodiesel USA is the third new service offered by ORA. In today’s volatile commodities environment, Standard Biodiesel will pay a 10 cent per gallon premium above current market rates, insuring member companies can remain environmentally responsible yet offset disposal expenses with compensation for recycling their waste oils.

"These three relationships are timely additions to our member service offerings in light of today’s rising health care costs; emphasis on sustainability and environmental responsibility, and the need for businesses to reduce expenses however possible. These will be valuable resources for current members, or for businesses seeking savings through consideration of association membership," Petow added.

In addition to the above new services, ORA also offers its members group programs for workers’ compensation and property & casualty insurance working with Liberty Northwest; very competitively priced credit card processing fee programs in tandem with First Data Corporation; discounted point-of-sale (POS) equipment via Micros; payroll services in partnership with Paychex; tailored health insurance programs from Garth Rouse & Associates; supplemental health insurance programs with Aflac, and graphic design, marketing and publishing services from Creative Center.

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The Oregon Restaurant Association is the leading business association for the restaurant industry in Oregon, which is comprised of over 9,000 restaurant and foodservice outlets, a work force of 120,000 employees, and a total economic impact of $9.7 billion - making it the cornerstone of the economy, career opportunities and community involvement. The Association works to represent, train and promote the rapidly growing industry.