The most recent snapshots of the national restaurant industry are coming up roses: Bolstered by positive same-store sales and customer traffic and an optimistic outlook among restaurant operators, the National Restaurant Association’s Restaurant Performance Index remained above 100 for the fourth consecutive month in February, signifying an expansion in the index of key industry indicators, and the association also reported that restaurants have added more than 560,000 jobs since the beginning of the employment recovery, with more than 200,000 of those positions created in the last six months.

Yet the local restaurant headlines have been far more bleak lately: Joya’s Bistro at The Greene, Benham’s Restaurant & Catering in Dayton, l’Auberge in Kettering — all closed in recent weeks, although Benham’s owners say they intend to reopen on Wilmington Pike in Kettering, and the owners of Joya’s and l’Auberge have said they’re seeking investors to reopen.

Why the disconnect?

Well, the Dayton area managed to ride out most of the Great Recession without any high-profile restaurant closings that plagued many other cities, in part because restaurant owners and operators made deep, painful cuts to survive.

So the recent round of closings may just be a matter of delayed impact.

Trends that start on the coasts usually reach Dayton slowly, as if they’re carried via pony express, but maybe the robust recovery of the national industry can hop a fast train to the Miami Valley.

Because as the nation’s second-largest private sector employer employing nearly 10 percent of the U.S. workforce, the restaurant industry is a pivotal part of the overall economy.

Treating children well

My colleague Chelsey Levingston reported last week that Dayton and Cincinnati children’s hospitals are among Ohio children’s hospitals leading the nation in improving patient safety and quality as well as collaborating on research.

Dr. Arnold Strauss, director of the Cincinnati Children’s Research Foundation, said Ohio received more funding from National Institutes of Health for pediatric research than any other U.S. state. Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center CEO Michael Fisher is chair of Ohio Children’s Hospital’s Solutions for Patient Safety, a nonprofit formed in 2009 to improve quality and safety of child patient care and reduce overall health costs.

The nonprofit’s members include all eight Ohio children’s hospitals.

It will lead a national learning network launched in March to export the practices of these Ohio hospitals to hospitals around the country.

On a second front, a new research collaboration was launched to study child asthma and newborns with drug addictions.

It involves six of the Ohio hospitals, including Dayton and Cincinnati. Strauss said Ohio’s and Cincinnati’s leadership in pediatrics is nationally recognized.

By any other name

The LexisNexis.com Copyright and Trademark Community Blog reported last week that Mark Anthony International recently filed a lawsuit against Jack Daniel’s Properties.

Mark Anthony International is seeking a declaratory judgment that it has the right to sell a margarita-flavored malt beverage under the trademark “Cayman Jack” and to register the trademark with the feds.

The lawsuit was filed after Jack Daniel’s opposed Mark Anthony’s trademark application and threatened Mark Anthony with an infringement lawsuit, the blog reported.

What’s interesting about the complaint is Mark Anthony’s assertion that Jack Daniel’s presumes to have sole ownership of the word “Jack” in connection with the sale of any alcoholic beverage, the LexisNexis blog said.

That proposition, Mark Anthony alleges, is untrue because Jack Daniel’s has tolerated and expressly consented to numerous other alcoholic products sold using the word “Jack” in their names.

Meanwhile, I wrote a story last week about a new winery coming to Miami County called “The Naked Grape Winery,” which is rather similar to “Naked Grape Winery” in Dundee, Oregon.

I envision attorneys somewhere sharpening their proverbial pencils over this one.

Or maybe I don’t know jack.

If you have information that you think BizInsider should know about, email mfisher@DaytonDailyNews.com.