All Blog Posts (4,663)

“Is everyone alright?”- Robert Kennedy’s Final Words

I was sitting down to write a humorous piece on customer service, the restaurant industry and bus personnel in particular. As I hit the Google images icon the famous…

In the restaurant industry, being fully staffed — with top-quality employees — is Holy Grail of HR. It is constantly sought after, rarely achieved and rumored to be difficult to achieve. More often than not a restaurant has a decent team, with a few outstanding employees and the occasional bad apple. It’s not uncommon to find a manager or head chef stepping in to cover a “no-show” staff member.

Foodservice faces such high turnover rates that managers often jump to quickly…

Service First

By: Monica Constantino

Service is more important than food.  It defines the restaurant EXPERIENCE.  Food may define the restaurant, but we all know we can find great Korean BBQ in the tiniest food truck in Brooklyn, or the best fried chicken in the deepest neighborhood in Compton.  The experience is what the consumer is looking for today.  As the economy shifts upward, the competition…

As many restaurant owners have found, investing in an active Facebook page takes consistency, creativity, and time.

Creating a Facebook page and leaving it to sit dormant is like having customers sitting in your booths and no servers to take their order or fill up their glasses.  Customers get annoyed and your restaurant look like they don't care.

Running a contest on your restaurant's Facebook fan page is a great way to grow your…

Have you been trying to figure out how to integrate Social Media into the email communications you send out for your Restaurant? Fear not! It's actually far easier than you think.

Each, taken on their own, are effective. Put them together though and you will have something very powerful. Email marketing and social media go together perfectly,…

Reality Chef Programming:

I'll be the first to tell you I throw pillows at the flatscreen when young chef's banter with some of the most respected chefs in the country. "Alfred Portale just dosent understand my style of food" Jesus really? I need to throw bigger objects at my Television (my son is trying to put a parental lock on the food network, who's the parent I ask you ) Chef Portale was doing the most amazing cutting edge cuisine when most of these "Chefs" were in…

I recently published an article on mobile apps for restaurants that has generated a lot interest. In the last week my Twitter account added about 25 followers (most of which are web marketing companies) and I have been contacted by about a dozen providers of mobile apps. I am currently sorting through all of their offers and I need to confess that the overwhelming majority of them are very confusing. 

Restaurant owners that are considering mobile options have a ton of options and I…

There are two distinct, yet related, ideas in brand extensions which have been in the news recently.  I’m going to be following both with more than idle curiosity to see if they create added brand awareness, added traffic, or a negative backlash -- or all three.

First ... Friendly’s and Burger…

Non-stick pans are a gift that we all have been taking for granted. We all, myself included, have slowly been ruining our beloved non-stick pans. Yes, they are useful for almost everything, but it turns out, they aren’t as durable as you might think. Avoid the following and extend the life of your non-stick items!

1.    Let’s start with the heat you typically use with your pots and pans. Now I always thought that non-stick pans were the toughest of them all. This is not true. As it turns…

I guess it should be expected that as the world awaits the highly publicised Facebook IPO that Facebook-related articles would crop up like weeds.  Well, here's another one...

On the heels of my post the other day on the essential use of a social login for loyalty programs, due to consumer fatigue in having to complete yet another profile on a new site.  The study by…

The words “leader” and “leadership” used to be widely accepted definitions of person(s) at the very top. Now, they have been widely broadened to reflectively include those who contribute to the process of moving things forward at any level, in any business setting.

I like to think of it this way, leadership is like ice cream, and the specific business, industry or circumstances are the flavors. It is impossible to use chocolate chip and make it work when pistachio swirl is required,…

Consumers love you, love your place and love your food - but why are they going to share their contact information to join your loyalty program?  Statistics suggest that many of your customers would join a program, if it were available (50-80% in other industries) but online loyalty programs I think are…

Facebook recently rolled out some new metrics that are going to make your Restaurant's Fan Page Rock! The new insights are going to help you grow your fans and your fans interactions in ways you never imagined possible.

Obviously it's important to monitor your facebook statistics, but the new metrics make it even easier to monitor your Facebook Fan…

by Celeste Edman, Marketing Expert

Atmosphere has a huge impact on how we experience our meal when dining out. Many believe that there are certain colors that help us relax and encourage us to eat more and stay longer. There has been a significant amount of study done to determine if music and more precisely, certain tempos, will change how and what we buy. All these elements play a role in our overall dining experience. Yet, has our attention to them become so…

There are many differing opinions on whether sites developed in HTML5 can display content on mobile devices as eloquently as they do in the desktop and tablet world. Before we examine the pros and cons of each, here is a little background on the two technologies.

HTML5

HTML5 will be the new standard for Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), according to W3C. ("The World Wide Web Consortium is an international community where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the…

    As a soon to be college grad, I feel that I should pass my extensive knowledge about college kitchens and cooking onto all the incoming and future students. Let me preface this article by say that all college kitchens are small. Once again, ALL COLLEGE KITCHENS ARE SMALL. Do not think big and extravagant. Just because you are out of the dorms and have a kitchen does not mean that you should cram it full of gadgets or multiples of anything. You won’t have any space for the important…

(or, Sink Like a Stone)

You are a restaurant owner sitting in your office.  Every day it’s becoming more apparent that you will need to get deeper involved in more aspects of social media.  Those newspaper, radio and Yellow Pages ads just aren’t bringing in new faces anymore. 

You leave the office and are walking through the…

It’s been four years since we entered The Great Recession. Now, at long last, optimism about economic growth in Leisure & Hospitality and Food & Beverage is taking root.

For operators this means finding leaders who have the skills and proficiency to do the job will become harder and harder. Sourcing values and character matches will be a monumental challenge.  Operators will need to step up benefits and retention strategies, and salaries will begin to rise…

If you want to test a man’s character, give him power.

~Abraham…