Heather Turner's Blog (10)

Yelp is to restaurants as Tripadvisor is to Lodging,  Love it, Hate it. Or a combination of both. Sadly it’s not going to go away any time soon, so restaurants need to use it constructively.

Yes there are many Yelpers that are just wenchy, complain about the smallest things, are having a bad hair day and have also just broken up with their significant others and the littlest thing is an irritation to them. But there can be a lot of good and constructive information gleaned…

• Blogs give you a place to share information about your restaurant and promote your specialties, specials and menu.
• Blogs create value for your readers, prior customers, current customers, and future customers, 24 hours/7 days a week without any cost except a little of your time.
• If you can use word processing, you can use a Blog, You don’t need special software to blog or need to learn how to use special software to blog.
• The search engines will love you if…

This past winter I did a consult with a 40 seat restaurant in a rural New England community who was looking for some additional marketing ideas. They had tapped out on as much online and offline marketing as they could do. They had also gone ahead and been progressive, and had gone to local business around them, met the owners and employees and offered incentives to come in to dine.



While the restaurant was keeping its head well above water, the owner wanted to be busier during…

Finding a location is an integral part of a restaurant and does play a major role in whether your operation will fly or fail. The location is only one of many key components that make up what happens in the long term to your restaurant’s future. Finding a good location does not mean your restaurant will necessarily succeed, many factors contribute to a restaurants success or failure, the location being a primary key issue but not the only one to consider.

• Write an outline for…

This past week I gave a lecture to a group of Innkeepers and Restaurateurs in Maine on Reputation Management. With all the numerous posts and information out there about protecting your business online from malicious reviews or reviews by unhappy customers, little thought is sometimes given to two other areas.

One, what is your local chamber or business association saying about you offline. and two, what are your employees saying about you online?

What are…

Awhile back I wrote a blog post with tips on getting hired (or not), of which this is a continuation on this series for those in the process of job hunting.  The next post in this series will be: Is Your Resume getting to First Base in the Hospitality Business?

Many…

I can't stress enough that businesses need to be prepared for data loss.

During a conference I presented to last month, in one of my sessions I asked, "How many of you back your information up?" Less then half the room raised their hands. And then I asked, "Have you…

Last week Chops & Hops restaurant found themselves in the national news by posting a somewhat un-PC post on their Facebook page. 134 news articles later (as of March 29th) and it's still making the rounds in newspapers and news articles online and off.

Takeaways from this for any restaurant:

1. This can happen to anyone. A…

According to consumer surveys, a person who has had an unpleasant experience with a business will tell 10 other people. Approximately 13% will tell more than 20 other people. Customers who have a good experience tell an average of only 3 other people. One of the most important things a waitperson is responsible for is turning dissatisfied customers back into satisfied customers.

• Deal with the problem immediately. It is important to deal with a customer’s…