David Bloom's Blog (7)

Last week another restaurant-Groupon faceoff went public, featuring Back Alley Waffles in Washington, DC. Back Alley claimed Groupon’s slow payment cycle was to blame for a business-killing cash crunch. Groupon fired back saying they were paying on the agreed-upon schedule, and that only 18% of the daily deals sold had been redeemed.

It is easy to blame others when business goes south. Ruby Tuesday once blamed “winter weather” for missing sales targets. Groupon makes a tempting…

Many restaurants hire professional designers to build their website, but hiring a professional doesn’t guarantee a great result. 



We talked to Jill Parks, Creative Director of Savannah design firm Sans Sheriff for tips on what to do (and not do) to give you the best chance of getting an amazing restaurant website that works for you and your customers. 



Before you…

We’re pretty much data fanatics at Ordr.in. It’s a calling. We finally decided to put our data nerd-dom to good use: Check out our first infographic, Foursquare in the Big Apple. Over one month we tracked checkins, new visits and tips at 618 NYC restaurants using the Foursquare venues API. And when the data was in, we turned it over…

We talk to many restaurant operators. All of them are suffering from sales pitch fatigue. The steady flood of daily deals solicitations, loyalty program offerings, and social/local/mobile ad listing opportunities has taken a terrible toll. The problem is that there are some pretty good services on the market; tools that can really help a restaurant attract, engage, and retain customers. The key is moving quickly to separate the worthwhile from the worthless.

There are three numbers…

The phone I grew up with was clunky and served just one purpose — talk to someone. My monthly costs were high, and long distance calls were expensive. If something broke… major trouble. Today I have an iPhone. I can do a million tasks on it easily and intuitively; apps make it infinitely customizable; and while I may pay more each month, the expense is pegged to my usage- to my satisfaction.

The POS is a nerve center of a restaurant but no matter how much improvement you drive…

It’s becoming increasingly clear that restaurants need to push their marketing further out from their restaurant to capture and retain customers. According to a nifty infographic from the National Restaurant Association, 28% of customers use social media to choose a restaurant; 27% use consumer-driven review sites.

Frankly these numbers seem low, and are low I am sure when you look at younger demographics- the customers who could be…

For those of us who sit in front of a computer all day it can be hard to remember than much of the world does not. They stand in front of customers or pace around work sites. The computer is secondary to how they work.

Mobile is changing this. People who previously engaged tech briefly (if ever) at the end of the day are now consuming content and information continuously via their phone. We’ve blogged about this before. But while restaurants are…