When a group is thinking about holding an event, a restaurant is usually the first place people turn to. Events including a wedding-rehearsal dinner, a large charity function and a corporate holiday party can improve business at your restaurant.
Hosting events brings in customers who might have never heard of your restaurant or who have been meaning to visit. Depending on the event, you can have hundreds to thousands of initial visitors. The event gives those potential customers a reason to dine with you. Wow them with your food and customer service, and you’ve gained a repeat customer.
Events have potential to bring in people who use social media, which means plenty of check-ins, tweets, Facebook posts and Instagram pictures in and about your establishment.
There are many types of events you can hold, and each has a vast array of benefits.
Private parties
If you have a separate area in your restaurant that can be closed off, use it as a private party room. (read more…)
As a journalist who covered advertising from time to time and later made some forays into public relations, I know firsthand how long it can take to get everyone on the corporate ladder to sign off on a single press release, a model that doesn’t seem to lend itself at all well to social media. For one thing, if the legal department had to sign off on every tweet, no company would ever be able to keep it to 140 characters, much less get the message out while anyone still cared.
Companies need to rethink the way they go about getting their message out in a social and digital age. Clearly, social media is an increasingly important tool; chains are investing significantly and reaping the rewards in terms of increased sales, traffic and brand loyalty, as Monical’s Pizza’s Lisa Chidichimo told us last fall.
However, the nature of the medium virtually guarantees that the conversation is often beyond the company’s control and, as restaurant companies including McDonald’s have discovered, the best-intentioned social media campaigns can quickly take on a life of their own, flipping the original message and painting the company in a negative light. (read more…)
Anita Jones-Mueller founded Healthy Dining in 1990 with the aim of inspiring chefs to create healthier options for diners and allowing Americans to include restaurant dining as a part of a healthier lifestyle. The initiative’s dining and nutrition guide, HealthyDiningFinder.com, has won two Web Health Awards, including a Merit Award in the website category of this year’s annual Health Information Resource Center Winter/Spring Web Health Awards. I interviewed Jones-Mueller about Healthy Dining Finder and how it can help restaurants offer healthier choices to their customers.
How many restaurant partners does Healthy Dining have?
Close to 400 restaurant companies, coast to coast, participate in the Healthy Dining and Kids LiveWell programs on HealthyDiningFinder.com. It is very exciting to see so many restaurants of all types – fast food to fast casual to fine dining – offering a selection of qualifying menu choices that nutrition-savvy guests can appreciate and enjoy.
How does Healthy Dining help restaurants offer nutritious menu items? (read more…)
Americans spend about the same amount on alcohol as they did 30 years ago, but the way they spend has shifted dramatically, according to National Public Radio’s Planet Money blog. In 1982, consumers spent about 75% of their booze budget at the store; today, it’s more like 60%, with restaurants and bars gaining much more business. Prices for beer, wine and cocktails at restaurants and bars went up 79% in the past three decades, while store prices declined 39%. Also, spending has flipped as more of us opt for wine instead of cocktails, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The percentage spent on beer might be flat, but we’re spending more of it on small-batch brews. As we reported in March, craft-beer sales increased 13% last year, as more Americans opted for small-batch brews. Several hotels are taking advantage of the trend, offering craft-beer happy hour and even partnering with local brewers to create signature beer, USA TODAY reported. (read more…)
At BlogHer Food ’12, food writer and pastry chef Garrett McCord talked with bloggers Kelly Jaggers and Kristen Herwitz about the popularity of vintage food and drinks and how twists on standard “olds” can make exciting “news.”
Who is the inspiration?
Both Jaggers’ and Herwitz’s interest in vintage recipes hits close to home. Herwitz has utilized her husband’s grandmother’s handwritten recipe cards, saying she, “scribbled down ideas from them for inspiration and incorporate[d] my modern values.”
Jaggers’ vintage roots come from her upbringing in a multigenerational family. “They were all tremendous cooks and made massive meals. I grew up cooking this food and loving it,” she said. Now, Jaggers likes to “make things more trendy,” and enjoys using new spices and ingredients to make old recipes new again.
What is vintage all about?
“Vintage has varying definitions,” Herwitz said. These dishes and drinks are rooted in the “old” — casseroles, meals with boxed or canned ingredients — made “new” by the modern interpreter. (read more…)
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