In years past, restaurateurs might mumble under their breath when patrons blew off their reservations or showed up and hogged the table for too long or spoke rudely to the waitstaff. They might send sidelong glances or even, in extreme cases, deal with the rude guest face to face.
But now it’s a digital age and patrons and restaurant owners alike have Twitter and other digital channels to rely on when they feel the need to vent, although the jury’s still out on the advisability of restaurateurs calling out guests for behaving badly. A few weeks ago, the media was abuzz with the story of frustrated restaurant owner of Red Medicine in Los Angeles, who called out patrons by name on Twitter after several failed to show for their Saturday night reservations.
The reactions were mixed, with most in the industry empathizing with the frustration that led to the outburst while opinions varied in terms of whether the public shaming was appropriate. (read more…)
When looking for a place to dine, many consumers turn to websites such as Yelp and Urbanspoon, which can be great at helping diners find nearby eateries rated by their peers, but can often leave holes when it comes to information about those restaurants, especially the contents of the menu. Having an outdated or incomplete menu posted online can mislead prospective diners, which may ultimately result in them choosing another place to eat. It may seem easy for restaurant managers to take control of their online menus, but a restaurant may have an outdated menu posted on a website without even knowing it.
“Restaurants already have online menus, many without doing anything, because of larger Internet forces. Consumers rely on online searches to make dining decisions, so directory and guide companies have been copying menus onto the web for years to use as digital real estate,” said Jim Williams, founder and CEO of MustHaveMenus, which helps restaurants create and manage traditional and online menus. (read more…)
Perdue Food Products President Jim Leighton said the book he wrote and published late last year, “Getting FIT,” is largely an homage to his father and the early business and life lessons he imparted to his son and those around him.
“My father taught me this: No matter what you do in life, you will end up doing it with people. You have to understand that and become good at it. Surround yourself with like-minded people who are interested in you and you them. Have a high level of humility, and high level of passion for the organization and for the goal. Working together, you’re creating something much larger than any one individual could create alone.”
Leighton started life in Battle Creek, Mich., where his father worked for Kellogg & Co. before co-founding Archway Cookies and moving his family around the country to build that business.
Leighton did not immediately follow his father into the food business, choosing instead to start the first health club in Evanston, Ill., after graduating from the University of Iowa, and building that into a company, National Health Management, with clubs in Chicago, California and other markets. (read more…)
People who fail to show up for a dinner reservation cost the restaurant money, whether it’s because of an emergency or mere thoughtlessness. A reservation holds a table that the eatery would otherwise use to feed paying customers, who would then also tip their server.
On Saturday, popular Los Angeles eatery Red Medicine called out no-shows by name on Twitter, sparking a social media debate on whether public shaming is the right way to go. The restaurant tweeted, “All the nice guests who wonder why restaurants overbook and they sometimes have to wait for their res should thank people like those below,” following with two more missives that name names. Managing Partner Noah Ellis told Eater LA that his frustration got the better of him, but he also says he has good reason to be frustrated.
“It’s always been a problem here (at the restaurant and in LA as a whole), but it’s tricky — those restaurants that overbook to protect themselves punish the guests who show up on time for their reservations, but not the people who no-show,” Ellis said. (read more…)
Chefs and home cooks alike can find new ways to innovate without busting the budget or spending all evening in the kitchen, with speed-scratch methods that combine frozen, canned, shelf-stable and even leftover ingredients into yummy and seemingly gourmet dishes.
Perhaps no foodservice organizations are more ripe to reap the benefits of new speed-scratch cooking methods and recipes than school kitchens, where parents and health advocates are pushing for more fresh-food options, budgets are as tight as ever and introducing children to new foods can be a challenge.
Using familiar shelf-stable ingredients may help school cafeterias transition students to healthier fare, perhaps avoiding a repeat of the early travails in Los Angeles when schools threw out all the chicken nuggets, corn dogs, pizza and other familiar foods at once and switched to dishes including vegetable curry, pad Thai and lentil and brown rice cutlets, as the alternative weekly BeyondChron reported last year. (read more…)
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