Friday, April 28, 2017
Today's Specials:
HACK: Make Your Restaurant Market Itself [Restaurant Hacks]
Independent restaurant owners and managers are too busy to worry about restaurant marketing all the time. Here are tips for restaurant marketing automation.
DID YOU KNOWs…
Pizza Dress
If you remember the women that created that Taco Bell Dress, she’s back at it with another fast food themed garment. Instead of Taco Bell, she has created a Pizza Dress inspired by Dominos. Watch out Lady Gaga, there’s a new food dress contender in town.
Beetlejuice Juice
LA is getting the world’s first Tim Burton themed bar and restaurant called Beetle House LA. Waiters will play the part of actors from infamous Tim Burton characters and all menu items are inspired by his films, think Sweeney Todd (Fleet Street Martini) etc.
Bartenderless Bar
A new bar in Chicago doesn’t have bartenders. When customers walk into Tapster, the newly opened pour-it-yourself bar, they receive an RFID-enabled tap card (which is linked to their credit card) that allows them to sample any of the bar’s 62 taps.
CHIPOTLE’S CYBER HACK
Why it matters to you: here’s what we can learn from Chipotle’s cyber hack.
Last Tuesday was not a good day for Chipotle. As with many other chains in the past, they announced they experienced a major payment system hack. Therefore, if customers paid via credit or debit in late March and mid-April, it’s possible hackers have stolen their credit card information. The company’s CFO said in a statement, “we immediately began an investigation with the help of leading cyber security firms, law enforcement, and our payment processor. We believe actions we have taken have stopped the unauthorized activity and we have implemented additional security enhancements.” In response, he noted that they are in the process of contacting those who may be affected.
This cyber security breach has come at a tough time for the company considering their profits decreased by 95 percent in 2016. A number that they’re trying to turnaround with introducing new menu items and their new fresh tortillas. Arby’s is currently in the midst of a lawsuit following their massive security breach that’s thought to have compromised data from over 350,000 customer credit cards. Now so more than ever restaurants need to be on top of their cyber security being cautious of potential threats. Overall, we can learn from Chipotle and Arby’s recent problems by beefing up our own security in our restaurants.
RESTAURANT NIGHTMARES
Why it matters to you: minor cases of bad luck can test whether your team is resilient.
By now your restaurant is probably running like a well-oiled machine even including the minor occasional slip ups. Restaurant Business Online examined the week’s restaurant nightmares featuring situations that landed several high-profile restaurants operations in hot water. The majority of these cases more so involves bad luck, such as stolen merchandise, whereas others learned their customers were exposed to pathogens that made them ill (with no fault of the restaurant). In another case, a couple attempts to dine and dash while accidentally forgetting their ten-year-old daughter at the table. While these scenarios are definitely nightmarish, there is little we can do to prevent bad luck.
Unfortunately, running a smooth ship will always have little bumps along the way. Restaurant Business Online acknowledges that all of the nightmare-worthy cases they featured are completely out of the restaurant's hands. What matters more than small cases of bad luck is more reflective on how the establishments deal with it. Management is crucial in remaining positive and keeping up staff morale as to ensure that guests do not become aware of whatever bad luck has stricken the restaurant. Most often, these cases do little to impact revenue and will test how resilient your staff is when handling mishaps.
