MARKETING: How to Find Success with Outdoor Dining
Warm weather is here, meaning it's food truck season. Here are marketing tips for food truck owners and restaurant operators looking to cash in on the outdoor dining season. Everything from food truck branding, outdoor dining experience, and social media marketing.
DID YOU KNOWS…
The 2018 World Beer Cup
Ever wonder what the best beers on earth are? Well the Brewers Association (BA) have announced the results of the 2018 World Beer Cup. Also called the “Olympics of Beer”, this year’s contest saw 8,234 beer entries from 66 countries. The US swept with 242 awards, no doubt pissing off some German monks somewhere. Full results here!
The Most Annoying Plane Passengers
Crying babies. Kids kicking your seat. Unsolicited small talk. Being a passenger on an airplane has lots of mental dangers. But which bad passenger is the worst? This infographic breaks it all down.
The Other Cavaliers
SNLmocks LeBron’s teammates in the sketch “The Other Cavaliers” that was, sadly, cut due to time constraints. Here’s Donald Glover as part of LeBron’s “superfluous” teammates . Think it’ll motivate LeBron’s teammates and ease pressure of Lebron?
SHAKE SHACK BAILS ON CASHLESS
Why it matters to you: After a failed cashless experiment the fast-casual chain changes its mind.
It is a fairly common Millennial assumption thinking everyone will know how to use certain pieces of technology. Shake Shack did this in the form of an experiment at their Astor Place restaurant in NYC when they went cash-free last fall. At this location there were “hospitality champs” instead of cashiers who were there to assist anyone in need of help with their digital kiosks.
Overall this experiment failed. Some guests didn’t know how to navigate the kiosks and others wanted to use cash. In response, Shake Shack is abandoning the cash-free method and transitioning to a more 50/50 system where diners can order at a kiosk or a cashier. Despite how pervasive electronic pay is, it’s still difficult for restaurants to fully abandon cash. Best to allow the customer the options: choose the kiosks if you are the more tech-savvy customer or the cashier if you prefer actual human interaction and paying in cash.
GARCES SELLS RESTAURANT GROUP
Why it matters to you: In a slightly strange move, Philadelphia chef Jose Garces sells his restaurant group.
In a tale as old as (modern) times, we have news of yet another restaurateur, chef, and restaurant group in limbo. Philadelphia-based chef Jose Garces just sold off his restaurant group (the Garces Group) to Louisiana-based Ballard Brands for about $5 million USD. This comes on the heels of lawsuits and settlements totaling $5 million in 2017 for not underpaying investors, supplies, etc. Just the other day investors in his group filed a lawsuit to have him removed from his company. Ouch.
Certainly no way for Chef Garces to come out of this unscathed. Best for him to just move on and out of the hospitality industry, no real chance for him to regain any ground after all of this unfortunately. The industry can be rough for people like him, but the bottom line is you have to pay your bills or you will make some enemies… People don’t forget.
