Tuesday, March 7, 2017
Today's Specials:
GALLERY: Most Embarrassing Restaurant Spelling Errors
Restaurants are busy; we get it. Sometimes little things get overlooked and can cause some serious embarrassment. This is especially the case with spelling and grammar. We found a collection of restaurants that need to do a double-take when using spell check.
INFOGRAPHIC: Restaurant Marketing Ideas for March 2017
March is ripe with great marketing ideas for restaurants and sports bars. Here's what to mark on your calendar and promote to guests.
DID YOU KNOWS…
DirecTV Lowers It’s MLB Extra Innings Price… Kinda
Never say DirecTV doesn’t know how to make a deal. They just lowered the “fan” price for MLB Extra Innings – a whole whopping $1.20. A price break is a price break, right?
Trey Flowers Releases Seal Named After Him
Super Bowl Champ Trey Flowers said he gave a rehabilitated seal named after him a “pep talk” before it was released back into the wild. “I’ve dealt with injury and things like that and I had to rehab and go through the process and go back out and perform,” Flowers said. “So I gave her a little pep talk and said we have the same struggle, we both rehab! But we’re going to be all right.”
One Employee Really Hates Pineapple Pizza
Pineapple on pizza might be one of the few things more polarizing than today’s political climate. People either love it or despite it, with little gray area. Well one restaurant employee took their hated for pineapple pizza to a new level by refusing to put pineapple on the order. Instead, they taped a $5 to the inside of the pizza box.
I ORDERED A PIZZA WITH PINEAPPLE AND pic.twitter.com/VkmdaHYBwe
— ali (@Try2ShootUsDown) March 5, 2017
NO WOMEN WEDNESDAY?
Why it matters to you: You might be affected by this political protest.
Much like a day without immigrants, women across the country are protesting the policies and politics of our current administration with their absence. It’s been organized by those responsible for the women’s march. Considering women make up only a little over 20% of the kitchen, many restaurants might not necessarily see the impact that a day without immigrants had.
A day without woman actually has some unintended consequences, highlighting the dearth of female leaders in the restaurant industry. A very small percentage of restaurants have female owners and head chefs. Things are beginning to change in terms of making restaurants an equal opportunity workplace with the addition of maternal leave policies. Awards like “Best Female Chef” are important now, but will hopefully one day be obsolete as we acknowledge sexism and eventually eradicate it from our industry.
THE WORST GUESTS
Why it matters to you: how would you handle guests trying to take advantage or your business?
Working in restaurants we’ve seen it all, especially customers trying to sabotage their food to get a free meal. An Italian restaurant in Brisbane Australia caught one of their customers red handed planting one of her own hairs into her food. The owner of the restaurant has been in the business for over 20 years is has seen just about everything, unfortunately for the guest, there was a security camera over her shoulder. This is a difficult problem to avoid however we may need to take the bad Yelp hit.
In that same note, police in Spain are investigating a group of 120 diners who ran out on their 2,000 euro ($2,100) bill. This is the second time a restaurant in the area has experienced a large group dine and dashing. Both cases appear to be related where the group had an ‘escape plan’ in place to avoid paying. There are multiple ways to combat this type of situation; many restaurants require a credit card on file for large parties while others take a guests’ contact information. We need to prepare ourselves for the people who intentionally try to hurt our business for their own benefit.
MISTAKEN IDENTITY
Why it matters to you: Racism doesn’t care about class
What should we make of the rash of celebrities claiming they experienced racial discrimination? The latest story comes from T-Payne (ne’ Faheem Najm). He claims that while dining an “Old white lady walks up to our table and asks ‘are you guys football players?’ (Subtitles: how the f— can y’all n—– afford to eat here).” If this happened, then the woman was pretty insensitive to approach them with her ignorance on display. That being said, there is no corroboration this happened at all.
The good news here is that T-Payne didn’t call out the restaurant and instead responded to here query by telling the woman, “No we’re in the adult entertainment industry.” Clearly, he didn’t need any auto-tune to make that little quip. In the end, there isn’t much we can do in our buildings to dissuade people from behaving poorly. Besides, shouldn’t T-Payne have been dining “On a Boat”?
