Monday, May 8, 2017
Today's Specials:
TECH: Drew Brees Invests $10 Million in a Food Delivery App
Founded in Lake Charles, Louisiana in 2015, Waitr, the food delivery app for Smalltown, USA fits alongside Walk-Ons in Drew Brees's investment portfolio. Waitr faces stiff competition against industry heavyweights UberEATS, Grub Hub, Amazon Restaurants and more.
DID YOU KNOWs…
Pizza Heaven
A pizza restaurant in Yonkers, New York has exploded on social media for selling massive slices of pizza. When we say massive, we mean slices of pizza over two-foot-long. The super slice comes with 18 different toppings. See the video here.
Hangover Hell
About 76% of adults experience some type of hangover after a night or day-and-night of drinking. Fortunately for us, there are multiple foods that we can eat to help beat that hangover. Here are some tips on what foods, vitamins, and liquids to stock up on to fight the head pounding.
Beer 101
Our friends at VinePair created a beer guide for you to learn the basics of beer, brewing, and the history of everyone’s favorite beverage. Once you have a better idea of the history of what you’re serving, you can make better recommendations to your guests.
CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT IT
Why it matters to you: these tips will help your food “stick” in the guest’s mind.
Restaurants are constantly using new tricks to keep guests thinking about their food. Business Insider recently spoke with an Oxford University researcher and author that specialize in the science of food. Some of the old-school techniques in the book that ensure customers remember their dining experience involves adding small surprises that will stick in their memory. Many guests like occasional offerings of free tastes of new dishes or new wines available free of charge. Other ways to create a unique dining experience involve switching up the traditional 3-course menu to a tasting menu with lots of smaller plates of food. This was guests can get a wide variety of samples without having to order each one.
One aspect of dining that many chefs are trying to avoid involve once the guest leaves the restaurant, the experience is over. In addition to top chefs, many food chains are gearing more toward the “memory of food” concept, therefore if the right memories are created, it will stick in customers minds. One important aspect that was noted in the article is that most customers remember the start and end of the experience so it’s important to make a great first and last impression. As restaurant operators, using these tips we can keep our restaurant in the guest’s mind for days, even weeks after they leave our establishment.
RESTAURANTS OFFERING BENEFITS
Why it matters to you: create a sustainable career path for your team.
We are all aware of the struggles of working in a restaurant; low pay, long hours, no benefits etc. Well, two head chefs in Minneapolis had a vision where working in a restaurant was more of a “sustainable career path” for adults, so they created one! While both chefs say that they loved their job, and initially didn’t mind working 75-hour work weeks, as they got older, they had trouble envisioning a future. Their new restaurant Byte, opened on March 1 and offers employees a 40-hour work week, $15 hourly to start (and overtime beyond 40 hours), full health benefits, and paid time off.
In exchange for the generous employee package, they do acknowledge that they need to cut back on other expenses such as table service and a few farm-to-table ingredients. One owner Mark Lowman quotes, “the restaurant kitchen industry is an outdated system... built on machismo and how hard you can work, which just feeds ownership and the corporate structure and allows them to pay you less. Well, you’re working with a new generation of people, and that’s not good enough anymore.” Restaurants offering benefits will take time to catch on and determine strategies, however, it could be a realistic future for our industry.
