Tuesday, August 1, 2017
Today's Specials:
TECH: Does It Make Sense to Use CRM for Restaurants?
Does your restaurant need CRM? Learn about the benefits of CRM for restaurants for both the guest, the restaurant owner, and the restaurant's staff.
SPORTS: SportsTV Guide Monthly Calendar & Preview
September brings a month straight with every weekend filled with college and pro games. And that’s not all, MLB baseball is finishing its season and the playoff positions are in the balance. September promises to be the beginning of a great new year for Sports.
DID YOU KNOWS…
Dominating Delivery
Delivering pizza in a car is so last year. Munchies collected videos of Dominos Delivery drivers doing some crazy tricks on motorbikes on their way to deliver a pizza. Many of these are deemed “wholly unacceptable behavior” by Dominos at a corporate level. Apparently, the corporate staff isn’t familiar with delivery wheelies.
Tweets Gone Rogue
A fake McDonald’s Hong Kong Twitter account has gone viral after posting very strange tweets. The account began posting promotional ads, but then without warning, posted suicidal messages, about broken homes, and a missing child; but while also still tweeting about BigMacs. The account was never associated with McDonald’s and has since been removed.
Most Loyal Customers
The battle for the most loyal customers only growing. Surprisingly, statistics show that McDonald’s customers are far more loyal than Starbucks customers as data tracks more diners at the fast food chain than people buying their Starbucks coffees. Starbucks was listed as number two just ahead of Sonic.
DOG-GONE IT!
Why it matters to you: Individuals with disabilities have an undeniable statutory right to bring their service animals into your restaurant.
The Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in 1990 and immediately made clear what accommodations were legally required by anyone operating a public space. One of the many advancements the law brought was the legal right of an individual to be accompanied by a service animal in those public spaces, including restaurants. This is an entrenched law and shouldn’t be a secret to anyone that works in our industry. Then why is that we still have instances when an individual is denied service or made to feel bad for having their service animal with them?
Since that law has passed, there has also been an increase in the number of service animals employed to help individuals with disabilities. With the identification of appropriate applications service animals now supports folks with diabetes, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other more obscure challenges. This is a simple training exercise. If you include the specific rules surrounding guest’s with disabilities during orientation, you ensure your entire team will avoid a foolish assertion about a dog’s place in your restaurant. As long as the animal is clearly marked as a service dog, you must allow its presence. Train your team and then you will avoid being the restaurant that goes viral for chucking someone’s service animal.
CRAVING CALORIES
Why it matters to you: Our unhealthy menu options might be causing more harm than good.
Usually, many of the items on our menus remain because of their popularity and the guests’ positive feedback. But what happens when those menu items are extremely unhealthy? This is the problem that an AdAge article examines as top chains including The Cheesecake Factory and Texas Roadhouse, whose best-selling dishes are some of the unhealthiest food on the planet. A number of restaurants have started to include calorie counts on menus, which was set to be a requirement for chain restaurants this year until the FDA delayed its debut.
Most of the time, restaurants are businesses that need to make money on what sells, which are the unhealthy options. However, some chains take this to the extreme.
The Cheesecake Factory’s Pasta Napoletana was named the worse dish in a study, as it contains 2,310 calories and is the equivalent of eating a Pizza Hut Meat Lover's Personal Pan Pizza topped with three cups of pasta and a cup of heavy cream. Critics have voiced their concerns that some of the country’s top chains are making their already over-the-top meals unnecessarily unhealthy. A gray area on the menu has become prevalent where we look out for our guests safely while we offer them very artery-clogging food. Certain aspects of the problem are highlighted more significantly in some restaurants but overall, are very unlikely to change. We just need to be mindful of repercussions our menu might be causing in the long term.
