Friday, September 15, 2017
Today's Specials:
HACK #101: Have a Charging Station at the End Of the Bar [Restaurant Hacks]
43% of restaurant guests are willing to give up beer for their smartphone. Armed with that knowledge, restaurants & bars should have charging stations at their locations to keep guests plugged into their seats.
DID YOU KNOWS…
‘Couldn’t Be Quieter’
When a home in DeWitt, MI went up for sale, the owners decided to have some fun with their real estate agent. They posted a comical note next to their “For Sale” sign with an added selling point of their house, “Quiet Neighbors,” because their house is next to a cemetery. Well played.
Going Down to Turn Up
People go above and beyond with their creativity to better the world, like sneaking a bottle of vodka into a festival. Recently, a man posted about his extensive scheme to sneak vodka into a music festival by burying it three weeks before, then digging it up when the time came. This man went all out with a treasure map and all. Take a look at the elaborate plan.
How Should You Protect Undocumented Workers?
Undocumented workers have been a topic sweeping the restaurant industry in the wake of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdowns. Eater featured an article detailing the issue and how restaurant owners should protect their undocumented workers.
YELP VS. GOOGLE
Why it matters to you: Yelp accuses Google of using Yelp-photos in their reviews.
Online reviews are either a great added public relations boost to your restaurant or they are a plague that restaurant operators cannot control. Now that Google has taken on more of a Yelp-themed approach to their review system, the companies have been at odds. Yelp has accused Google of breaking a 2012 agreement to not use content from third-party sites – including Yelp – to use for their benefit. The Wall Street Journal reports that tension has been rising between both companies after Google used Yelp photos for its local business review listings in search results. Ever since Google expanded into the review market, similar companies including Yelp have been competing for the same business.
The main problem that Yelp has with Google reviews is that they’ve been pulling photos that Yelp users have uploaded to the site, and using them for a similar purpose. A Yelp investigation claims that Google “pulled images from Yelp’s servers nearly 386,000 times for business listings in Google Maps.” Overall, these problems are important for restaurant operators to monitor as they could potentially impact your businesses. Owners should constantly be on top of what reviews and photos are posted about their establishments and where. It also may impact where and how your guests review your business.
THE LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
Why it matters to you: What will you compromise for profit if your minimum wage rate increases dramatically?
Much has been said about the minimum wage increases in Seattle. They were the first major city to adopt the Fight for $15, and several studies have given contradictory conclusions about the impact. In a recent NPR post, a new twist on the effects of wage increases was also revealed. Researchers at Ball State University in Indiana tracked results of surprise health inspections and found violations had increased in areas where wages had grown. While the violations that increased were predominantly considered of a less critical nature, they were significant enough to be statistically relevant.
The research’s supposition is that operators that are looking for ways to maintain their profit are cutting corners and hygiene seems to be a place that is suffering under the new minimum wage. While you can challenge the methods of the study and even if there has been enough time to properly analyze the data, you can’t ignore the intuition that something has to give if an operator wants to remain profitable. Let’s be honest, if hygiene is where you cut, then you deserve whatever comes your way as far as the consequences. There are better ways to compensate for an increased minimum wage like improved training, better schedules and more disciplined operations. Potentially getting guests sick shouldn’t be in your playbook.
