FOOD SPEND: Food Spend Reporting with Zero Work [Sponsored by Orderly]
The spreadsheet era is over… Tracking food spend and supplier pricing can now be automated. That means zero work managing invoices and spreadsheet. Ditch the spreadsheets and get the free Orderly app instead. With food spend tracking and price trend management, the average restaurant is saving $1,061 and 21 hours per month with the Orderly app. Download it today.
DID YOU KNOWS…
New Zealanders Get Crafty
New Zealanders are crafty folk. To get around a ban on public drinking over the holiday weekend, a group of New Zealanders built a sand island during low tide and claimed they were in “international waters” so the ban didn’t apply to them. Local police called it “creative thinking” and wished they had joined them.
Boston Schools Move to From-Scratch Cooking
For years, Boston schools were getting their meals shipped from Long Island, NY and reheated in a 30-year-old warming oven. Now they’ve moved to a “Blue Apron model” where ingredients are prepped in one location but cooked on-site at the schools. It’s created new jobs and is providing students with fresher, unprocessed meals.
CA Marijuana Law Aims to Repair Damage
Marijuana is now legal in California, but the state has gone further than other weed-legal states. It also sets up a process to erase many marijuana-related convictions. And on top of that, CA is enacting an “equity program” that allows victims of the war on drugs to have application priority for marijuana business licensing.
MOBILE THINKING
Why is matters to you? Restaurants are starting to realize their apps aren’t working.
Who wants to download a new app for every restaurant they visit? Not many people. Fact of the matter is: most restaurant apps fail. They are not engaging enough to users and typically aren’t tailored properly for a typical customer’s transaction. Add on top of that many guests have mobile app fatigue, and it makes mobile app success a massive obstacle to climb.
More restaurants are turning toward mobile friendly web-based apps instead. Web-based apps are shortcut links that perform similarly to apps yet are veiled as a normal web page. These web-based apps can send push notifications and can complete transactions without seemingly locking guests in like downloading an app does.
A properly designed and functioning web-based app seems to be the way we will all move forward. The shift towards cloud-based technology is changing the way we do everything and this is one major way going forward where we could optimize our customers’ experience for the better.
TO NEW MENUS AND BEYOND
Why it matters to you: Guests are seeking healthier menu items, but are you responding?
With the New Year, there are always those that attempt resolutions to improve their eating habits and 2018 is no exception. In fact, the trend toward healthy eating is pervasive and consumers have demonstrated they will pay a premium for it. That’s why TGIFriday’s initiative for a ‘Better for You Menu’ is such a great example of meeting the guest where they stand. TGIF has always done a credible job anticipating and even setting trends, and this new healthily built menu is another example.
Whether it’s the Beyond Meat burger or other moderate to low calorie options, TGIF is giving those with healthy eating resolutions a place to dine out and stay on track. If you aren’t sure how your guests will react to new healthy options, you should run a few as specials. TGIF includes calorie counts right on the menu. You can easily follow their lead and provide the same with no risk by testing them before you add them to a permanent offering.
