MANAGEMENT: Give Your Restaurant Family the Perfect Gifts for the New Year
With the New Year just days away and the Christmas season here, it’s a good time to decide what to get the people in your life. This year, let’s use the allegory of gift giving and reward the various folks you serve with something new in the upcoming year. From your staff to vendors there are things you can do better this year that will make their lives easier. So, here’s a holiday primer to follow when getting the ones we work with something great in the New Year.
DID YOU KNOWS…
Free Food During Shutdown
José Andrés announced on Thursday that he’ll offer free lunches for any federal employee in DC who are stuck in the partial governmental shutdown. He announced his charitable movement while retweeting Trump’s call for a border wall lest there be a “shutdown that will last for a very long time.” As we’re writing this email Friday morning, we’ll see what happens.
What Bao for Free
Bao is a short film that ran before Incredibles 2. It’s about a story of an older Asian woman whose bao dumpling comes to life and needs a lot of mothering – and with a surprising, emotional twist. It has been short-listed for an Oscar and can be watched now for free – for the next week, so give it a watch while you can. Also bring a box of tissues because it’s Pixar.
The State of Craft Beer
The number of craft breweries surpassed 7,000 this year and it’s expected to grow another 1,000 by end of 2019. Talk about a booming industry. Here’s a cool infographic by C+R Research on the state of craft brewery in the US. Any guesses on the craft beer capital of the US?
WHY CAN’T WE ALL GET ALONG
Why it matters to you: Here’s to being kinder and gentler in 2019.
It seems restaurants are in the news a lot these days and not for their great food or fun atmospheres. Two stories in particular sure sound like the problems we are having at large in our society. The first is about an Indian couple who own a restaurant in Montana. The owners posted a picture of their lunch buffet on Facebook and had an ugly confrontation with a social media user. The user replied, “I’m going to puke.” It was a fairly rude thing to post; the owners responded by beseeching him to not be rude. To which the poster responded, “Your race is an insult to the Earth. You come here, get a handout, and don’t do manual labor here but make a killing off our tax dollars. So to that. Go f*** yourself.” Needless to say the restaurant owners were horrified.
In another incident, it was the restaurant that perpetrated bigotry against one of their guests. A guest at a Charleston South Carolina restaurant was surprised to find a homophobic note in his bag while he was visiting the restaurant. A server admitted to placing the note saying that it was a joke between servers. Some joke. To make matters worse, the manager showed absolutely no empathy as to why this would have upset someone. As we near the end of the year, I wonder if we can ask ourselves how to make 2019 a gentler year for our industry. Restaurants are supposed to be safe havens from the crazy that has infected our culture these past few years. I for hope we can all be a little kinder and more tolerant in the New Year.
[Source: Yahoo Lifestyle]
TRENDING HOW
Why it matters to you: Which of these new trends will hit your restaurant in 2019.
Contrary to popular opinion, most of the restaurant industry doesn’t set trends, we respond to them. However, few of us take the time to find them before you are already behind. That’s why this blog is terrific place to get acquainted with what some experts expect to be the big things in 2019. They asked dozens of industry insiders what we can look forward to in the upcoming year and the responses are a mixed bag of opinion and fanciful projection. However, when you separate the wheat from the chaff, you can find a few very potent prognostications. Sure, a few are as mundane as warnings not to miss the rise of authentic Mexican food like the one from Larry Johnson, CEO of Fogo de Chao. Fortunately, there are others that are solid gold and that’s why we think this is worth a read.
Brimstone Restaurant Group in South Florida suggest that cooking with cannabis will see a huge rise in popularity. This is especially true as states continue to legalize it and the recently passed farm bill has made industrial hemp and CBD legal to produce. On a tech note, Teshin Daya of Uberall asserts that “near me” will continue to be extraordinary opportunities to market your restaurant. With 80% of consumers having done one on their mobile and folks keeping their GPS and data enabled, this will become even more important. Are you optimized in the various local search platforms, especially Google’s? This trend dictates that you do. To read more of these trend defining opinions check out the blog, it’s worth the read.
[Source: ModernRestaurantManagement]
