SOCIAL: 5 Ways to Bring Your Restaurant’s Brand to Life on Social Media
A strong social media presence is a powerful way for restaurants to engage with their guests. Here are five lessons to bring your restaurant's brand to life from some the best social media accounts in our industry.
DID YOU KNOWS…
Slow-Motion Equality
Despite progress there is still a huge amount of work to do when it comes to achieving gender parity. Ipsos MORI released a study to coincide with International Women's Day which focuses on the level of concern across 27 countries regarding equality. For example, respondents were asked how many years they thought it would take for men and women to achieve economic gender equality and the results are mindblowing, when compared to World Economic Forum estimates of how long it might really take.
Not All Heroes
This driver might’ve done the world a great service when he overturned his truck, spilling out 60,000 pounds of Busch beer (about 80,000 cans). This is really the best possible outcome for that stuff.
NCAA Surpasses $1 Billion
An audited financial statement by the NCAA showed the group busted through the $1 billion revenue bar for the first time ever. It also had a $105.1 million operating surplus. This comes on the heels of continued pressure to pay their student athletes. Probably not the best look, fellas. #PaytheKids
ACKED-PPLBEE’S
Why it matters to you: Applebee’s confirms 167 of their stores POS systems were hacked and credit/debit information was stolen.
One of people's’ biggest concerns these days is having their personal information caught up in a hack. RMH Franchises posted that the Applebee’s restaurants they own were hacked in a relatively small scale (considering the nearly 2,000 store system) attack that exposed 167 of their store’s guests’ information. Other “good news” is the attack was also limited to certain dates. Unfortunately, the release of knowledge of the breach was mishandled, as the breach occurred on February 13th and the company did not notify anyone outside of the company until March 2nd. We think that is bit long to wait to notify the people at risk, wouldn’t you say?
What is Applebee’s, or rather RMH Franchises, to do from this point? A security breach of any level is a large red flag that their system is flawed and if one cyber attack happened it is only a matter of time before another, larger-scale one happens. So how do they avoid a larger scale data breach? Whether it is changing their wifi networks to a more secure system, a new POS system ensuring all restaurants under the franchise can take chip-cards, or improved cybersecurity measures, something must happen fast. We think a solid assessment of the entire system is in order as guests’ security while spending hard earned dollars at your establishment has to be #1 on your list.
SOMETHING ISN’T ALWAYS BETTER THAN NOTHING
Why it matters to you: In a strange play, McDonald’s flips its logo upside down to support women on International Women’s Day.
Supporting women is great. It should go without saying and be the norm; even so, certain large scale players like McDonald’s aren’t quite getting it yet. For International Women’s Day they flipped the golden arches upside down in support of women all over the world. This is more problematic for a few reasons: They’re consistently underpaying women, and have swept sexual harassment allegations done to women under the rug, and the like. Because of their track record, this publicity stunt of flipping their sign upside down ends up being more offensive than supportive. Compare it to someone being a vocal male-feminist then having sexual harassment and abuse allegations come out and be ignored. Gross.
So we are once again in a “How will McDonald’s recover from this one?” scenario. Is there really a concrete way? No, but a start would be to properly-monetarily compensate the women who “play invaluable roles at all levels” and not ignore their allegations of harassment at any level. Basically, when your CEO is making 74 times the salary of your lowest level employee (who is statistically, most-likely a woman), a few t-shirts and a flipped sign don’t really cut it.
