MARKETING: 5 Tips to Build Your Restaurant’s Corporate Identity
The way your restaurant is presented to consumers is very important. Building a strong, focused corporate identity will help create a favorable image of your company in people’s minds. But what exactly is corporate identity? And how can you build a positive corporate identity that will set you apart from the competition and help you grow your restaurant?
DID YOU KNOWS…
Brown’s Go #DP
So, let this be a lesson in being SUPER CAREFUL about what hashtags you stream on your website or on your restaurant screens. A marketing staffer for the Cleveland Browns wanted to show off some Dawg Pound reference material, so team employees could see how fans were engaging with the Browns on social media. So, the staffer input #dp -- which for the innocent, brought up a ton of porn – which streamed on the facility wall for more than 20 minutes. We’re sure it caught staff’s attention but perhaps not for the right reasons. Oops!
AOC’s Tax Plan
Newly-elected Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s tax plan idea is that a person who earns $10 million in a single year would pay up to 70% tax on every dollar earned after that. Despite its icy reception by the super-rich at Davos, the notion actually has support in the U.S. with polling from The Hill/HarrisX finding that 59% of the public favors it, with 45% of Republicans also behind it. Tax measures like the one Ocasio-Cortez has proposed used to be a normal part of U.S. economic life. During the WWII, the highest marginal tax rate for top-earners was 94% and in the early 1960s, it was still as high as 91%, according to the Tax Policy Center. Everything changed when Ronald Reagan took office and implemented one of the largest tax cuts in U.S. history. That sent the highest marginal tax rate tumbling to 50% in 1982 and since 1987, it has never nudged above 40%.
Harry Potter Beer Festival
America is loving its pop-up beer trend. Pop-culture pop-up bars seem to be especially popular. Right now, there’s a Harry Potter pop-up festival that’s touring around the US. The festival includes adult Butter Beer, character photo ops, and live music from DJ Dumbledore. The festival plans to land in Las Vegas; Portland, OR; Denver; Phoenix; Seattle; and Indianapolis.
IT’S TIME FOR AN IMMIGRATION POLICY REFRESHER
Why it matters to you: Make sure you are up-to-date on current enforcement policies before ICE comes knocking.
It can’t have escaped your notice that our government is in the midst of its longest shutdown in our 243-year history. The underlying premise of this shutdown is immigration policy and reform. Few industries, other than farming, use more immigrant labor than hospitality. That’s why it’s more important than ever to stay abreast of how this administration has disrupted enforcement and be prepared to comply with current immigration policy applications of the various agencies that manage immigration.
This post about complying with the Trump Administration’s enforcement of their immigration policy provides some simple best practices to ensure you don’t run afoul of any rules that might expose your business to sanction from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Basic steps on educating your staff in the employment verification process, formalizing your policy towards employment verification, conducting self-audits to ensure your compliance and knowing your rights are worth your attention. We can all use a refresher course occasionally, so be proactive and update your policies.
[Source: ToastTab]
LET’S CLEAN UP OUR ACT
Why it matters to you: Restaurants are contributing to the plastics disaster in our oceans; we need to make that stop.
Our oceans are choking on single-use plastic containers. By some estimates 70% of the plastic dumped into ocean is single use products like plastic cutlery, plates and to-go containers. The European Union (EU) agreed on January 18th to restrict the use of these certain single use plastics by 2021. The situation is dire, and the EU is taking real steps to address it. In fact, their approach is less driven by conservation and more by a desire to be at the forefront of innovation that will be caused by a search for sustainable alternatives to single-use plastic.
EU Vice President Jyrki Katainen went so far as to say, “This is an opportunity for Europe to lead the way, creating products that the world will demand for decades to come, and extracting more economic value from our precious and limited resources.” It’s this type of innovation that our industry desperately needs to reduce our contribution to the trash ending up in our oceans. Every year in the United States, the paper, aluminum, glass, plastics and other recyclable material we throw away would be worth $11.4 billion if it were recycled instead.
If you aren’t already, why not take a moment and review if and how you employ single-use plastic and try to replace it. Styrofoam carryout containers and plastic cup lids can be replaced with environmentally safe alternatives. Our industry just needs the will to eliminate them. It’s time we did our share.
[Source: Forbes]
