MARKETING: Understanding eSports and Their Marketing Potential for Sports Bars
On paper, the concept may seem absurd. Who wants to watch somebody else play video games? But nobody questions why millions of people tune into the NFL every Sunday afternoon. The concepts of professional eSports and major league athletics are not as different as you might think. At the end of the day, you have spectators observing someone else playing a game. There are flamboyant personalities, tense drama-inducing moments, and fanbases cheering on their favorite teams and players. Yet, eSports remains an untapped marketing for the sports bar industry.
DID YOU KNOWS…
Tip Your Flight Attendants
While the restaurant industry grapples with the push to get rid of tipping, Frontier Airlines is pushing their passengers to tip their flight attendants. Frontier had introduced a tipping option three years ago that was pooled among the flight staff, but they’re nixing the pooling option. Each attendant will keep their individual tips. There’s debate & concern on if this will actually help income rise or drop compared to their peers.
Firing Family
The owners of a Detroit vegan company had to fire their son after it was revealed that he secretly filmed a couple at their restaurant while also using homophobic and racial slurs. The worker posted the video on his social media (since taken down). The restaurant apologized and later announced that the staff fired was their son but that “does not excuse him of responsibility nor accountability; and simple being a decent human being.”
What about 8K?
As impressive as the latest 8K TVs unveiled at CES may be, they are little more than marketing vehicles, at least for now. While Ultra HD television is in fact edging towards mainstream adoption, 8K is still years ahead of its time. According to a December 2018 forecast by Strategy Analytics, 8K-ready devices will account for just 3% of active UHD TVs by 2023. By that time, global 8K sales are expected to amount to 11 million units a year, up from just 400,000 in 2019.
MINDFULNESS FOR THE MENU WIN
Why it matters to you: Experience and review your menu with all of your senses.
If you are not familiar with the concept of mindful eating, it’s high time you became so. Mindful eating is actually experiencing your food using all of your senses. While most of your guests don’t eat this way, one or other of their senses are tuned on whilst they eat. Consequently, reviewing your menu’s impact is a very strategic method.
This means actually experiencing your menu items at every sensual level. While taste is important, we all have heard the cliché, “people eat with their eyes.” That is partially true, because they also passively employ their eyes, nose, mouth and hands to experience your food. By breaking down each of your dishes with regard to these potential interactions, you will clearly be analyzing your menu items in ways you may have never envisioned.
This guide to mindful eating is a great primer to help you fully grasp and embrace this concept. It directs you to several compelling outcomes when you, and your staff, have experienced your own menu mindfully. From enhancing the customer experience to helping your staff better guide guests in their menu choices, mindful eating can positively disrupt your menu approach. Mindfulness forces you to know your food in ways you may not now and that alone should improve your menu and service in ways you may not have anticipated.
[Source: Toast]
DOES ANYONE HAVE A…?
Why it matters to you: Are feminine sanitary products a new best practice?
When opening my first restaurant in 1996, my partner asserted that we were going to have a ladies’ room stocked with conveniences for our guests. Among them were hand cream, hair spray and tampons/pads. Sure, this is a weird and difficult conversation for some of you, but the reality is that half your guests and staff are women and providing them with the convenience and relief of available feminine products IS a best practice. It appears that a lot of operators are catching on and including tampons in their ladies room stocking checklist.
This is less about the intimate nature of the products and more about letting your guests realize that you have their back. We have often spoken of the value that operators should provide women in difficult social situations, so what could be more difficult than being without a tampon when one is needed? This is a really inexpensive bit of service elevation that can reap serious benefits for your brand. There is real value as being knows as an operator that thinks of the special conveniences appreciated by women. Women not only make up over half the population, but they also make more than half the dining decisions.
[Source: Eater]
