MARKETING: Offer Guests Discounts or Free Items for Sharing Your Restaurant on Social [Hack #110]
If you’re looking to both improve the guest experience while simultaneously garner some free social media exposure, there’s few better ways than offering a free item quid pro quo. Give your guests the chance to score a free, or discounted, menu item in exchange for promoting your brand on their social accounts.
DID YOU KNOWS…
How to Find a CIA Agent
If you’re looking to find a CIA agent in your area, they just may be hanging out at your restaurant – at least, if you run a coffee shop or diner. It’s a bit cliché, but apparently true. “Restaurants and cafes are in many ways the lifeblood of espionage,” a former spy said. Here’s some more cool history about the relationship of our industry and intelligence officers.
Bernie’s Proposed Tax Rate
A Bernie Sanders presidency could be very bad news for U.S. billionaires. While Elizabeth Warren would levy taxes of up to 62% on America's wealthiest individuals, Sanders would go a step further. Sanders wants to tax the vast majority of income groups at a lower rate than the current tax system. Things really start to get interesting when it comes to the top 1% of earners, however, where the tax rate spikes to 53%. It doesn't stop there and the country's 400 wealthiest individuals would have to pay a whopping 97.5% tax -- the current rate under the Trump administration is just 23.1%. If the proposal was in place, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates would pay approximately $9 billion and $8.5 billion in taxes this year respectively.
NBA Offering NBTA TV as Standalone
The NBA is making a major change in how it’s offering its OTT service, NBA TV. It can now be purchased separately or added to your NBA League Pass subscription. Separately, it’ll go for $7/month or $60/year and is available across OTT devices. NBA TV will show games, although not marquee matchups, as well as replays of games.
HACK AWAY AT YOUR MENU
Why it matters to you: We can all benefit from some menu design best practices.
The single most important moment at the point of purchase is your guest’s interaction with the menu. There are right ways and wrong ways to design and organize your menu, but it appears there remains a dearth of best practices for menu creation.
This assertion is proven when you read these three menu hacks addressing how best to execute on menu design. We have dedicated a decent amount of mind share to menu implementation, but these hacks are the best advice we have seen on that front in a long time. The post covers three specific topics: Drawing attention to high-margin items, pinpoint your pricing, and keeping it simple. To that end, the writer dives deeply into the nuances of menu design and psychology and does so with excellent clarity.
For example, the issue of how to place prices on your menu, the hack focuses on every aspect of pricing appearance on your menu. It makes the correct assertions that pricing should not have dollar signs and even round up numbers like 12.95 should be avoided. But it doesn’t stop there. It also suggests not lining up prices to ensure the guest isn’t easily able to do a comparison and draw conclusions about your menu that might not be accurate. Additionally, it encourages you not to use a dotted line to connect pricing to the item, which just draws your eye to the price before you even read the item description. There are other golden nuggets in this post and we strongly encourage anyone that is creating a menu to review it before they put pen to paper.
[Source: FSR Magazine]
WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON?
Why it matters to you: We need to discuss how to respond in the face of bigotry.
As community gathering spots, it’s inevitable that you will have people of differing political opinions that might interact at your restaurant. One such interaction happened recently Fat Joe’s Bar in Fond du Lac, WI when a server overheard a couple in her section saying something transphobic about a table nearby. When Brittany Rossio-Spencer approached the table to simply take their order, the couple asked her opinion about the object of their derision. Rossio-Spencer was extremely uncomfortable with the question and expectation that she would agree with the couple, so she asked her manager to have someone else take the table. The manager delivered her an ultimatum -- either serve those guests or leave the restaurant. Rossio-Spencer chose the latter and then posted her experience on Facebook. We are genuinely interested in how the average manager would respond when faced with this crisis a server was experiencing.
In the case of Fat Joes, they have only further committed to the position that it’s not their job to police the conversations of their guests and only to serve them food & beverage. Was this the best approach? I’ll offer my own opinion -- yes and no. Yes, they are 100% correct that is their role and they shouldn’t discriminate against ANYONE based on their opinions. It’s their right to serve whomever arrives regardless of their politics. No, they were 100% wrong not to accommodate Rossio-Spencer. She didn’t confront the guest, just asked to not be forced to interact with someone that had attempted to force their views on her. She should be commended for walking away give the divisive times we are encountering. There would have been no harm is simply switching servers and respecting her needs as well.
So, what do you think? Please share your opinion with us. This is a real situation that any of you could find yourself and that makes it worthy of further discussion.
[Source: The Friendly Atheist]
