MARKETING: How to Integrate User-Generated Content into Your Marketing Strategy
According to Medium, 88% of customers believe reviews written by other users, with 84% of Millennials stating that user-generated content (UGC) has directly impacted their final purchase decisions before. There is a clear advantage in using UGC in your restaurant’s marketing strategy to not attract guests but promote your brand. However, finding the right ways to do so isn’t straightforward and depends on numerous factors in regard to your existing restaurant marketing as well as the culture and values you aim to promote.
DID YOU KNOWS…
Starbucks’s Black ‘Phantom Frappuccino’
Starbucks’ has gone to the darkside of the unicorn drink trend, by releasing a “Phantom Frappuccino” for Halloween. It’s a vegan beverage, flavored with coconut, mango, spirulina, pineapple, and charcoal. It also includes a “ghoulish lime slime.” There’s no plans for releasing it in the US, alas.
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
The United States still has the world's largest millionaire population by quite a distance and it accounted for 40% of that total with an estimated 18.61 million people. For any given country, the number of millionaires depends on three primary factors: the size of the adult population, average wealth, and wealth inequality. The U.S. scores highly on all three and its millionaire population is continuing to expand, growing by 675,000 since 2018.
Sun is Shining on Solar Energy
Solar photovoltaic energy is expected to account for about 60% of the renewable growth over the next five years. The falling average cost of installation and implementation for solar will aid in its expansion. Back in 2010, SEIA reports that each watt of energy produced by solar cost about $5.00. That price dropped to right around $1.00 per watt by the second quarter of this year. The increased focus on renewables by governments is expected to help continue the downward trend in costs.
WHAT THE FORECAST?
Why it matters to you: Projecting your sales and expenses means you are managing your business and not being manage by it.
Independent operators are notorious for shortcutting the steps that chains take very seriously. Processes like inventory, labor projection and business planning just seem to get swept away by the daily urgencies required by your business. But then indie operators also complain their margins are so thin and they can seem to move the needle on their business.
Maybe it’s time to embrace the best practices of your chain peers and see if that helps you get to the result you desire. Among the best and most relevant of those processes is sales forecasting. Which is precisely why this post about how to conduct an accurate sales forecast is the perfect place to start for those of you that put off this essential management function until now.
The post delivers some of the essential formulas you will need to develop your sales forecast, but it doesn’t leave it there. It also takes pains to explain why this process is important for every operator. The main thrust is that these projections give you a place to start when determining your success or failure during the forecast time period. Things like inventory can be managed differently with more insight into expectations. Additionally, you can view your seasonality from a numbers driven rather than anecdotal approach. Instead of “feeling” the business fluctuations, you can pin down when they come and how to best respond to them. The financial forecast gives you control over your business by forcing you to plan and then assess. It may seem like extra work, but it won’t when you find yourself proactively managing your business, rather than reacting to it.
[Source: Toast POS]
MEAT THIS
Why it matters to you: The meat industry is dangerous and that is bad for restaurants.
If you are wondering why people are looking to alternatives to meat products, then your answer may be clear in a recent report produced by the Human Rights Watch (HRW) that details just how dangerous the meat industry has become. In it, the HRW casts a wide net to show just how scary meat processing can be and that it’s not likely to get better anytime soon.
Let’s start with our appetite. Americans consume 222 lbs of meat average annually and that’s up by almost 4% over last year. The work it requires to process all that meat can be very dangerous. In the 28 states with mandatory reporting of worker injuries, a worker goes to the hospital every other day with a serious bodily injury. This can include limbs and eyes being mixed into meat that is being processes at the time of injury. This isn’t to mention the number of chronic illnesses from exposure to chemicals and additives that are used to treat the meat being processed. One of the causes of these injuries is the speed of the line used to slaughter the animals.
On September 17, the USDA signed off on a rule that may push pork slaughter lines to run even faster. Line speeds at the slaughterhouses that produce 90% of the pork eaten in the U.S. will no longer be overseen by federal inspectors; the job is now left to plant supervisors, with no upper limit on speed. This sure sounds like a recipe for disaster. Clearly for the vulnerable workers that staff these plants but for us as operators. A general lack of inspection should terrify you. Have you ever dropped a bun top and thought no big deal, I’d eat it and the place it back on the burger? Imagine that approach when no one is watching the meat we serve our guests. And in fact, the number of inspectors is at a 48-year low for the USDA. We certainly aren’t suggesting you stop serving meat, but you may want to ask your provider where the meat is coming from or switch to a local farm that you can visit and certify for yourself that they aren’t producing something that will ultimately cause you to serve a guest food that ends up making them ill.
[Source: GrubStreet]
