SURVEY: Do Sports Bars Show Women's Sports?
According to a recent Nielsen report, 84% of sports fans are interested in watching women’s sports. But are sports bars taking advantage of that fandom? That’s what we’re hoping to find out in this short, three-question survey. Once we get the results, we’ll publish them in an infographic juxtaposed to the Nielsen results, along with additional tips for how operators and managers can identify and maximize the opportunities showing women’s sports on TV can bring them.
DID YOU KNOWS…
Sleep in a Giant Wine Barrel
Do you ever pretend that you’re wine? No? Just us? Fine, but you still might enjoy this vineyard in Portugal where you can sleep in a giant wine barrel. The Quinta da Pacheca Estate has on-site accommodations including 270’ rooms in the shape of wine barrels used on the estate. The barrel rooms include a private bathroom, walk-in shower, a “large, round bed”, skylight, terrace, AC and WiFi. Sounds great to us.
Where the Gender Pay Gap is the Widest
South Korea has the most work to do in order to close the wage gap. OECD data shows that in 2017, a male worker in South Korea would outearn his female counterpart by 34.6%. The problem is also highly evident in other Asian countries, especially Japan.
“King James” Flys Past “His Airness”
LeBron James reached yet another milestone in his quest to becoming the greatest basketball player of all time. The 34-year-old from Akron, Ohio scored 31 points in the Lakers' loss against the Denver Nuggets on Wednesday to pass NBA legend Michael Jordan in the leagues’s all-time scorer list. The self-proclaimed (and tattooed) “Chosen One” scored 32,311 points in regular season games during his career so far, making him the fourth highest scorer of all time and the highest-ranked player that is still competing.
MENU MAGIC NUMBER 7
Why it matters to you: It’s time to improve your menu and here’s how.
Your menu is among the most important (and neglected) aspects of your marketing. If you haven’t recently, a review of your menu can net real improvements in the guest experience and increase sales. This post in Modern Restaurant Management delivers some basic insights into making the appropriate changes in your menu to get there. For example, research has determined that seven is the magic number of items per category on your menu. When choosing the order of those items, any item you want to highlight should be in a box to visually differentiate it, according to iMenuPro.com. And of course, professional photos can go a long way to driving sales of a profitable item. But don’t stop with the physical design.
Making the prices on your menu feel less intimidating can also go a long way to driving sales. Cornell University found that by simply removing the dollar signs on your menus sales increased. It seems to make it easier for guests to disassociate their purchase from their actual money. Other operators have even changed to writing the prices in words instead of numbers with success. Ultimately, your menu actually tells a story.
This is especially obvious when you consider the descriptions on your menu. Now that you have reduced to only seven items per category, you have more room to include food provenance and branding from national products in your descriptions. This goes a long way to helping guests overcome their spending concerns and focus on their experience. So, take a peek at your menu and see where you can make it easier on your guests to buy and easier on you to grow.
[Source: Modern Restaurant Management]
WHO DIS? NEW FISH?
Why it matters to you: Is the fish you bought really the species your vendor claims?
Speaking of telling a story with your menu… it appears that Fake News isn’t the only thing people are questioning the veracity of these days. In an investigation done by Oceana widespread fraud was found in the US seafood industry. Of 449 fish tested from 250 restaurants, seafood markets and grocery stores, 21% were found to be mislabeled. That means 1 out of every 5 folks that order fish are not receiving the species they were told was being served. This study exclusively focused on the US market, but there are also foreign importers that had previously been accused of the same behavior. The most commonly mislabeled fish are Sea Bass (55%) and Snapper (42%). And in the Midwest, imported species have been labeled as locally caught yellow perch.
This issue is not necessarily a restaurant operators to control. You choose fish yourself from a list provided by your seafood provider and if it’s mislabeled, you have them to blame for it. However, that doesn’t relieve you of your responsibility in the eyes of your guests. The only way to address this issue is for consumers and retail distributors to hold their own vendors accountable for mislabeling the fish. An honestly, you might not think it’s a big deal, but someone that visits your restaurant and expects grouper that gets something else, might not agree, especially if they are allergic to that fish. So, have a conversation with your fish vendor and ask them to actually verify that the fish you are buying is the species you requested. It forces them to memorialize their fraud and protects you from being blamed when that fraud is revealed.
[Source: Huffington Post]
