With a mission to close the global skills gap and help people pursue work they love, General Assembly strives to create opportunities that impact a vast range of communities. Aside from addressing pertinent issues in the press — including the Computer Science for All program, and what the next White House administration should consider when […]
The post A Year in Review Part 2: Diversity, Access, and Social Impact appeared first on GA Blog.
Let’s get straight to the point: 2016 has been huge for General Assembly. We’ve expanded our global community into new cities and launched beautiful, new campuses in locations where we’re already thriving. Our catalog of full-time Immersive programs grew exponentially, with four new courses that are transforming graduates’ careers in competitive tech fields around the […]
The post A Year In Review, Part 1: New Campuses, Courses, and Corporate Training appeared first on GA Blog.
The cell phone revolution affects your restaurant.
You can’t ignore it. In fact, you can’t even brush it to the side anymore.
The digital revolution has arrived, and cell phones are here to stay. Are you cell phone ready?
In this article, we take a look into online ordering habits of your restaurant customers.
They are using cell phones, and they’re using them in increasing numbers. Here’s why adding online ordering is so important for your restaurant.
First, let’s look at some online ordering stats so we know where the state of the industry stands today. According to a RetailMeNot study, mobile is vital to the restaurant industry, and here’s why:
Now let’s look at an important demographic – the Millennial generation and their online ordering habits.
Millennials are worth an estimated $600 billion in spending power.
And, seventy-three percent of Millennials report making a purchase from their smartphone. This means this generation of people demands online ordering options.
Millennials have high expectations when it comes to your restaurant’s online presence. If they don’t find what they want immediately, you can bet they’ll take their business elsewhere. (tweet this)
This means if Millennials want to place an online order, and they can’t do it from their cell phones, then they will find a restaurant who caters to their needs.
Think about the experience your restaurant offers Millennials online. If it isn’t seamless tying from your restaurant to your website, and Millennials find it difficult, again, they’ll go elsewhere.
Bottom line – your online menu matters, and it should be easy to order from it when users are on any device, including their cell phones.
It’s vital to make online ordering easy for Millennials as well as the rest of your customers. After all, the baby boomers (group older than the Millennials) also use computers and cell phones for online restaurant searches and ordering.
To help you meet your customers’ needs, let’s look at some ways to use online ordering and how it can help grow your restaurant business.
Many online ordering systems offer a way for you to predict a customer’s order. This makes it easy for the customer because your system is “guessing” what the customer will want based on past orders.
This meets the Millennial need of fast, efficient and uncomplicated.
In addition to their website and mobile app, many restaurants are offering ordering through their social media platforms.
For example, you can add this function to your Facebook page as a way to grab hungry diners browsing the platform.
No one wants to wait on hold for you to take their order. They want to visit your restaurant website, pick their items and hit order.
Online ordering will most often take less time than waiting for someone to take your order and process your information.
You’ll find that your takeout process is significantly simplified through online ordering. It’s easier on your customers and on your staff.
When you add an online ordering option, you should start to see your takeout orders increase because you’ve made it easy and efficient.
Online ordering is increasingly popular, and your customers will be happy to find it. You’ll also gain new customers especially once word gets out that they can eat their favorite food in their pajamas at home.
You’ll expand your business with online ordering by entering more and more target markets in your hometown.
You’ll also find that online ordering creates a habit of repeat orders.
This is a terrific benefit for your restaurant.
Your online ordering customers have a superior lifetime value because they are more likely to reorder from your restaurant than a traditional customer. (tweet this)
Why? Because you’ve made it so easy for them to order their favorite dish on a recurring basis.
Cell phones can help drive your restaurant business.
Not only can you offer online ordering on your website, but you can extend it to a dedicated mobile app and even to your social media platform.
Apps allow your customers to create accounts, storing their contact information and even their favorite orders. You can make ordering easy for your customers by allowing one-click repeat orders.
We also want to touch on mobile pay options for your restaurant. This includes ordering, checkout and payment.
You’ll find a huge potential with mobile pay, especially among Millennials and those they influence.
Online ordering allows you to instantly and easily offer a rewards/loyalty program to your restaurant customers.
Loyalty programs drive business and keep your customers coming back week after week.
By combining mobile pay and mobile ordering options with your restaurant’s loyalty program, you’ll watch sales rise and customer happiness increase.
Is your restaurant website mobile-friendly and responsive to device size?
Your customers live on their cell phones. They text, read email, use apps and search the web.
If your website isn’t mobile-ready, it’s time you revised it, added an online menu and ordering system. Your website must be mobile-optimized. It’s also time to take a look at a dedicated mobile app and online ordering.
You might know that restaurants are the number one thing cell phone users are searching for on their mobile devices. They are most often looking for several things: your location, phone number, hours, menu and online ordering options.
Miss any of these things on your mobile-friendly website, and you lose business.
Consider revamping and revising your current website and look into adding a mobile app.
Online orders are the wave of the future, and your restaurant needs to be cell phone ready today.
Do you have an online menu? Your restaurant needs a responsive, mobile-friendly website with an interactive online menu. It’s the ideal way to highlight your food as well as encourage online ordering.
At Restaurant Engine, we build responsive, mobile-friendly restaurant websites. Contact us today for your free website consultation. We are here to help you update your website and stand out in the crowd so you can stay ahead of your competition.
Images: Rikki Chan and freestocks.org
There are countless reasons why your business should start a blog in 2017. Publishing content creates more leads, positive ROI, and more links directing to your website. Blogging is a crucial part of inbound marketing because it allows you to quickly disseminate helpful information to your followers and new site visitors. This, in turn, helps […]
The post HubSpot on How to Launch a Successful Blog for Your Business appeared first on GA Blog.
Great food? Highlight it on your menu.
You’re dreaming of opening your own food truck, and you have an idea. You probably know what you’d like to serve, or at least you have a concept.
Did you know that crafting your food truck menu is the most important thing you can do?
Your menu defines who you are. It sets the stage for diners and lets them know what to expect from your business. (tweet this)
In this article, we look at the well-crafted menu and provide advice for mobile food trucks starting out.
First, let’s look at the basics of determining your menu.
It can be hard deciding what to serve at your food truck. You may have too many ideas or not quite enough.
Perhaps you’re wondering what kind of food to serve. For starters, your food must be appealing – after all, it has to attract diners.
If you have specialty dishes, that’s terrific. If not, do some research into your target audience and what they might like to find at your food truck.
Try to fill a niche and not enter an already crowded market. For example, if they’re five trucks in town serving artisan pizza, it’s probably not a good idea for you to do the same.
First, decide on your central menu items. If you want to serve items from Central Asia, then you’d build your menu concept around food from the region. If you want to serve food with a French flair, you’d build your menu on that model.
Do be realistic about how many different menu items you can serve at any one time. Unlike a traditional brick and mortar restaurant, you are working with a smaller kitchen and a smaller staff.
Take your limited space and time into consideration. If you’re only serving from 11 am – 2 pm, then making 15 different items isn’t realistic.
Quality is what you’re after. You want to be known for something. Whether it’s gourmet street cuisine or brats, be sure to stay true to your brand image. This will help you determine your menu.
A good rule of thumb is that most food trucks can handle five to 12 different menu items at any given time. The fewer the better to keep your quality top notch.
Second, you want to make sure your menu is easy to prepare. You aren’t technically fast food, but remember, your diners don’t have anywhere to sit quietly, drink a glass of wine and wait 20 minutes for their meal.
You must be able to prepare your items quickly. Your goal is to keep the line moving as fast as possible so you don’t lose customers.
Consider streamlining your menu by using some of the same ingredients in your dishes. For example, if you’re offering bowls, keep it to basmati and quinoa. Or, if you’re serving wraps, keep your meat and cheese options to just a few.
The goal is to eliminate waste and enable a quick turnaround time.
Your food truck brand extends from your truck to your menu and your food.
When designing your actual physical menu, we’ve got some tips for making it easy to read, stand out and convince diners to order.
Believe it or not, there are some psychological tricks you can use to get your food truck patrons to buy from your truck and not the two on either side of you.
When it comes to your printed menu (if you have one) or your menu display board, be sure the print is large enough for everyone to read. If it’s too small, you’ll frustrate potential customers, and they’ll visit the truck next door.
Some food truck owners make the mistake of using amateur photography on their menu. You want to use professional photography whenever possible. With the high-quality, heavy-duty cameras on many smartphones today, it’s never been easier to snap a good shot.
Your menu should align with your brand. If it doesn’t, you are making a costly mistake. Your logo, your menu, your font choices and color scheme all work together to define your food truck.
Without a recognizable brand, your food truck business will suffer.
Another mistake food truck owners make on their menu is burying their best-selling or signature dishes. Give these items prime real estate on your menu so they get top billing.
This also makes buying food and managing your food costs more efficient.
Finally, another mistake we often see is the boring menu. Who wants to order pork fried rice when they could have grilled char sui pork with roasted broccoli, carrots, red peppers and garlicky herbs bathed in a Cajun surprise sauce?
Entice your customers and make them really want your menu items.
With food trucks on the rise, you can use your well-crafted menu to stand out from the competition. (tweet this)
Do keep your menu manageable – shorter is better. And, be sure to update it based on produce availability and the seasons.
Take care with your visuals and make sure your menu board and printed menu are appealing and eye-catching.
Finally, proofread your menu. You absolutely don’t want any typos reflecting poorly on your menu.
Do you have an online menu? Food trucks need a responsive, mobile-friendly website with an interactive online menu. It’s the ideal way to highlight your food as well as share your weekly locations.
At Restaurant Engine, we build responsive, mobile-friendly restaurant websites. Contact us today for your free website consultation. We are here to help you update your website and stand out in the crowd so you can stay ahead of your competition.
Images: Brandon Morgan and Ted Van Pelt via VisualHunt / CC BY
Committing to a major life change can be scary, especially when it comes to your career — but inspiration from those who have made their way to the top can go a long way in overcoming obstacles and leveling up. Through his bestselling self-help book The 4-Hour Workweek, massively popular podcast The Tim Ferriss Show, […]
The post Tim Ferriss and How to Develop Mental Toughness: Lessons From 7 Titans appeared first on GA Blog.
The world of financial technology, also known as FinTech, is pushing the boundaries of how people exchange money — impacting everyone from mammoth banking institutions to individual consumers. On December 7, four finance luminaries joined us at General Assembly’s NYC headquarters for The Future of Finance, an intimate panel discussion exploring innovations in the financial […]
The post FinTech Experts Share Insights on the Future of Finance appeared first on GA Blog.
There have never been more opportunities for user experience designers: In 2015, U.S. companies posted nearly 30,000 openings for user experience roles — up 15% from 2011 — at an average salary of $99,177. The market demands top-quality talent, and training toward industry needs has never been more vital. At General Assembly, we accomplish this […]
The post InVision on Creating GA’s User Experience Design Course appeared first on GA Blog.
Loyal customers spread the news of your great restaurant.
A recent survey that says customer service is more important to people than the quality of the food at your restaurant has us pondering the question, “Does great customer service really get you customer loyalty?”
It appears that for many people the service they receive is indeed the determining factor in whether or not they’ll be back. Consider the Chicago Tribune critic who said, “Good service and mediocre food beats poor service and great food every time.”
In this article, we look at the relationship between great customer service and customer loyalty. We’ve already established that service is often more important than the food, and now let’s look at why.
The driving force in today’s economy is the Millennial customer. This refers to those born between 1980-2000.
Not only are they trendsetters, but their spending power is enormous. They are largely responsible for many of the trends we see today when it concerns customer service and customer loyalty because their needs trickle out to the rest of the world.
Millennials influence the buying decisions of those older and younger than them. This means that your restaurant must meet the demands of the Millennial generation and that means a friendlier, customer-service oriented experience at your restaurant.
You can count your Millennial diners as loyal customers if you treat them the way they expect to be treated.
They are quite likely to become brand ambassadors for your restaurant if they value your customer service.
Think back to the 1990s sitcom, Cheers. It was the place, “Where everyone knew your name.” This is the experience today’s customer wants.
Millennial customers, and those who share their outlook, want an authentic, personalized experience at your restaurant. (tweet this)
They want to dine in a place that feels like home, but they also want a sense of adventure that they can’t actually get at home. You can meet their needs by providing an interesting and delicious menu that is served by courteous, friendly staff members.
Today’s customer wants something memorable, exciting and new when dining out. Provide them with an experience they won’t forget, and again, you’ll have their loyalty.
Your customer service extends to your values as a brand.
If you want to earn customer loyalty, your customer service must match your restaurant’s values.
For example, if your customers value organic, locally-sourced or sustainably produced food, provide it to them. They’ll see this as an extension of your customer service as it pertains to your community as a whole.
This is just one more nod back to the Millennial generation that makes an effort to frequent businesses that support things they care about.
Social proof is important to today’s diners.
When we talk about customer service and your restaurant, you’re probably thinking about the service your customers receive from your wait staff. This is no longer the only area for you to provide exceptional customer service.
Social media is the norm for many people these days, and they often make their purchasing decisions online.
What’s this mean for your restaurant? It means it pays to establish a strong social media network, one where you respond to and engage your customers.
If you receive negative comments, respond promptly and with kindness and empathy. If you receive positive comments, thank your customers.
Today’s consumer decides much of their customer loyalty online. They decide where to dine based on the opinions of others.
So, while your in-restaurant customer service experience is vital, so is your social media customer service. Both can serve to either boost or deplete your customers’ loyalty.
You can bet that Millennials make their purchasing decisions in collaboration with others. They decide where to eat while listening to online chatter.
You build loyalty for your restaurant by providing consistent, excellent service in your restaurant and online.
Each one of your customer’s interactions with your restaurant is another building block on their road to customer loyalty. (tweet this) If you stumble in any of their experiences with your restaurant, their loyalty is at risk.
The good news is that your customers visit your restaurant thinking they’ll receive good service. All you have to do is provide it to them. Stay true to their expectations, and you’ll build customers for life who are also your brand ambassadors.
Here are a few steps to providing great customer service that really gets you customer loyalty:
Invest in your restaurant customer service, and you’re investing in customer loyalty. It’s always easier to keep a customer than acquire a new one, so concentrating on customer service boosts your customer loyalty.
Peter Drucker, a management guru, once said, “The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.”
This one statement encompasses everything we’ve discussed in this article. If the purpose of your restaurant is to create and keep a customer, then the answer to the question, “Does great customer service really get you customer loyalty?” is a resounding, “Yes!”
We encourage you to rethink your position on customer service. Rewrite your employee handbook. Offer ongoing customer service training. Respond to negative feedback online.
Do everything in your power to offer the absolute best customer service in town. It’s the restaurant that goes above and beyond that will beat the competition every, single time.
After all, what’s the use of a restaurant with good food and no customers to enjoy it?
How have you improved your restaurant customer service? Do you have any tips and tricks for success? We’d love to hear about them. Please share your experiences below.
Images: Roman Arkhipov and Rob Bye
Learning to code is the ultimate career-booster, whether you’re looking to elevate your current skill set or make it your full-time work. Having web development skills can land you a job in nearly any industry, including tech startups, financial services, media, and beyond. Coding knowledge is power — whether you’re an independent business owner, creative […]
The post How to Break Into Web Development appeared first on GA Blog.
Earlier this fall, about two dozen of General Assembly’s New York employees stepped away from their desks to visit two schools in the Bronx. Most of the group got their hands dirty by gardening, painting a mural, and setting up a new greenhouse at P.S. 30 Wilton School, while the rest helped students at P.S. […]
The post General Assembly Joins Tech Gives Back in National Day of Service appeared first on GA Blog.
Market your restaurant to increase your customer base.
Marketing your restaurant is all about understanding and meeting the needs of your customer, increasing customer acquisition and retention and creating buzz for your fabulous food and atmosphere.
To do this, you need a marketing strategy or plan.
Many new restaurants are so focused on their menu, décor, hiring and just opening the doors, they forget about the marketing aspect.
Yet, marketing should be at the top of the to-do list. You can market your restaurant easily and on a budget, and we’re going to show you some great strategies for doing so.
The purpose of any great marketing plan is to move your target audience to take an action. For your restaurant, that would be dining in your restaurant, recommending you to a friend and coming back again.
In this article, we look at eight great marketing ideas for new restaurants.
You’ve probably heard that it’s infinitely easier to retain a customer than it is to get a new one. Plus, it costs your restaurant up to five times as much to acquire a new customer than it does to keep your current base.
What’s this mean for your new restaurant? It means that once you fight for and win that new customer, you’ve got to do something to keep them around.
Aside from offering great food and superb customer service, create a loyalty program for your customers.
Make it easy for your customer to earn rewards. For example, buy 10 meals, get one free or earn 1000 points and get a free meal.
You’ll find there are many ways to create a loyalty program. The thing you want to remember is to keep it simple and make the rewards attainable.
Loyalty programs encourage customers to stick around and come back to you again and again to earn their “free” reward.
If you’re reading this article, and you don’t have a mobile-friendly, responsive website that features your phone number, location and digital menu, stop what you’re doing and make plans to build a website.
A website is absolutely vital to your business. If you don’t have one, your potential customers can’t find you online, and you can bet that’s where they are looking for a place to eat.
In fact, the number one mobile search is for restaurants. It’s something everyone has in common – the need to eat. So, you want to make sure your customers can find your restaurant online.
By having a professional website, you show customers that you are serious about your business. You can showcase your menu and customer reviews while offering information about your restaurant.
You can also offer a blog on your website so you can share tips, recipes and videos with your website visitors.
Don’t neglect this absolutely vital task.
Like your website, social media is fundamental to your online presence. It’s also one of the best ways to build a relationship with your customers.
While you have many social media options, we encourage you to start with a few. Pick the ones where you’ll find your target audience. (tweet this) Here are some top suggestions:
Don’t get lost in all the options. In the beginning, stay focused so you can really build your presence.
When it comes to social media, it’s about customer relationships. Share things your followers care about. Intrigue them and make them laugh for the best response.
You look at your texts almost immediately when they come in, right?
If you answered yes, then you are like most people. So, it makes sense to include text or SMS (short message service) marketing in your plan.
Grab your customers on social media or when they dine at your restaurant. Give them a reason to subscribe to this list with an offer like a free dessert or appetizer.
You can highlight this on a table tent, social media or your website. For example, you’d say: text “free dessert” to 789789.
Now that your customer has signed up, you can continue to offer them weekly or monthly specials.
This helps drive your customers back to your restaurant and increase customer loyalty.
Keep the fun in your marketing to entice customers.
Facebook advertising is a great marketing idea for new restaurants on a budget.
You don’t have to spend a lot of money to advertise on this social media platform. From simply boosting posts to sharing special offers and using lead generation forms, advertising on Facebook is great for restaurants.
Plus, it helps increase your reach and engagement as a business page on Facebook.
A budget of $5-10 per day can be quite successful.
Email is another inexpensive, yet effective way to keep your restaurant in front of your customers. (tweet this)
Once you have your website, you can include a sign-up form on it so people can register for your list. You can also gather names in your restaurant.
Email marketing allows you to provide valuable information to your customers as well as special event info, coupons and promotions.
Offer your target audience the chance to attend a cooking or baking class at your restaurant.
You can take reservations through a landing page on your website and in your restaurant. Consider charging a nominal fee to decrease no-shows.
You could also offer this as a contest on social media. For example, you could invite people to enter a drawing to win a cooking class for them and five of their friends.
It’s a great, inexpensive way to bring more people in to your restaurant and generate online buzz.
Today’s generation is all about ease and accessibility.
Make it easy for your customers to order from your restaurant.
You want your customers to be able to make a reservation online (if you take them) and place their orders online for pickup.
With more than 60% of new restaurants closing their doors in their first year of business, and 80% failing within five years, you can see the importance of marketing.
You’ll face an uphill climb and struggle to maintain consistent revenue if you don’t concentrate on your marketing strategy.
Remember, it’s not enough to just have a marketing plan. You actually have to work the plan.
Know your target customer and the best ways to find and meet them. Then, target your strategies there.
Your website is a pivotal piece to your marketing, so make sure it’s up and running before you open your doors to the public. This will give you a competitive advantage and a place to send your potential customers for more information.
Do you have a great looking, responsive website ? Is it user-friendly and enticing to your website visitors? If not, or you’d like a website tune-up and refresh, contact us for your free website consultation. We’ll make sure your website works for your site visitors and is the centerpiece of your marketing.
Images: Alex Munsell and Roman Craft
When you set foot in any of General Assembly’s campuses around the globe, one of the first things you’ll notice is the prominence of chalk art. Each campus has vivid murals of local innovators, from Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg in New York, to early computer programmer Ada Lovelace in London, to civil rights […]
The post Behind the Scenes With GA’s Chalk Artist + New Boston Campus appeared first on GA Blog.
Your food truck design helps you stand out.
Food trucks bring in more than $1 billion each year, and there is every indication that food trucks will continue to grow.
In an arena of fierce competition, it pays to have a food truck design that delivers.
Let’s look at why your food truck design matters more than ever.
Let’s say you walk into the grocery store, and you want to buy apples. There are eight different kinds. How do you choose?
Most people would choose the brightest, freshest, most attractive looking apples.
The same can be said for food trucks. If you’re parked in a food truck park, or you’re lined up on a crowded street full of trucks, you want to stand out. (tweet this)
The design of your truck is what sets you apart.
Some things than can help move you ahead of the competition include:
First impressions are everything. Sure, you could try to stand on your food alone. But, why leave anything to chance? Combine your great smelling food with a stand-out food truck design that appeals to customers walking by.
If your truck is bland and boring, potential customers are going to walk right by. You want your food truck design to stand apart from the crowd.
Your potential customers will judge the quality of your food by the quality of your food truck design. (tweet this) Make a great first impression.
Now that you know why your food truck design matters more than ever, you might be wondering how to pick a designer and where to find one.
Unless you’re a graphic designer, this isn’t something you should attempt on your own.
You want your truck design, logo, branding, color scheme, website, social media and more to be cohesive. This is where the pros come in.
Consider hiring a professional. This will cost you more than an amateur, but the results will be worth it.
Interview graphic designers and ask them about not only creating your logo and food truck design but putting together a cohesive branding package for you.
Ask the designer if they have experience with custom car/truck wraps and if they currently work with a skilled printer.
If spending a lot of money isn’t part of your game plan, you can always hire an amateur like a design student or freelancer.
The same questions you asked the professional designers apply here as well. You want this person to have some experience with large, custom graphics and especially vehicle wraps.
This is vital when designing your food truck. For example, if your food truck is pink, your website should also incorporate the color pink.
Talk to your chosen designer about your design concept. Don’t print the vehicle wraps or invest in custom food truck design until you’ve hammered out your entire design concept.
Think about the following for a cohesive brand:
Finally, when working out your food truck design, you want to think about the message you want to convey. What feeling do you want your visitors to walk away with?
This extends past your food to the design of your food truck.
You want your food truck, logo and colors to stand out to the customers. You want your presentation to be memorable, and something your customers won’t forget.
You’re after a food truck design that sticks with the customer long after they’ve left.
In other words, your food truck should have personality. It starts with the food truck and extends to your menu.
In a crowded food truck park, it often doesn’t matter which truck has the best food. Especially because often they all have great food.
To stand out from the competition, your truck must be attention-grabbing, clean and design-rich.
Draw attention, grab the customers’ curiosity, and entice them with your food so you are the busiest food truck in the park.
Now, let’s look at some great examples of food truck design to get you thinking creatively:
Their award-winning food truck design features a gold logo on black. Hailing from Phoenix, this truck serves incredibly delicious and cheesy pizza.
Their modern design with plenty of lighting captures diners with ease.
Indian food is colorful, spicy and flavorful, so it stands to reason their food truck should match.
This eye-catching food truck is hard to miss on the busy streets.
Ice cream is a recess from the cares of daily life, and this food truck screams fun and care-free.
This food truck inspires kids and adults alike, making everyone feel like a kid as they hop in line for terrific ice cream.
The play on the word, philosophy, works well in this playfully creative food truck design featuring great typography and colors.
Their tagline, “Falafal is a serious mental disease,” works with the title of the food truck and highlights their graphic illustrations.
Being a food truck owner means you love your food, and you’re fiercely passionate about delivering your food to customers and watching them enjoy your food.
Aside from the universal challenge of where to park your truck, your biggest challenge is attracting customers and overcoming the increasing competition.
With food truck choices literally “on every corner,” your food truck design matters more than ever.
You want to have a strong brand that flows from your truck to your food, website, social media and collateral materials.
The design of your food truck is the centerpiece of your marketing, and what it looks like matters. All of your other marketing should work well with it.
So, spend some time designing your logo, picking out your colors and designing your food truck to help you beat the competition.
Do you have a great looking, responsive website that matches the design of your food truck? Is it user-friendly and enticing to your website visitors? If not, or you’d like a website tune-up and refresh, contact us for your free website consultation. We’ll make sure your website works for your site visitors and is the centerpiece of your marketing.
Images: Dmitry Nucky Thompson and Gaetan Boutet
Grab the attention of potential customers with your signage.
Restaurant signage has the unique ability to pull diners in.
And, in our digital age, creative outdoor restaurant signage finds itself on the Internet, in the feeds of Facebook, Pinterest and Google images. So, your outdoor signs matter.
In this article, we look at 10 examples of crafty and fun street signs. Then, stick around as we talk about outdoor restaurant signage in general.
We lead off with Vinnie’s Pizzeria in Boston because they are world famous for their signage.
Since they began designing them in 2010, they’ve thrilled and intrigued customers with more than 700 boards.
News media like The Huffington Post and Buzzfeed have featured their signs, and they even made an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live.
Crafty and fun is the name of the game at Not a Burger Stand. Their unique signage compels diners to do something out-of-the-box to enjoy a discount or free meal.
They are well known for asking diners to order in the voice of someone famous, like Fozzie Bear, Yoda, Sean Connery and Randy Savage in order to earn a discount.
If you aren’t a Star Wars aficionado, a tauntan is a species of snow leopard that roams the windswept snow plains of Hoth, domesticated by the Rebel Alliance.
So, in this creative sign, they are promising to be much warmer and tastier than a tauntan!
Visit Flying Saucer Pizza Company
One might wonder what the proper position of toilet paper on a roll has to do with a coffee shop, but this is one business that’s willing to take craftiness to a whole new level.
After looking at this sign, which way do you think is the right way?
Visit Fayes Video and Espresso
You’ll find a cup full of playful sarcasm in their outdoor signage.
Yet, once you walk in the door, this gastropub is full of ambiance and delicious food.
A unique New Orleans spot, diners and drinkers can rest assured the place is not only prepared for the zombie apocalypse, but they’ll find a dose of fun inside.
Serving aged steaks, fresh seafood and plenty of wine, The Lord Nelson Restaurant subtly lets diners know they won’t find any fruit inside.
Or, they just decided to write a clever statement in the hopes of attracting passersby…
Visit The Lord Nelson Restaurant
No, they aren’t advertising XXX girls, but they are promoting the Olympics including girls’ volleyball and fencing.
It’s amazing what a slight change in font size and design can do to catch the eye.
This crafty and fun sign surely brought the customers in for their delicious New England fare.
Visit Blue Point Brewing Company
Another twist that uses large and small fonts to attract the attention of potential customers is O’Donovan’s Irish Pub.
While a more permanent fixture than the typical chalkboard sign, this restaurant enhances their branding with this crafty sign and entices their customers.
Are you the math type?
Then, this outdoor chalkboard surely appeals to your sense of mathematics! It’s another example of a cute sign used to lure diners in.
Visit Smith’s Restaurant and Lounge
Now that we’ve looked at 10 examples of crafty and fun street signs, let’s discuss ideas for your more permanent restaurant signage.
You know that the story of your restaurant, the design of your logo, your colors as well as the theme inside your restaurant should all work together.
This is also true of your more permanent signage. Use your outdoor signs to let customers know what they’ll find when they walk inside. (tweet this)
For example, if you are a fine dining establishment, your sign should reflect that in its design, color and materials.
Consider your outdoor signage as part of your overall branding and marketing strategy.
When creating your outdoor sign, you want to not only check on local ordinances and regulations concerning size, but you want the size to again fit with your overall theme.
If your sign is attached to your restaurant and not free-standing, it shouldn’t compete with the windows, doors or front of the restaurant. Everything should be in balance and work well together.
Think about if or how your sign should be lighted and its location with regards to the street and your restaurant.
The most important thing about your sign is that it is visible from the street. Your choice of colors, logos, images, fonts, direct lighting or back-lighting will all affect its visibility.
Consider the style of your restaurant when choosing the size of your sign and the shape of your sign. This will increase its visual appeal.
Many restaurant owners only think about their sign being visible during the day.
It’s important to make sure it’s equally visible during the night time hours. Whether you serve food at night or not, you still want to advertise your presence to potential customers at all hours.
Options include LED signs that are bright and can be seen in direct sunlight as well as the dark. You can also use overhead lighting or direct lighting to highlight the sign.
Another thing to think about with outdoor signage is the alternate view. Not everyone comes at your restaurant from the same direction. Other times, cars or plants may block the view of your restaurant.
Consider all the views and think about using other forms of signage to showcase your restaurant. You might put a sign at eye-level, on top of your restaurant, on the awning or place it sideways.
Think about all the angles you need to cover.
Clever, crafty and fun street signs are a great marketing strategy for your restaurant or café. (tweet this)
Not only can they draw diners in, but when the signs make people laugh, your customers will remember your restaurant the next time they are going out to eat.
Use your street signs to inspire your customers and make them laugh, and you’ll do much towards promoting customer loyalty.
Have you seen a unique, crafty and fun street sign at one of your local restaurants? Please share below. We’d love to see what else is out there.
Images: Jason Briscoe and Patrick Tomasso
Talk with your customers on social media, not at them.
Smart restaurant owners know the best place to create, build and maintain a relationship with their customers is right where they spend the most time – on Facebook.
Whether it’s their smartphone, tablet or desktop, you can bet your customers are using Facebook. In fact, of the more than 500 million active Facebook users, more than 50% log in to their accounts every single day.
That’s a whole lot of people checking in to their Facebook accounts on a daily basis.
In this article, we look at how you can use Facebook to connect with your customers to build strong, long-lasting relationships.
One of the newest and most promising ways to connect with your customers and build a community is with Facebook Live Video.
With live video, you actually take your restaurant online on Facebook live. You can talk in real time to your audience and even take their questions.
Facebook Live Video enables you to have a live and engaging conversation with your followers. You can even gauge how they like your live broadcast by watching their live reactions roll over the screen.
What might you showcase? You could live stream any of the following:
Live video is successful because it gives people an inside look at your restaurant, it’s authentic, and people love watching video. (tweet this)
Your restaurant will benefit from reaching your audience in new and exciting ways. You’ll also have a superb chance at acquiring new followers as they catch on to your live stream.
With Facebook Live Video, you can generate extra excitement for your restaurant.
Before you get started with live video, here are a few tips:
Share professional imagery on your Facebook page.
You may spend a lot of time crafting and curating content for your restaurant’s Facebook page. You’ve got a social media planning calendar, and you’ve got posts lined out for the month. If this is the case, great job.
Yet, keeping up with your social media page is a lot of work. It takes patience and dedication to craft engaging Facebook posts on a consistent basis.
You can take some of the work off your shoulders while at the same time connecting with your customers.
How? Encourage your customers to be a part of the conversation.
Not only will this be fun for your customer, but it will draw in new followers as well because Facebook has created a platform where it’s okay to be a voyeur. We can watch what others are doing in safety and even react to it.
Look at these ways you can encourage customers to fill up your restaurant’s Facebook page:
Remember that word-of-mouth advertising is still king, yet it has evolved in today’s digital age.
Facebook is the platform for word-of-mouth. You can bet that your potential customers are looking at your reviews and the comments on your Facebook page before deciding to dine with you.
You want people to “check-in” at your restaurant when they’re on the premises. This increases your visibility in the Facebook News Feed. (tweet this)
This is a terrific way to connect with your customers.
Go one step further and set up offers on your page that are shown to your customers once they check-in at your restaurant. Using Facebook Offers, you’ll not only connect with diners but enhance their loyalty as well.
Make it easy for customers to find your menu. It should, of course, be on your website, but did you know it can be on your Facebook page as well?
It’s easy to add a menu tab to your Facebook page. This is a great way to connect with your customers.
When it comes to Facebook, the possibilities for connecting with your customers are endless.
We’re going to leave you with a few more tips for using Facebook to connect with customers:
As we mentioned earlier, shrewd restaurant owners know they can build and maintain relationships with their customers by meeting them where they are – right on Facebook.
Make today the day you leverage this powerful platform to engage, delight, educate, connect with and reward your customers.
At Restaurant Engine, we build responsive, mobile-friendly restaurant websites that intrigue and tantalize your customers.
Contact us today for your free website consultation. We’d are here to help you stand out in the crowd and stay ahead of your competition with your restaurant website.
Images: Rémi Walle and Brooke Lark
Adobe Digital Academy students on the General Assembly campus in San Francisco
General Assembly is proud to be partnering with Adobe in the development of the Adobe Digital Academy, a Bay Area–based program focused on offering opportunities in technology to underrepresented communities. Adobe supports high-potential candidates through partnership with General Assembly’s Opportunity Fund and Adobe technical internships. Selected candidates receive Opportunity Fund scholarships for General Assembly’s Web Development Immersive (WDI) course followed by a three-month technical internship in Adobe’s offices, with the goal of hiring interns for a full-time position.
“You learn so much in a short amount of time at the development bootcamp, and once you’re at Adobe you realize there is so much more to learn,” says Adriana Villagran, one of Adobe Digital Academy’s first students. “There is a really good support system for learning new technologies and the team trusts me to experiment and explore.”
Randy Riggins, Adriana’s manager and Adobe’s senior engineering manager says, “It’s beneficial having an immersive intern because she is able to do real work, and bring a fresh perspective and new energy. [The program] gives candidates from alternative backgrounds an on-ramp to technical careers.”
“You learn so much in a short amount of time at the development bootcamp, and once you’re at Adobe you realize there is so much more to learn.” — Adriana Villagran, one of Adobe Digital Academy’s first students
Through General Assembly’s Social Impact platform, we’re committed to creating partnerships and programs that enable affordable and accessible education, contribute to a diverse tech talent pipeline, and promote social mobility through careers in tech. In the coming weeks our San Francisco campus will host information sessions with more details about the program. This program in particular supports low-income students who make less than $30,000 per year and have had barriers to education and employment, including people of color and women.
Last month, we released General Assembly’s first Student Outcomes Report. In it, third-party-verified data from our Immersive programs showed that 99% of GA graduates who participated in our Career Services program got a job in their field of study within 180 days of beginning their job search. It’s because of our close partnerships with employers like Adobe that we can support our students in finding new career opportunities.
“For many of our students, the time spent in General Assembly’s classrooms learning from experts and developing projects with peers is only part of the equation in becoming web developers,” says General Assembly’s Director of Social Impact Tom Ogletree. “The Adobe Digital Academy allows participants to get on-the-job training and mentorship from a leading technology company immediately after graduation. This sets graduates up for success as they launch careers that leverage their new technical, workplace, and interpersonal skills.”
“We’ve found the benefits [of our collaborating with General Assembly] to extend far beyond our initial expectations,” Adobe Innovation Lead Liz Lowe says. “Hiring managers are enthusiastic about the fresh perspective Adobe Digital Academy candidates bring, and a number of employees have gotten involved via our mentorship and professional development program. We are excited to see the program grow and continue to evolve as one potential solution to a complex challenge.”
We’re eager to watch these new tech professionals thrive at Adobe, and we look forward to following their robust careers.
The post General Assembly and Adobe Team Up to Bring New Talent to the Tech World appeared first on GA Blog.
Online ordering makes frequenting your restaurant easy.
How many times a day do you actually use your mobile phone to make a call? Now, balance that with how many times a day you use your phone to do an Internet search?
If you’re like most people, you spend more time on your mobile device looking for information than using it as a telephone.
According to several studies, restaurants are the most searched-for category on mobile phones today. This has helped spearhead the online ordering revolution.
Many restaurants worldwide have jumped on the bandwagon of online ordering. In this article, we look at the online ordering revolution and its massive growth potential.
Let’s take a look at the benefits of providing online ordering for your restaurant.
Mobile ordering allows you the flexibility of an interactive menu design. Your online, digital menu can suggest add-ons such as salad, appetizer or dessert. You can prompt users to order a larger meal size for “leftovers tomorrow.”
Online ordering can result in as much as a 20% increase in the average ticket price for most restaurants. (tweet this)
By offering online ordering you recognize the need your customers have to take a long hard look at your menu without feeling the pressure to order quickly.
You let them order in the comfort of their own homes, and they’ll be more likely to order more because they have time to peruse your menu.
Here are a few ways you can encourage the up-sell when it comes to online ordering:
Another huge avenue for growth potential with online ordering is your ability to reduce staffing costs.
Phone orders in your restaurant take time. This means additional staff members available to answer the phones. In addition to phone orders eating up staff time, you’ll often find order taking errors.
What’s more, your staff members are likely to forget or be uncomfortable offering additional items, so you lose your shot at the up-sell.
You can increase your daily revenue without having to change your dining room by adding additional seating. You don’t have to hire extra staff. You avoid ordering errors.
You also end up with happy customers who aren’t frustrated waiting for a staff member to answer the phone. Customers are also happier because they didn’t have to deal with a grumpy, time-crunched waitress picking up the call in-between tables.
Overall, online ordering reduces your overhead and leads to more content customers. (tweet this)
Diners can order and eat at their convenience using online ordering.
Millennials want to be free to do what they want when they want it. They are highly protective of their time and don’t want to waste it waiting for food.
It’s all about instant gratification, and your online ordering options provide that for Millennials.
This group of the population wants everything quickly. They don’t want to come into your restaurant, order and wait to take it home.
They relish the idea of online ordering and then dropping by when it’s convenient for them to quickly pick it up.
And, it’s not just Millennials who appreciate this kind of service. Young and old, millions of people feel the same way. Blame it on the digital age, but today’s diners want the convenience of online ordering and fast pick-up or delivery.
Using email marketing in tandem with online ordering provides you with massive growth potential.
Before online ordering, you might send an email with or without a coupon and then wait for the customer to show up at your door.
Once you implement online ordering, you can send an email to your customers and include an order now call to action to encourage your customers to order from your restaurant.
Online ordering enables more people to enjoy your restaurant on their own time. And, it allows you the ability to leverage email marketing to reach your customers on their phones or computers where they are immediately able to order a meal.
You’ll increase customer loyalty and trust through online ordering which in turn provides you with growth potential.
Giving your customers an easy to use online ordering service helps you meet their needs and keep them coming back more often.
Since your customers spend hours on their mobile phones, you can tap right into those customers through your website and online ordering system.
You build customer loyalty by allowing customers to order when they want and on whatever device they choose. This also helps keep your restaurant top of mind when the stomach begins to rumble.
Online ordering equals instant gratification.
Why? One study shows that more than two-thirds of customers order food online using their mobile device. It’s fast, it’s convenient, and it’s easy.
Many restaurants find that online ordering is becoming a big driver of revenue, and it’s responsible for an increase in sales.
This is because your customers will spend more and visit your restaurant more often when they can order your food online or on their mobile phones.
If you’d like to send your restaurant business into over-drive, add online ordering capabilities to your website today. Don’t forget to make a plan for how to handle the massive amounts of orders as they flow in.
You might find that a dedicated to-go door works well to move your traffic flow and provide an easy way for to-go customers to pick up their online orders while keeping your front doors free for dine-in guests.
Do you have a dynamic menu on your website that can handle online ordering? At Restaurant Engine, we build responsive, mobile-friendly restaurant websites that incorporate menus that intrigue and tantalize your online ordering customers.
Contact us today for your free website consultation. We’d are here to help you stand out in the crowd and stay ahead of your competition with your restaurant website.
Images: Lauren Manke and Cel Lisboa
The customer experience is made up of multiple parts.
You probably think about customer service in your restaurant a lot. But, have you ever considered the complete customer experience?
When we talk about the customer experience, we’re talking about the way your customer is treated from everything including:
All of these things add up to a complete customer experience package which in turn determines the rate of your diners’ overall satisfaction.
Customer experience is a sum of all the moving parts in your restaurant. In this article, we look at one of those moving parts. Let’s take a look at 10 menu ideas that could improve your customer experience.
To make your menu as easy to read as possible, use enticing, beautiful, professional photographs of your menu items. (tweet this)
If possible, include photos of most of your dishes. While some restaurants only highlight a few dishes with photos, you’ll improve your customer experience if you include more photos.
This is especially true if your menu includes items people may not be familiar with.
Give your customers a visual presentation of your food before they order. Then, be sure to follow it up accurately in the real dish.
You’ll find that many of your customers are visual decision makers, and they prefer not to read your menu text at all. By providing both, photos and a description, you appeal to visual and textual diners.
Be careful not to clutter your menu, though. White space is good and allows your customers time to think.
Check out this Applebee’s menu. It does photos just right.
Today’s diner, more than ever before, wants access to fresh, sustainable food.
You’ll find that the trend in dining out is to “dine as you would at home,” just at a restaurant. Your customers want fresh, healthy options when dining out as they would if they were eating at home.
Consider adding organic, fresh and healthy options to your menu to improve customer the experience.
If you add these items, be sure and highlight them on your menu and in your online advertising.
Position your restaurant as one that is concerned with providing healthy, organic and fresh options for its customers.
Go one step further, and offer locally-sourced dishes as well. This shows that you not only care about your customer but the broader community at large.
This is a great way to stand out from the competition.
When thinking about improving your menu for the customer experience, ask yourself if you have too many items on your menu. Do you need to reduce the clutter?
According to The Balance, the ideal menu offers a balance of unique dishes and old favorites. If you go beyond this, you might think about paring your menu down.
Another restaurant expert says your restaurant menu should only have as many items (and in the proper mix) as the kitchen can efficiently crank out when fully taxed.
Think about eliminating the clutter and remove the menu items you don’t sell. This is especially important if you have a menu that has so many items on it that the text is very small and hard to read.
An overly cluttered menu is not part of a good customer experience.
Keep your classic dishes, your customer favorites and your high profit items and get rid of the rest so you don’t overwhelm your customers.
Having a menu that’s too large is also hard on you as you have to stock too many items that you might end up throwing away.
An easy way to know what to get rid of is to take your sales report and eliminate the bottom half of your items. These are your dishes that don’t sell. Then, take a good look at the top half and make sure you have a nice balance.
A well-balanced, just-right-sized menu provides a better customer experience through the menu’s ease of use and the higher quality of your dishes.
Your customers are always appreciative of special deals, and you can improve the customer experience by offering them. (tweet this)
Now, we aren’t necessarily talking about discounting your menu.
What we encourage you to do is create a weekly or monthly list of special menu items at special prices. You can insert this into your regular menu and change it out with the seasons.
Use this special menu to push extra-unique dishes and your higher margin items.
This improves the customer experience by keeping your customers enthusiastic and loyal about dining at your restaurant.
The customer experience can make or break your restaurant.
Use your menu item descriptions to improve the customer experience.
For example, would you rather eat a plain hamburger or one made with grass-fed beef from the highlands of South Dakota?
Keep your menu descriptions simple and short, but use them to your advantage to really tell your customers what they’re getting through creative writing.
As with professional photography, consider a professional copywriter.
Improve the customer experience by offering fair and competitive pricing.
Make sure your pricing strategy is not only to your advantage, but that it seems reasonable to your customers.
One way to gauge the effectiveness of your pricing is to take a look at your direct competition.
If you haven’t updated the look of your menu in the last 10 years, this is another way to improve the customer experience through your menu.
No one wants to look at a dirty, torn and outdated menu. And, quite frankly, that doesn’t speak well for the cleanliness of your kitchen.
Improve your brand and have your menu professionally done. This will not only improve the customer experience but your bottom line.
Gluten-free, vegetarian, vegan, allergy-prone.
There sure are a lot of special needs out there when it comes to dining.
Be flexible with your dishes and consider offering a nice mixture of offerings to meet the needs of your diners and improve the customer experience.
Do you know your typical customer? Is it mostly retired people, teenagers or families with children?
By considering your audience, you can tailor your menu to meet their dietary needs.
For example, if families make up your customer base, do you cater to them? Do you have kid-friendly dishes other than the typical chicken fingers?
Or, if you own an upscale restaurant, does your menu reflect that in not only the variety of dishes but the design itself?
Finally, the last way to improve the customer experience is to train your staff properly. Do they know your menu backwards and forwards?
Your diners will have a poor experience if your wait staff can’t answer questions without plowing through the menu themselves.
They should be well-versed in the entire menu as well as any specials.
When it comes to improving your customer experience, take a long hard at your restaurant from the perspective of your customer.
You might even “mystery-shop” every aspect of your restaurant so you have a true understanding of the customer’s experience.
Improve the customer experience by fine-tuning your menu as well as every aspect of your customer service, and your restaurant will stay miles ahead of the competition.
Do you have a dynamic menu on your website? At Restaurant Engine, we build responsive, mobile-friendly restaurant websites that incorporate menus that intrigue and tantalize your customers.
Contact us today for your free website consultation. We’d are here to help you stand out in the crowd and stay ahead of your competition with your restaurant website.
Images: Carisa Gan and Brooke Lark
People often associate the term “user experience design” with visual design or the design of a digital interface, like a website or mobile app. But the truth is, user experience (UX) design is bigger than that, and it’s used across every industry, from software, to business, to schools, and beyond.
Successful UX design is why shopping on Amazon is addictive, ride-sharing apps like Uber are thriving, and binge watching TV shows from any number of services has become the best way to spend a weekend indoors — skillful UX design has made it insanely easy to do. Even physical spaces are impacted by UX design: Think strategic layouts of department stores with enticing buys at every turn or the always-moving checkout lines at Trader Joe’s.
Understanding UX design can give you deeper insight into consumer needs, behaviors, and motivations, keep your skills relevant in a digital world, and increase your value in the job market. With a fundamental understanding of UX principles, you can better communicate with more teams at your company, create user-centric marketing campaigns, and learn to solve the right problem at the right time.
UX designers come from a diverse range of backgrounds like finance, industrial design, psychology, and medical research. Will Greenaway started his career as an anthropologist before transitioning to the field. He works with clients ranging from early-stage startups to giants like Google, Prudential Financial, and McKinsey.
Now, Greenaway is an instructor at General Assembly in Denver, where he arms students with the skills they need to either bring user experience into their current job in part-time courses, or pivot their career to focus on it exclusively. He’s also deeply involved in the Denver’s UX scene, navigating the intersection between clients and consumers.
We asked Greenaway for his expert point of view on the growing field of UX and how you can get started in it.
In one sentence, how would you define UX design?
UX design is an approach to solving problems so a product fits exactly with the problems and goals users need the product to solve.
What can a person or business accomplish with good UX design?
User experience design is applicable to many aspects of life. You can use the techniques to help solve any problem you might encounter, even outside of technology. If you’re creating any type of product or running any type of business you can use UX methods to find out exactly what needs to be delivered to customers. When a customer can receive exactly what they need, and exactly what they were sold, your business is a true success. Customers will tell others about your product. Then your business goals of generating revenue, growth, and customer engagement are increased, because the product will provide a solution to whatever problem the user purchased it to solve.
What are some common misconceptions about UX design?
That UX is somehow all about visual design or designing the interface of a website. These elements are an important part of the user experience, but UX design is about a user’s behavior, needs, goals, and dreams, and how to best deliver a product that meets all of these areas of the user’s experience.
“If you’re running any type of business you can use UX methods” –@GA_Denver instructor Will G.
Click To Tweet
What’s your advice to an aspiring UX designer?
Don’t wait until you think you know everything to call yourself a UX designer. Grab a book, a video, a quick course, and start applying the skills today! You’ll be amazed how much you can learn by trying out some of the techniques in everyday life.
What are some of your favorite resources for someone interested in getting started in UX design?
The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
Rocket Surgery Made Easy by Steve Krug
Sketching User Experiences by Bill Buxton
What are some common mistakes people make when they design their own websites and what are the fixes for them?
1. Not taking into account that their own tastes, goals, and preferences for a website are often very different than what the website’s users actually need.
2. Not testing their websites out with their users. When you write a rough draft in college you sometimes get feedback at a writing center or “test” it with your friends and classmates. Why wouldn’t you treat your website like something that might need feedback?
3. Getting too wrapped up in features and visuals without really focusing on providing the users with the right information and features when they need it. All those extra features are nice but they are usually to satisfy business stakeholders, not the users.
“The best way to break in [to UX] is to do what you love with people you like.” @GA_Denver
Click To Tweet
How can a designer break into the Denver UX scene?
Denver — and Colorado in general — has a lot going on! There are startups popping up all over the place. One of the best ways to break in is to get out to meetups and make friends in the industry. Denver is really relationship based, so the work comes as a result of making an effort to be involved with the local community. Sometimes the best way to break in is to do what you love with people you like and you will find a lot of tech-industry professionals are doing the same thing. Don’t assume you have to attend just tech meetups either! I’ve made a lot of great connections in the tech industry by getting out with my hiking groups and meetups.
Boost your professional profile with user experience design.
Explore UX design at General Assembly
The post User Experience Design Impacts Everyone — But What Is It? appeared first on GA Blog.
