10 Menu Ideas That Could Improve Your Customer Experience

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:

• The person taking reservations on the phone
• Host/hostess
• Wait staff and table service
• Entertainment
• Engagement of your staff
• Parking
• Waiting area
• Ambiance
• Bathrooms
• Food
• Speed

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.

#1: Use Professional Photography

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.

#2: Add Fresh Items

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.

#3: Highlight What You Do Well

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.

#4: Offer Specials

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.

#5: Write Great Copy

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.

#6: Fine-Tune Your Pricing

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.

#7: Refresh Your Menu

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.

#8: Cater to Special Needs

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.

#9: Take a Good Look at Your Customer

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?

#10: Know the Menu

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.

To Conclude

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

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User Experience Design Impacts Everyone — But What Is It?

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.

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“If you’re running any type of business you can use UX methods” –@GA_Denver instructor Will G.
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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.

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“The best way to break in [to UX] is to do what you love with people you like.” @GA_Denver
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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

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General Assembly Honored at MIT Inclusive Innovation Competition

General Assembly has an ambitious vision for the future. We’re working toward a world in which we can close the global skills gap, ensuring that everyone — regardless of social or economic barriers — has access to the training they need to pursue a career they love. To achieve this goal, we work closely with employers to understand the workforce they need, and then empower students and employees with these skills.

Our commitment is getting noticed.

In September, MIT honored General Assembly as a finalist in its Inclusive Innovation Competition. The contest identifies and celebrates organizations that are inventing a more inclusive, productive, and sustainable future for all. Like us, they see the importance of a network of organizations learning from one another and working together to solve important social challenges. As part of the competition, we presented one of our models for creating a more inclusive workforce: the General Assembly Opportunity Fund.

Opportunity Fund provides fully funded scholarships to our Immersive courses in full-stack web development, user experience design, and Android development for low-income individuals. We focus on underrepresented communities facing barriers to tech carries, including women, people of color, LGBTQ individuals, and veterans.

“The goal of our Opportunity Fund is to promote systemic change to how people access education,” says Jake Schwartz, CEO and co-founder of General Assembly. “We have created hundreds of fellows around the United States and around the world, of whom 60 percent are women, 80 percent people of color, and 10 percent veterans. From our perspective, we’re just getting started.”

Sarah Aoun, a Web Development Immersive graduate and Opportunity Fund fellow, says her identity is helping her understand how tech can be more inclusive of people from nontraditional backgrounds. “I see code as an art form,” says Aoun, an immigrant from Beirut. “General Assembly is giving me the tools that I need to develop this art, and connect all of my career goals in human rights, politics, and technology.”

Our Opportunity Fund has empowered an exceptional and diverse class of more than 200 students to pursue new careers in tech. These students have included Kazumi (a first-generation immigrant and mom of a special-needs child), Ruth (a Latina and LGBTQ individual who lost her job due to outsourcing), and Joey (a native New Yorker who had trouble finding a full-time, permanent job). We’ve seen how this program has helped provide financial stability and transform careers.

The program and its fellows.

To close the global skills gap, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. General Assembly is dedicated to developing additional measures like scholarships, bridge programs, and apprenticeships that can help ensure our premiere education is accessible to everyone — whether you’re a parent returning to work, a first-generation immigrant, or part of an underrepresented community in tech.

We’re grateful that Opportunity Fund and other partners’ programs can work closely together to identify and create new education and training models that promote more socioeconomic mobility, diversity, and access for more people. We’re honored to have this recognition from MIT and look forward to the exciting road ahead of us as we continue empowering students to pursue work they love.

Learn more about GA’s Opportunity Fund

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Founding a Company Entirely on UX Design: How GA Grads Started Jewelry Company Vrai & Oro

For years, Chelsea Nicholson and Vanessa Stofenmacher felt that the fine jewelry on the market just wasn’t for them. They wanted to make a statement with pieces that were classic yet attainable, and had an inkling other women felt the same. After graduating from General Assembly’s User Experience Design Immersive program in Los Angeles, they decided to do something about it.

The pair, who were friends before they were classmates, teamed up to launch Vrai and Oro — a Warby Parker-style fine jewelry startup that embodies UX principles its core. Vrai and Oro means truth (in French) and gold (in Spanish), and the name is reflected in the company’s values: quality, simplicity, and transparency. Chelsea and Vanessa produce their jewelry with ethically sourced materials in Downtown LA — without designer markups. And, true to their UX-driven brand, their website and eCommerce platform is minimalistic and image-driven for easy use.

We caught up with Chelsea to learn more about Vrai & Oro, the site’s user experience, and how GA helped the co-founders achieve their goals.

What brought you to GA?

We came to GA for separate reasons. Vanessa had co-founded another startup as Creative Director and wanted more insight into the user experience of the brand. I had recently finished studying business marketing and had a passion for consumer behavior, so I thought UX would be a strong complement.

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“Our entire company was founded through user experience,” says @vraiandoro co-founder
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What was the inspiration for Vrai & Oro?

We started V&O out of the desire to create jewelry that fits our everyday life without needing to make a statement. For years, we felt that jewelry just wasn’t for us. We were overwhelmed with trends, tired of the designer markups, and confused by misleading product descriptions. We decided to simplify our choices, prioritize quality, and make our collection attainable to women just like us. We’ve always been hugely inspired by companies like Everlane and Warby Parker and saw an opportunity to bring this business model to the fine jewelry industry.

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“We met more people than we could have ever imagined through the @GA community.”
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What skills from GA’s User Experience Design Immersive have you used to build your business?

Our entire company was founded through the user experience. Every decision we make is based around how it will affect our customers, so having technical education in that domain has influenced almost every area of our brand. Even beyond that, we really used the GA network when launching the company. We met more people than we could have ever imagined through events and the entire GA community. Last year, we were a part of the Grid110 accelerator program, which was critical to our growth and education, and we would have never had that experience or connection without GA.

What have you learned about yourself through your experiences at GA and as entrepreneurs?

That we truly love the startup life!

Do you have any advice for GA students who want to start their own companies?

Don’t make excuses. Get creative, and don’t let things like having a small or no budget hold you back. Turn what others think to be weaknesses into your strengths. A lot of young founders get stuck on the idea that you need a lot of funding, but really you just need to do it and trust it. Also — use the GA network!

Find inspiration from your customers.

Explore User Experience Design at General Assembly

The post Founding a Company Entirely on UX Design: How GA Grads Started Jewelry Company Vrai & Oro appeared first on GA Blog.

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A Picture Says 1000 Words – How Your Restaurant Can Benefit

Your restaurant benefits from visual storytelling.

Storytelling has been around since ancient times in many forms.

Yet, the art of storytelling has never had such prominence in the marketing arena as it does today.

When it comes to content marketing, email marketing, social media and your restaurant, storytelling has the power to drive your business and enhance your brand.

As we look at storytelling, we find that yes indeed, a picture says 1000 words. In this article, we discuss how your restaurant can benefit from using pictures in your marketing strategy.

Your restaurant can benefit from the art of visual storytelling using pictures with Instagram, email and content marketing.

Instagram Photos

Instagram is the social media platform of pictures. More than 95 million photos are shared on Instagram every day.

This means it’s a great place for your restaurant, and it means you’ve got to take great photos to stand out in a crowded arena.

When it comes to Instagram photos, your restaurant can benefit most by crafting a story with your photos. You want one brand feel for your images that viewers associate with your restaurant.

Is your restaurant a dark, intimate affair, or do you own a brightly lit, colorful café? Your photos should reflect your restaurant and your menu.

Here are some tips for taking the best photographs for your restaurant:

• Focus on the lighting. Your goal is to take the most tantalizing, visually appealing photos of your menu items. This is why you exist, so your pictures must be amazing. Take your photos near soft light sources.
• Accessorize your food. Use pretty linens. Make it interesting – think lifestyle images. Instead of a plain bowl of soup, casually rest a spoon on the bowl. Highlight a glass of wine with the bottle and the cork. Incorporate a waiter’s hand doing the pouring. Be creative and tell a story that resonates with your viewers.
• Garnish your photos. Add green garnishes to savory dishes and berries to sweet ones. Swirl some sour cream atop your chili. Again, get creative and make your viewers want your dishes.
• Incorporate your brand into your images with filters. Add frames or outlines, create collages, enhance the mood…the options are endless.
• Don’t forget the photos of people. Lifestyle images of your restaurant tell the complete story. Snap photos of your guests as well as your staff.

Finally, as you take your photos for Instagram, or your other marketing, stick with the rule of thirds.

For example, break your photo into thirds both vertically and horizontally – you now have nine parts. Highlight interesting points in your picture at the intersection points of the lines. This might mean highlighting your dish in the lower left corner.

Today’s digital world provides a chance for an inside look at your restaurant.

Email Photos

Email newsletters again allow you to capture your audience and build relationships through storytelling, and your pictures are the centerpiece.

Imagine getting a boring email that’s all text and no photos. Sounds like work, right? Your email newsletter should feature your best and brightest photos to encourage your customer to read on.

If the picture is done right, you might not even need very many words, because as the old adage goes, “A picture is worth 1000 words.”

Email images sell your restaurant. They make your readers hungry and give them a reason to stop in for a meal.

While images are vital to your email marketing, we do have one important tip: don’t send an email that is one big image. (tweet this)

If you do this, you run the risk of your email not getting opened at all. For example, if your customer has images turned off, or their data isn’t strong, they won’t see anything at all.

Single images are also larger and take longer to open.

We also don’t recommend using one big image, slicing it and putting into an HTML table.

You run into the same problems as with one big image. When using images, you want to assign them some accompanying text and always fill out the alt tag for your images to give readers an idea of what the image is if they can’t see it at first.

So, when sending your emails, use text and images together to tell your story and market your restaurant.

Content Marketing Photos

Content marketing includes your visual storytelling as well as your textual story.

Think of your photos as the hook that grabs your readers and draws them in. To help you capitalize on the power of pictures in your content marketing, here are some tips:

• Stock photos are so last year as are ultra-canned shots. Plan your photo shoots and keep them realistic. Show your visitor that they too can experience your restaurant the same way your photos depict it.
• Think about the types of photos that will appeal to your buyer personas and your customer base.
• Use photography to really tell your story. Keep your brand in mind as your photos draw readers in and tell them what your restaurant is all about.
• Use the 360-degree brand rule. This means incorporating real life into your pictures. Consider how your brand looks, what your staff will wear, and how you’ll frame your shots.
• Show people. Often times in restaurant photography, the people are left out. We encourage you to include photos of your staff and customers to give a face to your restaurant.
• Use your photos to teach. For example, if you are sharing a recipe on your blog, feature photos of the step-by-step process.
• Invite others to share your photos as well as their own photos.

Visual storytelling is a large part of you restaurant’s brand storytelling. Photos help broadcast and extend your restaurant’s story by connecting your customers and your restaurant through your photos. (tweet this)

Always ask yourself, “How will my pictures appeal to my audience?”

Keep these things in mind as you use pictures in your content marketing.

To Conclude

Your restaurant can benefit from a picture that says 1000 words.

If your photos are custom, professional and consistent with your brand, they’ll help your restaurant increase customer engagement.

You’ll also build a solid brand foundation for your restaurant while utilizing exceptional photography in all of your marketing .

Keep your photos real and take a look at them through the eyes of your customer. Ask yourself if they portray your brand in a positive light, further your story and engage the customer.

If you can answer yes to all of those questions, you’re well on the way to helping your restaurant benefit from great pictures.

At Restaurant Engine, we build responsive, mobile-friendly restaurant websites that incorporate photography to intrigue and tantalize your customer.

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:  Milada Vigerova and Jorge Zapata

 

 

 

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Measuring What Matters: General Assembly’s First Student Outcomes Report

Since founding General Assembly in 2011, I’ve heard some incredible stories from our students and graduates. One of my favorites is about Jerome Hardaway. Jerome came to GA after five years in the United States Air Force. He dreamed of tackling persistent diversity gaps in the technology sector by breaking down barriers for other veterans and people of color.

In 2014, with the help of General Assembly’s Opportunity Fund scholarship, Jerome began one of our full-time Web Development Immersive courses. After graduation, he had the opportunity to pitch President Obama at the first-ever White House Demo Day and has launched a nonprofit in Nashville, Vets Who Code, which helps veterans navigate the transition to civilian life through
technology skills training.

Exceptional stories like Jerome’s embody GA’s mission of “empowering people to pursue the work they love.” It’s a mission that motivates our instructional designers, faculty, mentors, and career coaches. It also inspired the development of an open source reporting framework which defined GA’s approach to measuring student outcomes and now, our first report with verified student outcomes metrics.

We know that anecdotes don’t always equate to statistical outcomes, and that students enroll in our programs for different reasons. We believe that transparency in reporting student outcomes is the best way to empower students whose goals, life circumstances, and career paths differ widely. We hope that rigorous measurement, paired with a relentless focus on outcomes, can foster a culture of accountability without stifling innovation. That’s why we asked KPMG LLP to review the graduation and placement rates included in the tables on page 20 of this student outcomes report.

While this report represents the culmination of a 12-month commitment from our team, it is just the first step in a process that we hope can inform a paradigm shift in how we think about measuring and reporting on outcomes across the education-to-employment landscape.

See our Student Outcomes Report

The post Measuring What Matters: General Assembly’s First Student Outcomes Report appeared first on GA Blog.

10 Things You Should Know About Restaurant Finance

Know your finances as well as you know your menu.

Whether you are a current restaurant owner, or you’re getting ready to open a restaurant, managing your money means conducting a regular financial analysis of your business.

That lets you look at your overall areas of strength and weakness so you can ensure your restaurant is in the territory of profitability.

To help you manage your numbers, we look at the 10 things you should know about restaurant finance so you can improve your operation.

#1: Stay on Top of Your Budget

We assume you have a budget for things like food costs, payroll, marketing and overhead.

That’s terrific, because every restaurant needs a budget. Now, the next question might be a bit tricky, “How often do you review your budget?”

If you’re like many busy restaurateurs, you may not look at your budget often enough.

Review your budget every month. It’s a relatively quick and easy thing to do if you make it part of your regular to-do list.

By reviewing your budget on an on-going basis, you stay focused on managing your day-to-day operations while planning for the future.

For example, you may notice that your staff is spending way too much time making coffee in your outdated machine, and that’s costing you labor hours. Since you’re on top of your budget, you can add a new coffee maker as a line item the next year.

#2: Examine Reports Daily

There are some reports you should look at daily. These help you manage your inventory and your labor costs.

By looking at your daily sales report, you’ll have a good idea if you’re going to meet your monthly budget goals. It helps you plan for the following week, too.

You can also glean from this report your most popular menu items. By checking this report daily, you’ll learn if you’re buying enough of what you need to make your most popular dishes.

In addition to your daily sales report, you want to look at your staff labor report. You’ll know in an instant if you are over-staffing your restaurant.

This report helps you manage and improve your staffing to either save money or serve your customers better.

#3: Avoid Minimum Payments

When possible, you want to pay your bills in full each month. (tweet this)

For example, if you’re charging food costs to your credit card, don’t charge more than you can pay in a month. Carrying balances at interest costs you unnecessarily.

The smartest way to use your credit cards for purchases is to pay them off at the end of each month. You’ll have gotten an interest-free loan for one month, and if you have a reward card, you’ll have earned points as well.

Don’t fall into the trap of making minimum payments because that can get out of hand very quickly.

#4: Know Your Credit Score

Restaurant owners need to have good credit scores if they want to get lines of credit.

You’ll find that vendors will be reluctant to negotiate payment terms if your credit is bad.

If you are operating your restaurant as a sole proprietor, you’ll find it isn’t possible to separate your credit score.

But, if you’re restaurant is incorporated, you want to register with Dunn and Bradstreet with your legal business name. This allows you to monitor and control your business credit.

To keep your restaurant’s credit in tip-top shape, following these tips:

• Pay your bills on time. Don’t miss payments or be late. Not only does this lower your score, but you’ll incur late fees and finance chargers.
• Avoid carrying large balances as these are red flags.

#5: Compare Your Numbers

A good way to maintain the financial health of your restaurant is to review your income statement period over period.

Compare financial statements paying special attention to your revenue and expenses over time. This helps you optimize your cash management, keep operating costs in check and improve your cash flow.

Your financial health and well-being is vital.

#6: Implement Top Notch Accounting System

When it comes to your restaurant finances, you want to use an excellent accounting system or service.

Software like QuickBooks can greatly help you manage your finances.

You can’t manage what you can’t count, and if your accounting system (or lack of accounting system) isn’t set up properly, you won’t have a good idea of your financial stability.

A properly managed restaurant is also managing its accounting books well.

If you struggle in this area, consider hiring an accountant or restaurant financial consultant to help.

#7: Price Menu Items Accurately

How are you pricing your menu items?

Are you taking food costs, overhead and payroll into consideration when pricing your menu items?

Or, are you taking the easy way out and checking your competitor’s prices and adjusting yours accordingly?

We recommend combining both of these methods. Know exactly what you need to charge to turn a profit, and know what you need to charge to compete with restaurants in your area.

To manage your food costs appropriately, you have to know what each one of your menu items costs you so you don’t overspend on each individual ingredient.

Be detailed when figuring out the prices of menu items, and you’ll keep your numbers in check.

#8: Take Inventory

Some restaurant owners and managers are extremely lax when taking inventory. They don’t know how much stock they’re losing to waste or theft.

To calculate an accurate food cost, you have to know what your beginning and ending inventories are for any given period.

Managing food costs means knowing what they are, and you can’t do this without thoroughly knowing your inventory.

#9: Set Goals

Are you flying blind, or do you have financial goals for your restaurant?

Have you made a plan for how much you’d like to grow your restaurant and increase sales?

You are responsible for meeting the financial goals of your restaurant, and to do that, you must first set them.

Set your goals based on the following:

• Previous year’s performance
• Percentage of growth
• Current trends
• Expected economic impacts

#10: Pay Bills Precisely

Don’t rely on your bank balance to pay your bills. (tweet this) This is generally not an accurate accounting of how much money you really have.

Use your accounting system to really understand and know your cash flow before you start spending money.

Final Thoughts

We’ve looked at 10 things you should know about restaurant finance as you move forward through the year.

Take these tips and use them to set your financial house straight and keep your restaurant profit margins high.

Are you an existing restaurant? Do you have tips for managing your money for our readers? We’d love to hear it. Please comment below.

Images: Olu Eleta and Helen Martinez

DISGUSTING Restaurant Sprays Their Steaks Before Cooking! | Kitchen Nightmares

The Top 8 Digital Marketing Tips From Hillary Clinton’s Campaign

Running a political campaign is a lot like running a business’s marketing department. To be successful, you have to determine a target audience, then find the best ways to reach them to sell your product.

Just over a month before the 2016 presidential election, three leaders from Hillary for America’s digital team visited General Assembly’s New York headquarters for a captivating panel conversation moderated by Fast Company writer Ruth Reader. They shared insight on the Hillary Clinton campaign’s digital marketing strategy, from experimenting with new platforms, to choosing data sources and breaking through the echo chamber.

Clinton’s team shared tips that digital marketers can apply to amplify brand messages, create stronger communities, and capitalize on new tools and trends. Get an exclusive look at how the campaign operates by watching the full discussion below.

1. Use your brand’s strengths to tell your story and engage with your audience.

Hillary Clinton isn’t known for her natural ability to work a room like Barack Obama or her husband Bill, but she’s celebrated as a great listener who makes strong impressions in a one-on-one setting. The team centered the campaign around those strengths, finding ways for voters to intimately engage with the candidate and make them feel like they have access to her, even if they couldn’t be with her face to face.

“A lot of the [campaign] videos you see are about these intimate moments,” said Jessica Morales Rocketto, Hillary for America’s Digital Organizing Director. “In organizing that, we’re trying to help people meet Hillary through contests. We’re trying to make sure she comments on Facebook pages, likes Instagram posts, and also [give people] access to ask her questions through conference calls or livestreams.”

2. Consider your target audience for each distribution platform.

Different platforms — like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and email — lend themselves better to various demographics and types of content, so it’s important to consider which outlet you’re using for each message.

“[We ask], who’s the audience there? Do they tend to be older? Do they tend to be younger? Do they tend to be women? We [think] about who we’re talking to and what’s natural on the platform,” explained Andrew Forrest, HFA’s Director of Audience Development. “Twitter tends to be for influential folks, and reporters … On Facebook, we think a lot about video distribution. It depends who we’re trying to reach with our message.”

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“It would be foolish to think we could control the message in this age of social media.”…
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3. Use a variety of data sources to inform your marketing decisions.

Targeting your audience based on age, location, interests, and other factors increases the effectiveness of a marketing campaign, and that data, used to inform content strategy and ad placement, can come from a variety of sources. Clinton’s team uses its own collected data supplemented by information that’s accessible via other sources, like Facebook and YouTube.

“We try to make judgments on whether our own data is better or worse than the data we [can get] from the platforms themselves,” said Danielle Butterfield, Deputy Director of Digital Advertising for HFA. “We target people we need to be speaking to but we lean on places like YouTube and Facebook” for user behavior and characteristics such as language and family-related details. For an ad about Clinton’s Bernie Sanders–assisted proposal for debt-free college, the campaign targeted student voters, then layered on Facebook and YouTube data to find parents with kids in college.

4. You can’t always control your message — and sometimes that’s a good thing.

There’s no stopping what other people say about or do with your brand, and sometimes it’ll work to your advantage. During the vice presidential debate on October 4, Governor Mike Pence said to Senator Tim Kaine, “Senator, you’ve whipped out that Mexican thing again,” after Kaine mentioned Donald Trump’s past derogatory comments about Mexicans. Soon after, a Hillary Clinton supporter created the website thatmexicanthing.com, which redirects to Clinton’s donation page.

“We keep getting credit for it, but [a supporter named Danilo Alfaro] did it,” Rocketto explained. “We don’t think about it as hijacking [our message]. It would be foolish to think we could control the message in this age of social media.”

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“Engagement is universal, whether the message is online or offline.” –@GA
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5. Find a way to break through the echo chamber.

As crucial as it is to cater to your core demographic, the most effective marketing campaigns discover ways to reach a wider audience — sometimes through unexpected channels. Hillary Clinton recently did that by appearing on an episode of the Funny or Die web series Between Two Ferns with comedian Zach Galifianakis, which was shared widely beyond her liberal base.

“You have to think about how to frame content so that it’s going to energize your base and people who are willing to be your evangelists, but frame it in a way that is approachable, surprising, and interesting to people who are not necessarily part of that group,” Forrest said. “[After Between Two Ferns went live], I regularly saw people posting comments that said, ‘I may not love Hillary but honestly this is just funny.’ It’s a really nice example of how we can break through by being a little bit creative, a little bit outside the box of what folks might typically expect us to do.”

6. Tailor your outreach to new trends and technologies.

Successful marketers are constantly adapting to new ways of reaching their audience, which often means testing out new social media platforms or content formats.

“One thing we’ve done that has been very innovative on this campaign is create videos in a way that is optimized for performance on social media,” Forrest explained, referencing the short, easily shareable Facebook-hosted videos that have been prominent in Clinton’s campaign. “Native Facebook video didn’t exist in the last presidential campaign. It’s completely revolutionized the way the media works today, and we wanted to make it successful.”

7. Engagement is universal, whether the message is online or offline.

Rocketto stressed that there’s no real difference between marketing to people online or offline because the ultimate goal is to engage people with your product or organization regularly, and in their real life.

“We’re trying to think about the ways we can be a part of the daily life of our supporters, whether it’s because they saw in their Facebook feed a post from Hillary Clinton about last night’s debate, or because they got a call from our organizers,” she said. “All of those things together are communications from the campaign, and I don’t think anybody is separating those. To me it’s just engaging with people — sometimes it’s online and sometimes it’s offline. I don’t think those terms really mean that much.”

8. Utilize brand advocates wherever you find them.

Some of the most influential marketing comes from peers and local influencers, which is why Clinton’s campaign spends a lot of time working with grassroots organizations and not only popular celebrities or politicians.

Rocketto pointed out that companies have “people who can be evangelists for your product, your technology, and supporters who are enthusiastic and want to talk about it.” Use them to your advantage and “give them the tools they need to be able to do that.”

Master your brand and business plan.

Learn More About Digital Marketing at GA

The post The Top 8 Digital Marketing Tips From Hillary Clinton’s Campaign appeared first on GA Blog.

Location Location Location – It’s The Single Most Important Thing You Can Do For Your Food Business

Drive business with a prominent location.

You probably know it’s all about location location location. But, did you know it’s the single most important thing you can do for your food business?

In fact, one study shows that restaurant location has a significant effect on brand preference and overall brand equity.

While creating your menu is probably your top priority, you want to put location at the very top of your list.

Deciding on the right location is the single most important business decision you will make. (tweet this)

Great food and service is vital, but if your location is bad, none of that matters.

Consider where you plant your restaurant as the three top decisions you’ve got to make – location, location, location. Here’s how to choose the best location:

Look at Population Numbers

You want to ask yourself if there are enough locals in the area to support your restaurant.

If your food caters to office workers, are you located downtown? If you are a fine dining establishment, can the income of the area support your restaurant?

Consider your placement next to business thoroughfares or highways if you cater to the fast casual crowd.

You want to be sure there are enough people not only living in the area but passing through on a regular basis to keep your restaurant thriving in your community.

A site study can help you determine this, or you can visit with your local chamber of commerce to see if they already have the data on hand.

View Available Parking

Great food, superb service, a prime location, but no parking. That doesn’t fit the bill for location, location, location.

You can bet your customers want to access your restaurant with ease. If they have to walk to your restaurant because your parking is bad, they will most likely look elsewhere.

If people in your area don’t drive, but take a train or subway, make sure you’re on an accessible route.

Assess the Size

Along with the location of your restaurant comes its available size.

Before choosing your restaurant’s location, take a long hard look.

• Is there enough room for your kitchen?
• Is the prep space adequate for the number of customers you will serve?
• Is there an office?
• Do you have storage?
• Does the dining room have space for the tables, hostess stand, bar and wait stations?
• How about the waiting area? Is it ample?
• Can you help to-go customers easily?

It can help to take large sheets of butcher paper, cut them to size and lay them out to make sure you have enough space for everything you’ll put in your restaurant.

Measure Previous Failures

So, your realtor just showed you the “perfect” location. It already has a professional kitchen and even comes with restaurant-grade refrigerators and ovens.

But, you need to step back and ask, “Why?”

Put on your detective hat and learn why the previous restaurant left. Dig even deeper and find out if other restaurants have failed in the area.

You might find that this particular location has featured failed restaurant after failed restaurant.

If one restaurant failed, it could be bad food, bad service or a poor concept. But, if multiple restaurants have failed in the location, then the answer is clear: the location is bad.

You’ll find that there are several reasons restaurants properties come up for sale.

• The owners are tired and moving on.
• The restaurant is struggling financially, and closing is the only option. Worry about this reason.

You’ve got to find out why.

A little competition can be good for business.

Meet the Neighbors

Yes, just like in your home, your neighbors matter.

Take a walk around the neighborhood. See who is doing business on the street. Does their concept fit in with yours?

For example, if you are a high-end restaurant, you don’t want to set up right next to a discount store.

Or, take a look around. If you are an Italian-concept restaurant, are you the only one in a couple mile radius? If there are others with the same concept, this isn’t the location for you.

If there are other successful businesses in the area that are different but complement yours, this is a good sign.

Successful businesses attract other successful businesses. (tweet this)

You might even meet the neighbors. Ask them how they’re doing and how they feel about the area and the traffic it gets.

Leverage Your Biggest Competitor

While positioning your restaurant among multiple restaurant concepts similar to your own is a bad idea, locating near your biggest competitor can be a win-win.

Some restaurant gurus say that the best location for your restaurant is as near to your biggest competitor as you can get.

When you are positioned near the “big guys,” you benefit from their large scale marketing efforts.

For example, if they are doing a big marketing push to get people into the area, and you are visually near them, customers may opt for your restaurant instead.

Competition can be good as long as you are confident in your restaurant, and you’ve got excellent food and service to offer.

More traffic in the area is beneficial especially if you offer a viable, outstanding option to the competition.

Final Thoughts

One of the biggest reasons restaurants fail is due to a poor location.

If your food business has poor street visibility, a lack of parking or little to no foot traffic, the odds are your restaurant will fail.

To avoid this ever present problem, look at your chosen location from multiple angles.

Before you finalize your location, do your target market research. Know where your ideal customer lives, shop and dines.

After all, if they can’t find you, they won’t learn how good your food is.

Bottom line – it is all about location, location, location. Be absolutely sure before you sign a lease or purchase the property.

Choosing the location of your restaurant is the single most important thing you can do for your food business.

Don’t just pick the first seemingly good location you find.

Do your research. Visit several locations and at different times during the day.  This will help you gauge the foot traffic in the area.

Draw your diagrams and see if the building fits your needs exactly, and if not, what you can do to adjust.

Be patient and diligent with this decision as it has long-lasting repercussions for the success of your restaurant.

Are you an existing restaurant? How did you choose your location? Do you have any advice for our readers? We’d love to hear it. Please comment below.

Images: Clem Onojeghuo and Rob Bye

Ramsay Rips Disgusting Wallpaper Off The Wall During Service | Kitchen Nightmares

How Does Your Social Media Presence Stack Up?

Your social media presence is vital to your restaurant’s online marketing.

Social media is an ever-present function of our daily personal lives, and it should be a function of your restaurant’s daily marketing plan as well.

Have you ever wondered, though, how your restaurant lines up with the competition when it comes to social media?

With more than 25 million Facebook business pages, you might find it hard to stand out in a crowd.

In this article, we ask the question, “How does your social media presence stack up?”

Are you doing what you need to do to thrive on social media? Are you using your platforms to their fullest potential?

Let’s look at some areas for you to focus on when it comes to stacking up to the competition.

Audit Your Platforms

Your first step is to make a list of all the social media pages you have. Perhaps you manage one and staff members manage the others.

It’s easier and more time effective to manage them in one place, so start with a list.

Then, if you aren’t sure how many platforms you have, do a Google search for your business.

If you are “important” on a social network, your page may show up on the first page in the search results. Click through several pages to make sure you grab all of your networks.

Now, it’s time to get organized. Using a spreadsheet program, make a list of your social media platforms.

Then, you want to take a good look at each one of your accounts. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Is this platform useful?
• Do I have a large following?
• Do my followers like, comment, share, re-tweet or post?
• Am I “wowing” my customers on this page?
• Should I continue my presence on this social media network?

If you find a platform that isn’t currently useful to your business, ask yourself why. Is it because your customers aren’t using it, or is it because you aren’t actively using it.

Look for Consistency

If your restaurant has multiple social media pages, and different staff members are managing each one, odds are your social media accounts are not consistent.

This can be a real problem for your restaurant. To maintain your brand image, all of your platforms must be consistent with the following:

• Logo
• Cover photo
• Up-to-date description of your restaurant using relevant keywords
• A link to your website
• A consistent voice
• Consistent imagery – for example, one platform might have professional looking photos while another might have photos taken with an ancient phone

To succeed on each social media platform, your messaging must be appropriate to your audience, but it also should convey the same voice and messaging. (tweet this)

Take a look at each social media platform. Are you posting exactly the same content everywhere?

While you can use the same message, your Twitter tweets by their very nature will be different than your Facebook posts. Instagram is visual, so your text can be very minimal. LinkedIn posts should apply to your audience – usually people in the business world.

Check your consistency on each platform and make sure you have the same look and voice. Then, you can tailor your content to appeal to each specific audience.

Your social media platforms provide valuable links to your website.

Check Your Content

Now that we’re on the subject of content, it’s time to really see how you stack up to the competition. Let’s look at your content in detail.

Check out the type of content you are posting. Do you always include links? Are you leveraging the power of video? Is there an image or video included with each post or tweet? If not, they should be as images and videos attract more people.

Are you constantly self-promoting? In other words, is every post about your menu items, your restaurant and your specials?

Do you curate content from other social media platforms? Do you re-tweet or share other content?

Are you following the 70/20/10 rule? It looks like this:

• 70% of your content should be relevant and add something of value for your followers
• 20% of your content is sharing other people/business’ posts
• 10% is promoting your restaurant

The most important thing to remember when using your social media platforms is to post and share content that is valuable, relevant, educational, humorous, insightful, inspirational, or pertains to the needs and wants of your restaurant customers.

Next, ask yourself how often you post. Do you do really good for one week and then fall off during the next week?

Social media posting should be regular and consistent. For some platforms that may mean once a day, while for others, like Twitter, that means multiple times per day.

Do take a look at your social media insights to determine what time of day is best for your posts and when they get the most action. You want to post when your audience is online.

Monitor Your Insights

If you want to know just exactly how you stack up on social media, look at your social media insights.

Checking your audience engagement lets you know what’s working, and what isn’t.

Some things to look at include:

• Time of day for best engagement
• Number of comments on posts/tweets
• Number of shares on posts/tweets
• Number of likes on posts/tweets

By monitoring your analytics on a regular basis, you can tweak content so it works for your restaurant.

Review Your Competition

You can’t know how you stack up against other restaurants in town if you don’t know what they’re doing.

Look at their presence on social media. Are they maintaining consistent branding? Do a large number of people like and share their posts?

Some platforms, like Facebook, let you see how other business pages are doing. Be sure and add the pages you want to watch as this allows you to see what posts work for them.

Monitor their activity. Are they every day or not so often? How many fans do they have? Are they active?

Regular review of your competition can help you with your own social media marketing efforts as you might get some ideas to use on your own platforms.

Final Thoughts

Lastly, we encourage you to look at your social media goals.

Do you have certain goals for specific social media accounts? Are you meeting them?

On that spreadsheet list you created of all of your platforms, consider adding goals to this list. That way you can reassess your social media marketing on an ongoing basis to see if you are stacking up to your own goals.

Set goals for the future, test, monitor and analyze your social media networks so you can see what’s performing well, and where you can revise and improve.

Finally, to really stack up against the competition, your social media marketing needs a plan. (tweet this) Create a content calendar and posting schedule. Assign someone to handle it to help ensure a consistent brand message for your restaurant.

Do you have a great looking, responsive website to link to through social media? 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: William Iven and Correen