Wednesday, November 30, 2016
Monday, November 28, 2016
Why Your Food Truck Design Matters More Than Ever
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.
Why Design Matters
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:
- Bright colors
- Modern graphics
- Large, appealing design
- Interesting and bold typography
- Uniqueness of design
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.
How to Pick a Designer
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.
Maintain a Cohesive Design
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:
- Logo
- Custom truck design
- Lighting
- Image choices – photos or illustrations
- Vehicle Wrap
- Colors and Fonts
- Your menu and menu board
- Website, social media, video, digital marketing, business cards
Set Your Truck Apart
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:
The Rocket Wood Fired Pizza
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.
Curry Now
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.
Recess Truck
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.
Falasophy Food Truck
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.
Final Thoughts
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
Sunday, November 27, 2016
Wednesday, November 23, 2016
Monday, November 21, 2016
10 Examples Of Crafty And Fun Street Signs!
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.
#1: Vinnie’s Pizzeria
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.
#2: Not a Burger Stand
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.
#3: Flying Saucer Pizza Company
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
#4: Fayes Video and Espresso
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
#5: Fuel and Fuddle
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.
#6: Cajun Mikes
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.
#7: The Lord Nelson Restaurant
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
#8: Blue Point Brewing Company
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
#9: O’Donovan’s Irish Pub
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.
#10: Smith’s Restaurant and Lounge
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.
Keep to Your Branding
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.
Plan the Size and Visibility
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.
Think About Day and Evening
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.
Consider Alternate Views
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.
To Conclude
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
Saturday, November 19, 2016
Thursday, November 17, 2016
How You Can Use Facebook To Connect With Customers
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.
Use Facebook Live Video
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:
- Kitchen session with your chef showing how to make a dish
- An event at your restaurant
- An inside look at the inner workings of your restaurant
- A live stream through the eyes of your server – you could engage customers if they are willing
- Take followers on a tour of your specials
- Do a live tour of your shopping trip to a local farmers market
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:
- Make sure that you have a solid community. If you don’t, work to build it first. You can do this by regularly posting content that matters to your followers. Share your story and work to build a relationship with your followers.
- Make a Facebook marketing plan. Decide when you’ll live-stream video and set a plan in motion for promoting it.
- During the live stream, pay attention to your viewers. You can see their questions, comments and reactions. Call them by name as this is a friendly set-up.
- Engage your viewers with interesting, educational and funny information.
Share professional imagery on your Facebook page.
Encourage User-Generated Content
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:
- Run a contest where customers have to post pictures or videos or complete a quiz for entry. The prize could be a gift card or free dinner.
- Have your diners take photos while they’re in your restaurant dining. Then ask them to post it to social media with a specific hashtag. For example, ask them to post their photo with the hashtag #LoveBistro99. Then, you can find the photos and share them on your Facebook page.
- When creating a branded hashtag, make sure no one else is using it, and that it’s easy for your customers to remember. Use it in your posts as well.
- Respond to every question and comment that people post on your 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.
Promote Facebook Check-In
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.
Enhance Your Facebook Page
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.
Final Thoughts
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:
- Complete your entire Facebook business page profile.
- Add a profile photo and a cover photo. Utilize this space to your advantage by including your logo and a professional, beautiful photograph of your restaurant and your food.
- Write the description for your page. Use this area to tell your story – get creative and keep it interesting. Do include your website address here as well.
- Post at least once a day. Use the Facebook scheduling feature to do this so you don’t have to worry about it when you’re busy.
- Consider allocating some money to Facebook advertising. For as little as $10 per day, you can boost posts, increase your reach and connect with more 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
Wednesday, November 16, 2016
Tuesday, November 15, 2016
General Assembly and Adobe Team Up to Bring New Talent to the Tech World
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.
Monday, November 14, 2016
Online Ordering Revolution – Massive Growth Potential
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.
Increase Ticket Order Size
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:
- You can reward your big spenders. For example, you can encourage customers to buy a little bit more because you offer a discount or free delivery at certain price levels. Let’s say you offer free delivery at $50. This helps entice customers sitting in the $40 range to order more for the sake of convenience.
- Online ordering allows you to offer suggestions to your customers as they build their order. You can suggest appetizers, drinks, desserts, specialty breads and more.
- Suggesting add-ons is another bonus to online ordering. You can gently encourage a higher order total by highlighting inexpensive add-ons. For example, you serve Indian food. Add-ons could be naan bread and chutney. A few extra dollars spent by each customer adds up in the long run.
- Online ordering lets you cater to groups. You can provide special offers and complete menus for these groups with appetizer and desert add-ons as well as party platters. Offer special perks such as free drinks to encourage the larger order.
Reduce Overhead
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.
Give Your Customers Freedom
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.
Leverage Email Marketing
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.
Build Customer Loyalty
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.
Final Thoughts
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