We Pledge Allegiance, to Food…

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As we celebrate our Nation's independence this upcoming July 4th, we wanted to share some stats gathered by our friends at the National Restaurant Association. It's truly incredible how much the restaurant industry impacts our nation, and how much the industry continues to grow and impact each generation -- and the impact of not only food trends, but technology trends as well.

• Restaurant industry sales projected to total $798.7 billion in 2017 and equal 4 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product.
  
  
• The restaurant industry projected to employ 14.7 million people in 2017 – about one in 10 working Americans.
  
  
• More than 9 in 10 restaurants have fewer than 50 employees.
  
  
• More than 7 in 10 restaurants are single-unit operations.
  
  
• 80% of Millennials have used free Wi-Fi in a restaurant in the last year.
  
  
• 42% of Consumers say the ability to order online would make them choose one restaurant over another.
  
  
• 60% of Consumers say availability of environmentally friendly food would make them choose one restaurant over another.
  
  
• 1 in 3 Americans got their first job experience in a restaurant.
  
  Check out some more statistics here!

Making the Most Out of July

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It’s July and summer is in full swing, which means that there are countless opportunities for your business to make a little extra money this month—including everything from commemorating America’s birthday on the 4th to celebrating lesser known (but equally important) holidays, like National Mac and Cheese Day on the 14th. Read on for tips and ideas that are sure to make your business stand out this month.

Restaurant owners have too much on their plate.

(pun intended)

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Whether your lifelong dream was to open a fine dining restaurant,  or the caffeine addict in you decided a coffee shop would be the perfect endeavor to take on, or you happened to be the next generation to take over the family’s pizza joint – we know that running a restaurant is far more complicated than it may appear to those not involved.

Sure, hospitality is in your blood, you were meant for this life – but that doesn’t make it any easier. Your hostess just called out sick an hour before her shift, your chef has an ego and won’t listen, your delivery never came for the special you planned (and advertised) for that night, and the water heater broke so dirty dishes are piling up in the kitchen. Sound familiar? (hopefully all of the above has never happened all at once, but you get our point)

Anything can happen – so since you have countless things to worry about, why make marketing and growing your business one of them?

We decided to look deeper into the life of the restaurant owner and provide a tool to keep you both organized and effective. We call it the Social Hub; and are happy to say that it’s been the sigh of relief that many busy restaurant owners have been craving since they opened their doors.

WARNING:

The following is based on a true story...

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Your friend stops by to see you at the restaurant before you open for the night, and gives you that concerned look which causes you to immediately ask “What’s wrong?”

She quickly asks if you’ve seen the outrageous review that was left about you on Yelp giving your cafe only 1-star, then quickly follows with “But there was a great 5-star review on TripAdvisor too so that’s good at least!”

You scramble to your computer to check out what is being said about you online (despite it being 5 minutes until you open your doors) and gasp at the nonsense displayed before you as you read this 1-star review. You want to reply to these comments, and explain that this isn’t accurate, (and say thank you to the person who left the great review) but forget your login to both Yelp and TripAdvisor so you’re stuck. And fuming. And now it’s time for dinner service. 

This is an actual story from one of our customers, and I bet that there is some of it you can relate to. We know how troubling it is to not immediately know how your online reputation is portrayed, but who has time to keep up with protecting it? Well, we found a way to help you.

Meet, the widgets.

The Reviews Widget: Your new best friend. 

This section of the Social Hub displays a basic overview of where your reputation is from a star-rating standpoint, as well as how you stack up in your industry. But more importantly, it streams in every review from every review site right into your dashboard. So those logins you forget are irrelevant – you can see it all (and respond to it all) immediately from one place. (Score!) An added bonus is you can set up mobile alerts to know when you have a new review to check up on.

The Social Media Widget: Marketing made easy!

This widget is such a time-saver. Once you easily connect your Social Media accounts, you can do it all. It shows all of the activity surrounding these accounts, as well as a tracker of who is following you. With a simple click, you can post out to both Twitter and Facebook at once and schedule posts to go out in advance. Truly a time saver and a free way to effectively market your business.

The Email Marketing Widget: (We’re pretty pumped about this too!)

Nothing beats having the ability to send out emails to your customers and bring them back in your door. This widget collects email addresses for you, gives you the ability to craft beautiful email campaigns and track all of the stats tied to them. Yes, it’s included for free.

The Listing Score Widget: Making sure people can find you

Without getting too in-depth, your listing score is more or less like a credit score for your business. It measures how you rank in terms of searchability across the web. So if your score is low, it can help you find out where you need to update your business info on the web so that you appear higher in search rankings, and that your customers (or more importantly, new customers) find you easily.