iPhone 4-is going to be available starting June 15th.With amazing new features it makes iPhone more powerful, easier to use and you can do pretty much everything from taking photos, recording videos and so many other things that can be helpful to your personal or business life. It is almost like a powerful computer in a compact tiny device that fits into your palm.
Some of the new features they talk about on the video are:
FaceTime
Retina Display
Multitasking
HD Video Recording & Editing
5-Megapixel Camera with LED-Flash
FaceTime
I used to dream about video calling a decade ago. Finally it seems that iPhone 4 is making it a reality on mobile phones. I know for some restaurant owners especially during the initial years of business they leave their home early in the morning and come home night. They work so hard on making the business success that they don’t even get to see their kids. When they leave in the morning the kids are asleep and when they come home by night they are again asleep. After all they have to wake up for their school next morning. But no worries. Seems iPhone 4 will be able to help you in connecting with your kids face to face on video while talking to them. With just a tap, you can wave hello to your kids, share a smile and feeling of love even from your office at your restaurant far away from home. By the way just want to inform you that it works only on Wi Fi and between iPhone 4 to iPhone 4. Still it’s a worth purchase that will connect to your loved ones may be help in bridging your family relation with your kids and wife.
Multitasking
One of the critical skills required in restaurant business is Multitasking since it requires you to do millions of things at one time. (Well just kidding may be not million but at least multiple things. You know what I mean) iPhone 4 introduces cool feature that enables multitasking. Now you can run your favorite third-party apps — and switch between them instantly. Just talking about apps there are so many that you’ll have to jump from one to another while you are tackling your day to day task from restaurant operation to social media marketing. This Multitasking feature becomes very helpful and will make you productive. You will feel like super human who will be able to do so many tasks in so less time.
HD Video Recording & Editing
If you are a chef or even an owner of a restaurant, I think this new HD Video Recording & Editing feature is kind of cool. You can shoot your own movies in high definition right in side your kitchen or restaurant. Even when you shoot your video inside the restaurant, it capture impressive video even in low-light settings, since it has the advanced backside illumination sensor and built-in LED light. Check this one out. This is cool. You can edit and create your own mini-masterpiece right on iPhone 4 using the new iMovie app that is coming soon to the App Store for $4.99.
5-Megapixel Camera with LED-Flash
One of the other new improvements on iPhone 4 is the increase megapixel of 5 with Led-Flash. Now you can take beautiful, detailed photos of desserts, or delicious food, wine and any thing you can think of with the new 5-megapixel camera with built-in LED flash. Even when you are inside your restaurant the advanced backside illumination sensor will help capture great pictures even in low light. If you want to take pictures along with some of your customers the new front-facing camera makes it easy to take pictures with out cutting off your head.
Well these are few advantages to name few, but there are several benefits that is beyond this one single blog post. So I’d encourage you to buy it and use it and discover the benefits as you go by using the product to your advantage for personal life or restaurant business use.
Are you using iPhone right now for your restaurant? Do you use any iPhone apps on a regular basis to help you on your restaurant business? I’d appreciate if you could share some of your experiences or thoughts on how iPhone 3G/3GS has helped you in running your restaurant business efficiently. So now that iPhone 4 will be soon available what do you think about the new features? Do you think iPhone will become an indispensible tool for your restaurant business?
Few months back Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs provided a peek at some of the new features coming to its iPhone 4 that is going to be available on June 15th.He presented some upcoming new features update to its iPhone operating system.
Among so many updates that caught my eyes is the ads in iPhone apps and the potential that it offers to any businesses-big or small including restaurants. It allows them to tap into this new media to advertise to the new mobile iPhone-iPod users. Iphone OS 4 will also give developers more tools for putting ads in iPhone apps.That means more developers will be building great apps to monetize. I’m sure there will be some apps that will also target restaurants. The iAd platform system presents a big potential mobile customers to your restaurant.
Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple in his own words says “Average iPhone user spends over 30 minutes a day running third-party apps. If you put an ad in every 3 minutes, you’d have 10 apps running during that 10-minute period per user. We will soon have shipped 100 million iPhones and iPod touches. That will happen sometime this summer. 100 million times 10 is a billion ads impressions per day from the iPhone and iPod Touch community.”
Think about this for a moment. 1 Billion ads impressions per day. That is huge. The question that remains to you is that if your restaurant business is ready to take advantage of this new platform that didn’t even exist few years ago. For get about Yellow Pages. No body looks at them now. For me, I haven’t seen them for years. When I get them on my door, they go direct to thrash. I’m sure you relate to this too as I presume you do the same. After all who wants to deal with that outdated yellow pages when you can get your information at a click of a mouse or push of a button on iPhone or other smart phones.
Though it’s just beginning, I believe this advertising model will be big in few years. You have a great adantage to dive into it right now when everything is fresh and virtually no one in your neighborhood is in it. I just wanted to share my thoughts where mobile marketing is heading and more importantly want you to be aware of the huge opportunity and plan accordingly from right now and reap the benefit.
Have you explored mobile marketing strategy for your restaurant? Have you tried to advertise your restaurant business on any any iPhone apps? I’d love hear your thought.
Last week on thursday I was invited to participate on a podcast-Facebook Forum hosted by Paul Barron.(Thanks Paul). It was an excellent discussion along with lots of fun. I was trying to find a quiet place. But the building that I was in had lot of echo. So I requested Paul to mute the line and open it during my turn to respond. I was waiting for my turn but that never came. I think Paul did not want to take the risk to include all those extra noise on the podcast. Any way, he has assured to get me into the next call, so hope I can share my thoughts live on a podcast next time.
On the Forum, there were awesome people - @Paulbarron @CarriBugbee @JeffreyJKingman @ARKfoodie discussing about social media.
They talked about Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Linkedin and many other topics. Most of the things that they discussed, I’m with them. So I don’t want to repeat the same thing. Instead I would recommend you to listen to the podcast. It’s full of ideas. Trust me there is tons of great content.
The one thing that I like to share my thoughts is on the recent changes that Facebook made and how it may affect restaurant business. Here you go….
For those who have not followed the recent changes that Facebook made, that they announced on F8 conference is that they are extending their reach on the entire web through new tools called “social plugins”. Simply what it means is that Facebook users like you and me can share our interest on any products or contents that we see on the web provided that websites have integrated the plugins. Yes, you can share what you like on the menu from your favorite restaurants too depending upon how you have set up your privacy settings.
Let’s take an example of a restaurant website which has integrated the social plugins ie “Like” button. When a customer clicks “like” button of any of his/her favorite dish while just surfing or ordering online the info about his/her action will feed through the profile page and their friends will have a chance to know what food they like. This is like “word of mouth” except it is done through clicks. It can be the best thing for your restaurants. It is in fact ” word of mouth” on Steroids as Gary Vaynerchuk likes to say.
What about privacy issue?
Yes there might be a privacy issue here. Some of the government officials and privacy groups are not happy about it. But as a restaurant business owner or marketing director you should not have a problem with this. I hope. It could have been the best thing ever for you especially the small business owners. With this tools and leveraging its power you have the ability to reach your customers virally. In less time you can gain more customers.
Those restaurants who will jump into it right away and start playing with it will have lot to gain from this new experiment. I hope you see these new changes at Facebook with opportunity and take advantage of it.
What do you think about the recent changes at Facebook and how it may affect restaurant business. I would love to hear your thoughts.
Over the past few years I have been closely watching the game played on the web. It’s interesting to watch the race especially between Google and Facebook.
Google has been there for over a decade now. They have been dominating the web since then. But the interesting thing that is happening right now is that Facebook is taking over the web. Facebook comes along in 2004. A baby in front of Google few years ago has grown so big so fast that Google is already starting to feel the heat. In fact Facebook is a threat to their dominance on the web. No wonder Google is scrambling to release product after product like Wave and Buzz just to counter defend themselves. I am not sure how effective they have been.
In the video Thomas Power of ecademy.com presents his insight about Facebook and the future.It is intriguing. I agree with him that Facebook will take over Google as a number one site on the web by this year 2010. He makes a prediction that Facebook might have a BILLION users by 2012. I wouldn’t be surprised if Facebook grows that big with the growth rate that I see at present. So for any businesses including restaurants it is the best time to get in and take advantage of the opportunity it offers.
They are so good at taking a simple concept and delivering it to the masses that it has become so popular and thus powerful force on the web. Just take an example of Fan Page. When it just got started it was static. Once they realized that it has to be more interactive, they made the status updates on Fan Page appear on personal profile page of the fan. Now look at all the businesses and may be even your restaurant has adopted Facebook simply because of this reason.
The biggest advantage that I see for your restaurant is the friend to friend recommendation of your restaurant on Facebook. We all know when we want to visit a new restaurant we tend to ask our friends for their recommendation. In a real life scenario you might be able to ask to a very few friends in person or on the phone. But the problem with this method is that recommendation is limited, as you can ask only few people. But with Facebook at a click you have an access to hundreds and even thousands of friends who might have recommendations for the restaurant that you are intending to visit. It would be like going to a restaurant review site like Yelp. But instead of reading review from random strangers you would be reading reviews from your own friends from your network. I’m sure you would trust your friends than the strangers recommendation. If Facebook buys Yelp or comes up with similar product then restaurants are winners here. Even the small restaurants with no brand name will have a chance to rise to the top just based on the good recommendations of your customers who are fans of your restaurant. So please treat your customers right and start gaining the great testimonials from now. Your restaurant will be far ahead when Facebook will integrate product something like that.
The race between Google and Facebook is not complete yet. It is still on. But as a restaurant entrepreneur I think you should be able to figure out who is going to be a winner and try to incorporate your present and future restaurant marketing based on that analysis.
So do you know who is going to be the winner. Who do you think is going to win the race?
As Thomas Power said that the winner of the race is the one with all the names. You know who has all the names now including your name and probably thousands of your customers name.
Your answer might give you a reason why your restaurant should really care about Facebook?
In the video Mark Sinclair talks about eCommerce future trends in US. In 2006 alone, $168 billion was spent and is expected to grow to $280 billion by 2011. When we talk about eCommerce we are not just talking about amazon.com or ebay.com but also restaurants that do business online. Pizza restaurants are famous for their online ordering.The transaction occurs on the web and now on mobile too with the rise of smart phones like iPhone. Have you cashed in some of those digital money?
If your answer is NO then it might be time to rethink about your restaurant business strategy. To really cash in online and on mobile one has to think of a new business model, get equipped with new set of online tools and learn new online marketing techniques.
Why Video?
Video is a trend that is getting popular with the rise of Youtube.Video is becoming an integral part of the business. The speed of the internet is getting faster and continues to do so.The technology has matured enough now that enables even a real time live video streaming. Why not create some sort of Chef Emeril kind of show?
Below are some of the reasons that I believe you should integrate video marketing.
More personal- When you use video, as a restaurant owner or chef you connect with your customers in a more personal way. Let’s face it when you have multiple restaurants there is no way you can possibly meet each and every customers. So in such a situation, you can leverage video by making personal message,sending greetings and thanking them for the business
Powerful Medium to sway your customer’s decision- Now a days we can access Youtube videos on iPhone and possibly in many other smart phones in the future. When you have your restaurant’s video displaying the dishes being prepared by the chef it becomes appealing to the customer on the road searching for your type of restaurant. Don’t you think you would have a better chance of swaying his or her decision to dine with you?
Indexed by Google-The video that you uploaded on Youtube, blog or Facebook Page would be indexed by Google. That means when people search online on Google, your restaurant’s video can be on the top search results.Since most of the people don’t bother to make video you have a chance to stand out in the crowd.
Recommendation
If you are interested then I would suggest you to get Kodak video recorder. Though in the past I have recommended Flip video recorder I have come to know from Pete Kane that Flip doesn’t have a strong mic to effectively record the voice. So give a try to Kodak video recorder. You can find them at Office Max or other similar Office supply stores near your city or town.
Why not record some videos of your main popular entrees showing your chef’s acrobatic skills ? You could also record a video tutorial of how to make the best salsa in the world. I’m just giving you an example. So when people are searching for recipe for salsa your site has a chance to be on the first to be discovered.
I think video is another powerful tool that helps your restaurant to be found by your potential new customers in the internet. What do you think about using video to market your restaurant? Do you think it is worth the time for restaurant owners or chefs to devote some time to create some videos and upload it online on sites like Youtube?
One of the most common question that comes out when we talk about social media with the restaurant owners is that “Why do I have to be on Facebook or Twitter or any other social media platforms?
Let me tell you one thing for sure that Social Media will change the way the restaurants do business now and in the future.No more can a restaurant afford to do business without leveraging social media if they want to survive and thrive in this new digital age.
I still remember when I wrote the first blog post about Facebook last year, there were only about 37 million people on Facebook in US and now after a year there is over 100 million people. More and more people are joining on Facebook, Twitter and many other social media network. As a business owner I’m sure you agree that you should go where your customers are. Right? Right now they are on Facebook and Twitter.
In the video the author Penny Power talks about New Entrepreneurs that are emerging now. She is absolutely right that there is this new breed of entrepreneurs who understand that business can be created inside the virtual world based on the value they create for their community.
If you look at the world of restaurant business then there are these new social media restaurant entrepreneurs that are emerging like @AJBombers , @KogiBBQ @CoffeeGroundz @NakedPizza You can follow them on Twitter to find more about them. They understand the power of social networks. They have created a community inside the virtual world of Facebook and Twitter to name just a few. They engage with them on a regular basis to make sure that their customers are taken care of and that they are happy. If any thing goes wrong with the service, product or anything they are right beside to help them out. They don’t wait 3-4 days for the complain letter to arrive via snail mail. Those days are gone. Now the same letter will be broad casted publicly in 140 characters or less on Twitter if they don’t act immediately. I hope you follow them on Twitter and Facebook to learn more about how they do business on Social Medial.
Word of Mouse Advertising
Word of Mouth Advertising comes only when you wow your customers. These new entrepreneurs understand the importance of exceptional service that goes beyond just serving food to the customers. They also understand the power of social media and would not hesitate to leverage it to create a viral effect of the ravings they get from their customers. I like to call it “Word of Mouse Advertising” powered by the clicks on the mouse. Restaurants are well know as a business where word of mouth advertising has been used for a long time. But now with the power of social media the advertising of your restaurant can go viral in less time if executed well.
New Business Model
“We will all win and not just I win.”
This is the new set of thought process of new restaurant entrepreneurs who are redefining the new business model. They believe that their customers deserve the quality service, respect and dignity. In order to achieve this they go an extra mile to WOW their customers. The customers pay them back with loyalty to their business and in return the entrepreneurs reach out to help their own community. In this case every one wins and not just one party.
Those who are ready to grasp this new set of rules in new era of Facebook and Twitter will rise up to dominate the restaurant market. Those who are not they are eventually going to be wiped out by their competitors who embrace the social media.
It is just a matter of time that “The new world will emerge from the ashes of the old world.”
Do you believe that Social Media will change the way restaurant does business now and in the future? I would appreciate your thoughts on Why Social Media is essential part of the success for restaurant business?
Though I am not the greatest fan of McDonald’s when it comes to the quality of the food, I have to admit that one thing I like about McDonald’s is that it has the best system of producing billions and billions of burgers at a great speed. It has such an efficient system that it enables them to expand quickly. No wonder we see McDonald’s every where.
One of the reasons that some small restaurants are not able to scale is that they don’t have a system in place. The business owner is the system. When the business owner is away from the store for some time then the business starts to fall apart or slow down.
So how do you know that there is a system in place in you restaurant business?
If your restaurant can run effectively and efficiently without your physical presence I know that your restaurant does have a system.
Watch the above video of McDonald’s which has the best system of delivering the burgers to those hungry customers with fast and quality service.Pay attention to the service provided to their customers beyond just the burgers. They go an extra mile to serve them that keeps them happy and make them come back again and again.
I’m sure we can learn something from the success of the McDonald’s.
It is a normal day during the week. Suddenly rain starts pouring right before the lunch hour.The restaurant should have been full during the lunch time. But it is not. The business is slow.Have you ever experienced that?
Weather does affect the restaurant business. Have you ever thought of any marketing strategy to attract those customers who might have decided not to come to your restaurant just because of the rain. Well, there might be an affordable solution for you.
I had a chance to see the video demo of the Blue Sky Local, a company that specializes in smart coupon marketing solution for the restaurants.They empower the restaurants to boost the customer traffic during the slow sales times especially when the weather condition is not so good. Thanks Matt Ackerson for the video. It was quick.
The main feature that I like about Blue Sky Local is that it is web based. Any restaurant owner or manager can do it online from any where. They have an access to dashboard where they can manage their customers. It is permission based which means that the mobile customers who have subscribed for the coupons will have to confirm to receive the coupons from your restaurant. The customers also have an option to unsubscribe by themselves if they choose to do so.
The other feature that I like is that the coupons have an option to be distributed via three different channels-email, text and twitter at the same time. This ensures that your mobile marketing campaign has a maximum effect.
If you are interested to check out this service you can find more information at their site http://www.blueskylocal.com
They even have a 30 days Free trial offer. So you got nothing to lose. Give it a try. If you think it is effective for your restaurant you can then upgrade it.
Once you try it and get some results please do share your thoughts with us about the service. If some one has already used it, I would appreciate your feedback so it would be helpful to other restaurant owners or managers to understand about the smart coupon marketing solution provided by Blue Sky Local. Thanks!
Few months ago I stumbled upon Food Spotting and it caught my attention because I knew that it had something unique to offer to restaurants and food lovers. Alexa Andrzejewski is the Founder & CEO of Foodspotting. She and her team were working on iPhone app then. So to keep up to date with their product release I had subscribed to their newsletter. I got their email about their iPhone app that is available now for any one to download for free. I thought of sharing with you too so that you get an idea where the future for Restaurants is heading.
I firmly believe that with the penetration of smart phones in US and worldwide the dynamics of marketing is changing. There are new platforms created for restaurants which didn’t exist even few years ago. Just take an example of this Food Spotting App. They just released it. Things are changing and my hope with this blog post is to make you aware of the changes that are coming. I would suggest you to see this new trends and prepare your business to adapt to the new changes that this smart phones like iPhone is bringing.May be you might not see the effect right away. But I believe that over the time services like Food Spotting will definitely change the way food lovers ( at least the iPhone users for now ) look for the food they crave.No more will this new breed of customers turn Yellow Pages to find restaurants.
Expect similar concept coming to restaurant industry especially when local location sharing is hot trend right now. What I am requesting is to keep your eyes and mind open to ideas. Just don’t discard it right away.
So what really is Food Spotting?
As stated on their site, “Foodspotting is a visual local guide that lets you find dishes instead of just restaurants. Powered by people who take pictures of their food for badges and recognition, Foodspotting makes finding good food easier by letting you see the foods around you”.
Watch the video of Foodspotting iPhone app demo by Alexa Andrzejewski, the Founder & CEO of Foodspotting and see for your self how it works and more importantly see how you can creatively market through these new kind of platforms which were not available few years ago.
I think it is cool way of being found by your potential customers on iPhone and may be later on other smart phones like Black Berry, Anroid and many others. What do you think?
Every restaurant entrepreneur has a dream to expand their business empire by adding more stores to their port folio. Most of the entrepreneurs start with a single unit restaurant. Gradually they add multiple stores into their business. This is when it starts getting tricky managing multiple stores. There is no way you can be in all the stores at the same time. Your time and focus is divided now. When you bought the second store and started devoting time and effort into the second store, the sales of the first store went down. Have you ever experienced that pain?
So as an entrepreneur I’m sure you must have thought about which business model to follow in order to avoid the problems in your ambition to expand your business empire to multiple stores.
After seeing so many restaurant brands and their business model I’ve seen one restaurant chain that I believe has set up a great business model that has proven successful. The restaurant chain that I’m talking about is Chick-Fil-A and their Profit Sharing business model.
Now let’s discuss how they do it?
Selected Chick-Fil-A employee or any chosen candidate pay only $5000 as an earnest money upfront and the rest of the money to construct the store is invested by Chick-Fil-A. The employee who is selected after several rigorous test operates the store empowered virtually as a owner of the restaurant. What ever profits they make out of the restaurant they share 50-50 percent. (Thanks Pete Kane for the comment on my previous blog post for their business model updates.)
Isn’t this deal attractive to a hard working motivated manager, operator or any restaurant entrepreneur who has a motivation, drive, determination to make it happen but doesn’t have money. Chick-Fil-A however controls the real estate which is their main business which in itself is another topic that can be another blog post in itself.May be I’ll save that one for one of the future post. But for now let’s focus on their restaurant business model based on profit sharing.
With this kind of business arrangement like of Chick-fil-A restaurants, you have a great opportunity to solve your core problem of growth and expansion.
Even if you are a single restaurant owner or with few restaurants in your portfolio, I believe this is a great business model especially if you want to get away from day to day operational headaches and focus your most of the energy in high leverage investment opportunities. Why not come up with similar profit sharing business model and hand over all the operations to the best capable employee which in your case would be a manager or some one you know very well and trust. You are confident that they can run your restaurant effectively and efficiently than you. The key is to leverage other people’s time and expertise and in return also rewarding them for their hard work. This is a WIN-WIN situation for both the party. For the person operating the store who gets to keep certain percentage (you can negotiate ranging from 10-50%) but make sure it is high enough to attract and retain them for a longer period. With this strategy you are aiming for multiple stores, so I hope you keep that in mind while you are negotiating with the eligible candidate. Your focus here is trying to get more and more stores without having to spent a whole amount of time baby sitting the manager/operator or who ever is running the store.
I saw an interview of Warren Buffet on a television. When he buys a company, he selects the best possible CEO for the company. He said that he doesn’t waste time doing all those kind of long meetings and conferences. He meets the CEO one time, hands over the key and bid a goodbye and says that he is gonna meet him next year.
The reason I bring up this is that to grow big one should have that kind of mindset. Like Warren Buffet once you select your best possible manager or operator that you trust and have confidence on, you just have to hand over the driving seat to him or her and move on to another one in search of another potential restaurant.Unlike Warren Buffet who meets with his CEO in one year, may be you will have to meet with your operator/manager on a regular basis to support them.The point is that you will not have to wander from store to store just to make sure your business is doing ok.
This is just my thought on this profit sharing business model that I think is great for any restaurant business entrepreneurs. What do you think about this kind of business arrangement? Would love to hear your thoughts. If you have some other business model that you think is good and is successful in restaurant industry, I would love to hear from you. Thanks.
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