This WaiterBell blog will become active again in April 2007, and we will be folding TechWaiterBell and TeamWaiterBell into this blog.
We will relaunch marketing for our product. Thank you for stopping by, we hope to have useful restaurant content for all visitors.
Thanks,
Randy
Head WaiterBell
excerpt:
“Who among us hasn’t had an unpleasant dining experience thanks to a rude waiter, lousy food and bad service? From the telephone to the table, customer service is defined by anticipating the demands of customers, and these days, customers are demanding more; specifically in the way of service, and service starts as soon as the guest walks through the door.The old adage, “You never get a second chance to make a good first impression” still holds true today, especially in the hospitality industry, and equally important is the guest’s lasting impression.
“If we don’t take care of our customers, our competition will,” said Annie Kang-Drachen, Director of Sales and Marketing at the Department of Food & Beverage Management, UNLV William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration.”
source: “Customer Service Or The Lack There Of” by Kate Mazzarella-Minshall (Foodservice.com)
excerpt:
“Google Inc. will offer printable discount coupons to local shoppers, in a promotional bid that aims to drive U.S. online shoppers using its Google Maps service to visit stores, the company said.The world’s top Web search supplier is taking advantage of the marketing tool, which is traditionally used by small businesses, to entice U.S. consumers to seek out savings from local retailers such as dry cleaners, pizza delivery restaurants and auto repair shops.
Google has partnered with Valpak, the top U.S. supplier of coupon advertising, to provide more than 20,000 coupons from current Valpak advertisers when consumers search for relevant stores using its Google Maps map and local directory service…”
source: “Google Maps offers discount coupons for US stores” by Eric Auchard (Reuters, Aug.14,2006)
excerpt:
“The grosser a dish sounds the better. That’s the philosophy some chefs are adopting when coming up with names for dishes on their menu. From Kitchen Sink Chopped Salad to Debris Sandwich, chefs are giving food a bad name. Luckily, they’ve been able to convince customers the dishes taste better than they sound, and for many, the marketing gimmick has paid off.San Pedro chef/co-owner Michael Goodman created the Fat Boy Man Salad at home a few years ago, when he wanted to eat more nutritiously. His vegetarian creation consisted of baby field greens, carrots, grape tomatoes, beets and green beans. It tasted terrific, but Goodman found it wasn’t enough to satisfy his hunger. Soon, he began super-sizing it.
“It was obnoxiously large,” says Goodman. “People started calling it the Fat Boy Man Salad.”
excerpt:
“He watches The Food Network religiously, cooks dinner for himself and his wife, Janet, at least four times a week, and said he’s more than comfortable working in the kitchen, even when it isn’t his own. He also has worked with local chefs at area restaurants more than a dozen times.So it’s no surprise that he leapt at the chance to be among the first to participate in a “Chef for a Day” program at The Seelbach Hilton Hotel’s Oakroom restaurant when the program was launched a couple of years ago.
“To be shoulder to shoulder with a group of professional people and keeping up with them doing exactly what they were doing and to feel a part of that — that was amazing,” Frick said…”
News
08/14/2006
Web helps find good eateries in Stockton (Stockton Record)
08/12/06
Put a quarter in the iPod Digital jukebox tunes in on younger crowd (The Wichita Eagle)
08/11/2006
Small Firms Adopting Wireless Technology (Black Enterprise)
08/09/2006
Start-up puts new twist on dinner-movie nights (Orlando Sentinel)
08/08/2006
Fast-casual restaurants draw customers with e-mail (Fast Casual)
Press Release
08/14/2006
MyPrint Corporation Launches Local Restaurant Marketing Portal for IHOP Corp. (MarketWire)
08/11/2006
Impart Announces First Installation in Revolutionary Menu Boards Application for Self-Service Food Industry (PRNewswire)
08/10/2006
Clicking For Food – Pizza Franchise Reaps the Benefits of New Online Ordering System (DBusinessNews)
08/07/2006
Wendy’s of Michigan Slashes Overhead with Software Switch (PRWeb)
Blog
08/07/2006
Restaurant Hand Held Terminals – An Overview (The Wizard of POS)
excerpt:
“The thought of price increases causes anxiety for many operators. But clever pricing is a great opportunity to practise your marketing skills, build your reputation and increase your profits.When inflation was high, price rises were almost a sport – now they’ve become an agonising debate. One thing’s for sure – you live by price and you die by price. Operators still holding the price of meals to what they were 12 months ago are bearing the brunt of massive increases in the cost of fuel and ingredients. Profitability is suffering.
So how do you put up prices with confidence and style?”
source: “How to increase your prices” (ProfitableHospitality.com, Aug.2006) [public access til Aug.19th]
excerpt:
“Being a regular earns you a lot of benefits for only a few conscious behaviors, mostly just good manners. Visit frequently, follow these tips, and within a short amount of time, you’re in.Wikipedia describes a regular as…
A person who appears often at a certain location and may know others who are also there often, whether out of want or occupation. For example, a regular can be one who goes to a certain coffee shop everyday, so often that the employees know him or her…”
source: “How to Become a Regular” by Greg Cerveny (urban monarch, Jul.31,2006)
excerpt:
“…Workers at some outdoor cafes say they recently have had some suspicious customers, such as people who ask to be seated and then disappear moments later. Not long after, a customer will complain of a missing purse.Meanwhile, alarmed customers have been finding creative ways to tether their bags to their bodies, wrapping straps from the bag around their legs, a chair, or underneath a high heel. Some restaurants have been supplying hooks under the table for bags to be hung.
“…Some of the restaurants on Newbury and Boylston, they are seemingly friendly and feel like the suburbs; people forget this is a city,” she said. “Sadly, the very people you wish would have a good experience in Boston are the ones losing their purses and wallets.”
source: “Purse snatchings hit cafes” by Matt Viser (Boston Globe, Aug.15,2006)
excerpt:
“Customer service has eroded over the past decade for a variety of reasons — low wages, lack of training, exponential growth, to name a few. Few companies have the blend of corporate culture, training and opportunities for advancement that makes employees surpass expectations……In the restaurant business, quality is difficult to gauge because most customers don’t complain — they simply go elsewhere. To amp up its service, Furio began a day-after-dining program to gauge customer satisfaction: The Scottsdale restaurant picks diners at random from the reservation book and contacts them about their experience.
“We look at every single comment,” says Stephanie Eglin, director of marketing for Anthem Restaurants, which owns Furio. “When somebody gives negative feedback, the owner himself makes the call if he’s able to. This type of endeavor is not costly, and we’re able to gain a lot of valuable feedback…”
source: “Customer service with a snarl” by Marija Potkonjak (East Valley Tribune, Aug.14,2006)
WaiterBell Blog: In the Restaurant Customer Service Business 