Tweet Beat 10/8/2014

Quick hits from articles seen on Twitter that may only interest me:

Inside the fierce battle for fast-food customers - Traffic counts in Casual Dining and Fast

Casual restaurants coming out of the recession are down, and the cost of food along with energy and healthcare is up. How are those companies going to provide shareholder value? It looks like through massive discounting campaigns to drive traffic counts.

 Surge Pricing is not Price Gouging - An interesting concept - applying the Uber model to restaurant pricing. With the advent of table top tablets and digital menu boards, the ability to shift pricing according to demand will soon be easy and widely available. Can this be used to a restaurant's advantage to drive traffic during off peak times?

UMaine's quiet approach to waste reduction - As a company that recently enacted zero sort recycling, the next step is composting of food waste. Kudos to UMaine dining for a great start to a program that will hopefully be something we can make happen soon.

Wal-Mart raises healthcare costs, cuts benefits for some part-timers - Get ready, folks. The full effect of the Affordable Care Act will be upon us in the next few months as companies get ready for 2015. The cost to businesses to provide "affordable" health plans will be enormous. Shareholders will demand that these costs be passed on to consumers through price increases, or demand that businesses do more to lesson their exposure to fines, and they will do so by employing more part time workers.

Why should YOU go to RIS 2014?

On October 27 I am heading to Atlanta for the second annual Restaurant Innovation Summit. The summer is hosted by the National Restaurant Association and has lots of great sponsors. I've been lucky to be involved with the advisory committee for the summit through our director of operation's affiliation with the National Restaurant Association board.  This is a great opportunity for me to network with some of the professionals at the National Restaurant Association, along with fellow marketing and IT professionals in restaurant companies around the country.

If you're a restaurant professional why should YOU go? The best reason is the networking. This is the best place for a restaurant professional involved in marketing or information-technology to be able to network with like-minded professionals in the country. Representatives from brands such as Dunkin' Donuts, Wendy's, White Castle, and several other international brands along with a lot of regional brands will be in attendance.  As someone from a small regional company, it puts me in touch with companies that are way ahead of what we are able to do. It also allows me to build a sounding board of people to get ideas and feedback from.

For me the second reason that I'm going to this conference is the education.  The goal of the conference is to educate hospitality professionals about emerging trends and recent innovation and technology. As a one-man IT staff, this really helps me keep abreast of technologies that our company should be looking at in pursuing. The biggest technology right now that I believe industries looking at is mobile payments, and a good portion of this conference will be focused on mobile payments in the restaurant industry.

Another reason why I'm going is just the opportunity to get out of the office and see restaurants in a different area of the country. Last year the conference was in Denver, and it was really cool to be able to see some of the restaurant concepts in that area and what they're doing and get ideas from them. It's no secret in this industry that when you see a good idea another companies doing you copy it. I'm excited to go to Atlanta this year and be able to visit different concepts in the area see what you're doing and get some ideas that I can bring back.

If you are interested in attending the 2014 Restaurant Innovation Summit, click here for more information: http://www.restaurant.org/Events-Networking/Events/Restaurant_Innovation_Summit/Overview

Being a Leader without being "In-Charge"

In our company we talk a lot about leadership versus management all the time.  The primary difference is that a leader inspires others to do great things and deliver exceptional customer service while a manager simply organizes, directs, and evaluates systems. I think most of our managers and team members infected with our corporate culture understand this concept but it's a difficult one for people that don't understand our culture and the workforce in general to understand. How can I be a leader if I'm not in charge of the organization? How do I teach someone to be a leader, and is that even possible?  Well, here are a couple of my thoughts.

1) How can I be a leader but not the manager?

It's very easy to be a leader and not be the manager.  We see this all the time in sports.  Successful teams talk about strong leadership while bad ones talk about a lack of leadership.  You're either a positive leader, a negative leader, or a follower of one of these two.  Successful organizations will have a more positive leaders and followers than negative ones and vice versa.  If you truly care about the organization and the mission it wants to fulfil, then you can choose to be a positive leader.  It's as simple as that.  You don't have to manage the day to day operations per se, but you should be helping those who do, and guiding other followers in a positive direction.  This may be through constructive criticism, positive re-enforcement of behavior, or being a leader by example.

On the other hand, you can be a negative leader very easily.  Pushing against the mission of the organization and leading others in that direction simply hurts the entire organization.  If this is the case, they why stay?  Maybe it's time for you to move on to an organization that you can lead or follow in a positive direction.

2) How can I teach someone to become a leader?

 

I believe that leadership can be learned, but it takes desire on the part of the person that wants to become a leader.  In my experience the best way to learn leadership is to experience a mentor/mentee relationship.  The role of the mentor is to teach their mentee to See, Say, and Sow.

 

See: When I think of leadership, I think of vision.  But being a leader doesn't mean that you have to have a grand vision of where an organization is heading.  It can mean that you can see where the shift you are working right now should go, and make your best effort to move it in that direction.  Maybe you see that a teammate is struggling in their job and you have the time to help them.  Then you can...

 

Say:  The role of the leader by example is great, but I believe that great leaders can communicate their vision to others and inspire them to follow.  When you see a teammate in need, you need to let them know that you are their to help them, and why it is beneficial for you to do so.  It's all about the approach you take in making this communication successful. 

 

Sow: Many hands make light work, right?  So if an organization has more positive leaders, then the organization functions on a higher level towards fulfilling the mission.  So leaders need to inspire more people to be positive leaders.  This is where the difference between management and leadership is most evident in my opinion.  It shouldn't matter to a leader if they are in charge. A leader should want others to help carry the burden.

 

Does your organization have leadership on all levels pulling in the right direction?  

 

Building a Brick & Mortar Brand in the Digital Age.

I had the opportunity to attend the Agents of Change digital marketing conference last week in Portland, Maine. This is the second time that I've been able to attend this conference, and every time I come out of a conference like this my to do list grows exponentially. It's a huge inspiration to see what people are doing in different digital marketing spaces and I love to try to apply as much as I can to my personal and professional life. Of course, in the past everybody has been talking about how blogging is a must do and that hasn't really changed. But now the attention is moving more towards podcasting and other types of digital media, because EVERYONE is already Blogging!  So it's time for me to consistently blog.  Technology is making is so easy that I actually used the Evernote app on my iPhone to record the first draft of this entry while I was driving (Hands-Free, of course!)

One of the things that I struggle with as a Restaurant Marketing director is applying things I learn at an event focused on businesses that sell  products P2P or B2B online is applying some of the lessons learned to a traditional brick and mortar business.  So the day after the conference I drove to Ellsworth as it is Autumn Gold Festival weekend and every year our restaurant Participates in the local Chowder Festival. Of course this is a great opportunity for our brand to reach out to new guests and that's really how we look at it. Last year when the local restaurants actually accused us of cheating.  Of course we would never try to do something like that, but you could always look at the old adage if you're not cheating you're not trying? Our goal is to raise awareness of our brand with potential new customers and our loyal guests. So to do that we bring as many options with us as we can for customers who may or may not like one particular soup, including cookies and dinner rolls.  And again this year, we were lucky enough to win the judges choice for best suit. It's nice that we won, but we really aren't there to win.

Our main goal is to reach out to customers that we don't see on a regular basis or at all. The lesson there is sometimes you have to go outside your full walls and do events like this to be able to reach out to your customers and people similar to your customers.   It's really how small businesses with little or no advertising budgets are using social media.  You HAVE to grab those opportunities that present themselves in real life.  How many times do you see a situation where your lined upside-by-side with your competition and have the ability to prove to your customers that they should give you a chance? The reality is that a brick and mortar business needs to blend social media and face to face marketing to survive in today's economy.  Do one and not the other?  You're setting your self up for failure.

Got a comment?  I want to know what you think!  Follow me on Twitter @therealjclay or leave a comment below.