KIDS REACT TO WALKMANS (Portable Cassette Players)

How Things Have Changed (sigh)

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Five Online Ordering Trends in the Restaurant Industry

Online ordering systems are growing in popularity amongst both restaurants and consumers. They have been associated with increased revenue, improved capacity management, improved productivity, improved transactional marketing, and customer relationship management. While they increase ROI and customer loyalty for restaurants, they also offer consumers an easy, convenient way to order their food. Here are five trends within the usage of these innovative systems as interpreted from the 2011 Cornell Hospitality Report, The Current State of Online Food Ordering in the U.S. Restaurant Industry:

1.Consumers of pizza restaurants, followed by sandwich places, Mexican restaurants, and Asian restaurants, most frequently use online ordering systems. Restaurants that have a specific type of food on their menu most frequently implement online ordering systems. Their menus are more defined, not overwhelming customers when they go to order online.

 2.The usage of online ordering by consumers was most prevalent in fast-casual restaurants, followed by casual restaurants and quick-service restaurants. Restaurants that are known for their quick service as opposed to a leisurely sit down meal tend to use online ordering systems more. The fast service and ease of online ordering matches the service a customer would receive at a more casual restaurant.

3.The most common reasons customers use online ordering systems are for convenience, speed, order accuracy, ease of use, and credit card acceptance. Having a quick and easy way for customers to place orders drives them to order more from you, especially when they can do it from the comfort of their home!

4.Online ordering generates incremental revenue by increasing order frequency for takeout, delivery, and catering and increasing order volume and service. Restaurants using online ordering systems reported receiving more frequent orders and increases in group and catering orders due to the ease and convenience of placing an order online.

5. Online promotions associated with online ordering work better than regular promotions.Online ordering can provide restaurant operations with key customer information that can be used to develop targeted customer promotion strategies. Catering to your costumers makes their experience more personal and keeps them coming back to your restaurant!5.     Online promotions associated with online ordering work better than regular promotions.Online ordering can provide restaurant operations with key customer information that can be used to develop targeted customer promotion strategies. Catering to your costumers makes their experience more personal and keeps them coming back to your restaurant!

Online ordering systems are useful for both restaurants and consumers. They increase the amount of orders and revenue for restaurant while simultaneously making it quick, easy, and convenient for your customers to order food from your establishment. With online ordering, everybody benefits!

(For more related articles please go to www.menudrive.com)

By: Ashley Davis
MenuDrive
www.menudrive.com

Photo by Trinichow.com

Talk About Being "Grubby" or "Greedy?" ~ GrubHub Wants Restaurants To 'Pay Up'

GrubHub Wants Restaurants To 'Pay Up' For Better Placement 

By 312Dining Diva

Popular online takeout service GrubHub (which acquired takeout biz Seamless in 2013) filed to go public in February, which means a bunch of changes are on the way to make the company more profitable to investors.

According to a Chicago bar/restaurant owner, one of those changes includes "demanding money from restaurants to get better placement (on the website)."

That sounds a little Yelp-ish to me. I use GrubHub on the regular, and when I'm feeling especially lazy, I type in "burgers," "pizza," etc. to conduct a search to see what restaurants come up. Once all the results appear, you can organize choices by "the best (or highly rated)," "cheapest" or "closest." If you look closely, the restaurants are NOT listed in alphabetical order, so those paying for placement will always be prominently displayed.

Here is the note my contact received:

College Cuisine

by: Steve Wilcott Going to college is a grand experience. It's the first time many young adults get the chance to begin taking care of themselves, no matter what the consequences. One of the main things that worries parents when their child heads out into the world of college is, of course, their diet. What are they going to eat if the cafeteria closes too early? What if they don't like the cafeteria food? What if they didn't even sign up for cafeteria meals? Parents needn't worry. College students today have developed their own underworld of cuisine, involving quite the array of foods, time-tested by students in the past, and catered specifically to college needs by clever manufacturers. The main staple of dorm life these days is, of course, the microwave. College students take microwave food to a whole new level. The smell of microwave popcorn is right at home in a dorm, even at 3 am. I had a roommate at college who ate microwave popcorn for breakfast. Quick, easy, cheap and filling- what more could you ask for?

Online Reviews? Keep This in Mind

By KIM SEVERSON 

APRIL 1, 2014


The size and racial makeup of a city, the price of a meal and even the weather can skew the quality and quantity of online restaurant reviews, according to the first large-scale academic study to analyze how outside factors affect crowd-sourced review sites.

The study, which will be released Wednesday, used computer models to examine nearly 1.1 million reviews of 840,000 restaurants over nearly a decade.

Online reviewers posted most often in July and August, researchers said, but those reviews were more likely to be negative. And regardless of season, if the weather was uncomfortable, all the worse for the chef. The most negative reviews were written when it was colder than 40 degrees or warmer than 100 degrees, or if it was raining or snowing.

The researchers, Saeideh Bakhshi, a doctoral student at the Georgia Institute of Technology; her husband, Partha Kanuparthy, who works for Yahoo Labs; and Eric Gilbert, an assistant professor at the university, said the weather’s seeming sway over reviews surprised them the most.

They also found that some regions of the country were more prolific in their online reviewing habits than others. Restaurants in the Northeast and on the West Coast were reviewed more than those in the South or the Midwest.

Predictably, urban areas with a higher level of education and income tended to participate in online review sites more often.

Among the other findings: People who waited a long time for a table in busy cities were more forgiving than those who waited in smaller communities. And sushi restaurants were consistently rated higher than hamburger places, the researchers said, showing that ambience and a higher meal cost could produce better reviews.

“That speaks to the perception of price,” Ms. Bakhshi said. “Places that have nice ambience and are listed as romantic or trendy or more expensive, the rating is higher.”


The couple came up with the idea for the study when they were in Seattle. They noticed that Seattle reviewers seemed to give fewer stars to similar restaurants than reviewers in Atlanta.

Certainly, the respective palates of each city could be a factor, but the couple thought there might be a way to measure other differences. So they created analytic computer models based on data from several sites, including TripAdvisor, Foursquare and Citysearch.

Healthy Eating Tips For Work at Homers and Telecommuters

Healthy Eating Tips For Work at Homers and Telecommuters
By Cathy A Lindsay
It can be hard to eat healthy foods when there is a McDonald's or an Arby's on every street corner. It can be even more difficult for those who work from home. Telecommuters have flexible hours, unpredictable work schedules, and do not always have the time to make the best food. So it is understandable why so many work-at-homers are interested in fast, easy ways to make delicious, nutritious, and healthy foods. There are a few different strategies that the work at homer and the telecommuter can employ to make sure that he/she has lots of easy, healthy foods on hand.
The first step to getting healthy is purging your environment of all things unhealthy. This includes just about anything that is fried, dunked, dipped, or battered, everything that uses high-fructose corn syrup, and the Itos food group (Fritos, Doritos, Cheetos, etc.). It is easy to leave these foods stashed in convenient places around the house, especially in and around the work area. It has all got to go. Everything. It might hurt a little at first, but nothing kills junk food cravings like giving up junk food.

Now that all of the unhealthy food has been trashed, it is time to restock the pantry. Fresh foods are the staple of any healthy diet. Normally, fresh foods line the perimeter of a grocery store, with offerings such as fruits and veggies, fresh meat, cheese, milk, eggs, and the like. This is where the majority of shopping time and resources should be spent. Fresh food has more vitamins, nutrients, and flavor, and is also digested and processed much more easily than processed or packaged foods. Journeys to the center aisles of the store should be limited, and items should be listed to avoid being lured by the bright packaging and empty promises of the happiness characteristic of today's food marketing. The best foods found in the center aisles include brown rice and flour, beans and nuts, and certain canned foods (ones not too high in sodium). (A word on brown Vs. white foods: Any time a food like rice or flour is offered in brown and white, it is because one has been "enriched" or "processed". "Enriched" and white together mean bleached. If you would never drink laundry supplies, please avoid white flour and rice.)
Okay, so now that the pantry is chock full of delicious, healthy foods, it is time to eat! But who has time to cook a full meal, three times a day?! Not somebody who has a flexible or unpredictable schedule. A good way to provide some structure to a new eating routine is to cook in bulk. One day a week, make three oversized entrees. That way all the leftovers can be individually frozen, reheated, and eaten on the spur of the moment. Replacing the old snack foods for something natural, with lots of complex carbs like carrots or beans is a fast track for healthy success. These new strategies should help reduce the desire to default back to the -Itos food group, and help maintain a new happy and healthy lifestyle.
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