Two Sites Worth Reading: HACCP and Putting Small Farms on Internet

Hi everyone! I hope this Monday has gotten off to a good start for you.

I came across two interesting items today on the Internet that I really think are worth passing along to you restaurant owners and managers.

The first is the main meal. It deals with an important subject: FOOD SAFETY.

Food safety is key to the success of any restaurant for the sheer reason that if your food isn't safe people get sick, you lose customers, and then someone closes your doors.

Here's the article title and link:

HACCP - What is it and how can it Help My Restaurant?

by Malcolm J. Richmond

Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points or HACCP is a preventive approach to food safety that aims to prevent hazardous effects to consumers by identifying potential food safety hazards in all food industries and applying certain actions known as Critical Control Points to reduce and eliminate threats to the health of consumers.

HACCP started in the 1960s when the United States’ NASA needed to make sure that their astronauts would not become sick from the foods they carried into space. The company Pillsbury was chosen to prepare the food for NASA’s space flights because the stringent production systems they used helped to ensure the safety of their foods. They also invented the acronym HACCP.

Click over to read the rest. It's worth your time.

This second link is more the desert of today's meal. It's an idea that's just finding some traction and I think could have a very good possibility of taking off and helping local restaurants to buy from local farmers in a more efficient means.

Can Putting Farmers Online Make Food Biz More Sustainable?

Jennifer Kho

The idea of buying food from a local farm might seem like the very opposite of high tech. But FarmsReach, a California startup that won the audience choice award at our Green:Net conference this week, hopes to make it easier to buy directly from farms by putting produce online.

The company has developed a web marketplace to make it easier for buyers — such as restaurants, hospitals and schools — to order produce from nearby farmers, and for farmers to manage their sales and deliveries. Farmers list the produce they have for sale on the site, and buyers can search for the fruits and vegetables they want and place orders, either picking them up at nearby farmer’s markets or having them delivered.

Follow the link above for the rest of the post. It really sounds like a viable idea if they could work through the means to input inventories. Small farms are one of the fast growing (pun unintended) sectors in the USA from what I've been hearing lately.

As always, remember that if you are a hard working restaurant owner or manager to check us out at SellMoreMeals.com for how we can help you increase your business and double your referrals. The first 14 days are free so that you can try us out.

Until next time.

I'm Twitter

Hey Everyone,

Twitter is a great place to meet people with similar tastes and passions in life. It's also a great place to connect with customers.

If you're not using it, why not? As a business owner you really should be.

I am and you can follow me at this link:

http://twitter.com/sellmoremeals

I try to post news and info that helps you in your business and daily life.

And don't forget to check out our website SellMoreMeals.com for a way that we can help you market effectively to your customers and build a great relationship with them.

You can try out the service for free for the first 14 days.

Example of How Every Touch Counts in the Restaurant Business.

I ran across a rather intriguing blog post the other day that details the amazing power of the wonderful Internet social mediums like Facebook and Twitter.

The post is focused on an event that took place in a hotel restaurant and it is so important for owners and managers to see because it's a great example of the power in the Internet.

Here's a snippet:

A customer waiting for attention from the waiter instead decides to update his Facebook Status with the message that “I’m in The Mill Pub and can’t get service. Hate that”. This message then becomes visible to the customer’s network of hundreds or thousands of friends. Could this have a negative effect on perception and even on bookings? Potentially.

A similar incident became widely publicized in the US recently when the high profile wine blogger and internet celebrity Gary Vaynerchuk when he attended a recent conference in Miami. His poor experience in a high profile hotel affected him so much he video blogged about it, as did a few other high profile internet folks with the result that hundreds of thousands of people learned of their experience within 24 hours. The results were huge and the hotel went into fire-fighting mode to try and offset the negative publicity.

The bad publicity lost the hotel a lot of key business.

It's a great example of the need of business owners and managers to treat every customer like they are their only customer. Is it easy? Good grief, no! But it is necessary to succeed in this current economic climate where we must do everything we can within reason to keep our loyal customers and and make new ones. Great food at a great price will bring people in! But a great personal experience will hook them and goes miles in keeping them coming back.

It's also a great example of just how powerful this new medium is today and as business people we need to be actively involved in using the power of the Internet to connect with our customers and make new ones.

That's what we at SellMoreMeals.com are committed to doing with our spa marketing program for you. We can help you connect on the Internet with your loyal customers and others in your area with a cost effective program that will increase your business by 15-20% and help double your referrals. Your customers will love it.

Management Tips for Restaurant Owners from a Cartoonist.

In doing some research today on a totally different subject I stumbled open a blog post that I think contains some gems when it comes to advice on managing a restaurant.

And perhaps the strangest thing is it came from a cartoonist. A rather well known cartoonist. Scott Adams of Dilbert fame.

Apparently he owns a restaurant.

Stacey's at Waterford: www.eatatstaceys.com

His blog is rather humorous - go figure - but this particular one has quite the gem of a management style list

You can check it out here: Management by Cartooning

Here's the first few of the list:

The principles I tried to establish with the staff early on, that seemed to have stuck, include these:

1. Have fun. Loosen up.
2. Try something new. Often. Keep whatever works.
3. No penalty for a new idea failing. Trying is the thing.
4. Employees are more important than customers.

There's five more in the list. So be sure to go check them out. His restaurant is running great business is up.

I think that the key to this list, hidden in it, is that it builds loyal customers. When the staff is having fun the customers are having fun. Loyal customers are gained and they come back again and again because the restaurant becomes the place away from the stress of the day and they get rewarded there for their patronage.

Let me know what you think about his list. I'm curious to know.

With loyal patronage in mind, let me point you restaurant owners and managers at our marketing program that will help you build upon those loyal customers, reward them, and gain more in your local area.

SellMoreMeals.com

Time are tough, but you can find opportunity

The times are difficult but as a restaurant owner you already know how 
to take advantage of opportunities when they come. You just need to 
remember to do so and not to get complacent. 

Tough times like these shakes up that complacency. 

At www.SellMoreMeals.com we help you take advantage of technology to 
maximize your dollars in an effective marketing and customer referral 
program. It's cost effective and builds customer loyalty while getting 
those loyal customers to help you in gaining new customers. 

Check out our video on our website for more information 

http://www.sellmoremeals.com/