Join who @dbrandcamp calls one of the most influential restaurant leaders on twitter. Inside Hospitality. @ihospitality

While daylight savings time is forcing time changes across the United States, your restaurant reputation may be at stake. In reality, daylight savings time is NOT an obstacle to success. The real challenge is Mother Nature and you may even be able to “blame the sun” should your restaurant reputation begin to slide. Daylight savings time around the world:

The cycle is not new but as the seasons change each year, restaurant managers are slow to react. You would think it was the first time daylight savings time went to effect and it is a total surprise that the sun dissappears over the horizon after 5 pm.

While restaurants have tools such as GuestPulse which monitor their reputations online, it is a good time to be proactive vs. reactive. It can be the small things that will have people chatting.

A proactive approach can seem like quicksand as the daily pressures of restaurant operations can be
distracting. A simple fix includes marking the calendar each week to compare last year restaurant sales vs. sales projections. This just may save the reputation of a restaurant. It is very important to review the sales pattern throughout the day. Everyone knows this is an issue of importance and “old news” is the response. Nonetheless, many will wait or forget. This makes the guest and the the staff pay the price, which turns into lower sales and higher costs for the business.

Here is a reminder for about the 30th year in a row.

• People eat dinner later.

The extended daylight hours will have people delaying their meals. Maybe they forget to eat?

• Outdoors becomes more popular.

• More will be searching online for these keywords: “outdoor seating”, “restaurants with views”, “waterfront restaurant”, “restaurants on the beach”.

• Staffing? If this expands the dining area, will more staff be needed?

• Has the exterior been painted, cleansed, scrubbed, and repaired?

Peak times are less dramatic and stretch out longer. In the winter people dine during a more compact time period. As the season brings longer daylight hours, the peak period for business does not have a wave but instead the guests arrive over a longer period of time.

• For the less experienced, it means that during winter more hands (staff) are needed to take care of the crowd in a narrow time period and they are problaby working shorter hours. In the middle of summer, the number of hands (staff) needed is less during peak time but they are working longer periods.

This issue alone might lead to guests venting through social media and restaurant review sites to warn others that your restaurant is “understaffed and not prepared”.

• Morale of the team can be impacted. Everyone gets a bit of spring fever. Since meal times are extended, the restaurant manager may say: “Do me a favor? Can you stay an extra hour?” After the 2nd or 3rd request, the answer becomes, “Sorry boss. I have to go home and wash my hair.” A lack of analysis and preparation impacts the usual great level of execution.

• There is pressure by the restaurant managers: “Cut labor costs. Why is labor so high?” Typically, the staff punched on the clock by 5 pm to accommodate winter peak meal times; however, spring and summer may have the staff wandering and waiting for guests who will not arrive for another hour. The temptation for the restaurant managers to say: “Why don’t you go ahead and wait until you punch in?” will have human resources shuddering in their boots and can potentially motivate unhappy staff to make a call to the labor board.

These may also become the same staff who are asked to stay late because of “unexpected business.”

GuestPulse will show a flurry of activity as guests share with others about their worst experiences. Even the best managers can be caught with the winter to spring adjustments.

The seasonal changes are so gradual that very few even notice. A reputation depends on hundreds
of little details. Bugs, air-conditioning, brown grass, ice-cream, cold drinks and salads must also be
considered. Sure, the more flimsy clothing worn by staff might have them missing socks and wearing sandals.

Those sitting in an office who watch the reports may see the sales numbers slide and profits dwindle. If they also monitor the remarks left in the social media world and restaurant review sites, the grumbles would make it obvious that the restaurant manager did not adjust the schedule and team to the new season. P&L watchers may be able to identify the what but not always the why.

Every year there is a new adjustment to the weather and daylight hours. Make it an opportunity to
improve the reputation vs. become a victim of poor planning.

Summary:
-Always be interviewing.
-Use a Spring Transition Checklist.
-Listen carefully to the team as they adjust.
-Watch GuestPulse results with a passion as the sun and season changes the patterns of guests.
-Review sales patterns from last year to anticipate the future.
-Be happy to see the sun….

Michael Hartzell – Inbound Marketing Certified Professional, entrepreneur, writer, speaker, restaurant marketing coach. Member of the American Marketing Association. Read more at
www.michaelhartzell.com/restaurant-marketing

Our good friends up north at @AjBombers put together a pretty great read that we wanted to pass along to our readers that really breaks down Foursquare.

Nice job guys !

Sometimes it won’t make sense to send so many of your employees to an off-site training event. We totally understand and agree. But that shouldn’t prohibit you from providing your people with great information and great training.

So forget about all that travel, airplane, hotel expenses, as well as having so many away from their offices and teams and business responsibilities, have us come to you instead.

This is the most economical means of injecting powerful content into your ongoing staff training program. We can bring our Social Media Marketing Bootcamp content to your group or organization for a lot less than it costs to send everyone to our closest event.

We can also customize the content to fit your existing marketing and social media strategy and can further customize it to include any option(s) you need in order to achieve your education or training goals.

Contact us for additional information.

Joe Land (Customer): I went to 333 for the first time in May. Obviously I was wearing the wrong clothes and driving the wrong car. The “valet parking attendant” and the lady that seated me had an indifferent attitude to my presence. The waitress was ok, but did lack a genuine happy attitute. The food was good, but a little over priced. This S. California Native will not come back to 333 again.

Jeff Reuter (Owner): Joe, I seriously don’t think that any perceived reaction from the Valet, Hostess or Waitress had ANYTHING to do with what you were wearing or driving – it was most probably 100% YOU that they were reacting to! 333 is a local beach hangout that receives every conceivable type of person, dressed in every possible type of clothing and driving every car made. You admit the food was “good”, but over priced????? What int he hell were you expecting to pay sitting in a 10 million dollar restaurant on the water in Newport Beach; the average price for food is 12 dollars?!?!?!?!?! For a “So. Cal. Native” you are obviously completely out of touch – stick with the drive thru’s…

Bob Phibbs, the “Retail Doctor” wrote an amazing post on Groupon and other deep discount type programs. This is a must read.

Click here to read the post.

Ever since anonymous masses were granted the power to push a “publish” button, there’s been debate over the validity of consumer-generated restaurant reviews. Fueling the skeptical fire early this month, Time‘s NewsFeed blog reported on a restaurant in Chicago that received a poor review on Yelp before the restaurant even opened.

According to Sylvia Rector, a Free Press restaurant critic on Freep.com, people who frequently use these types of sites “develop a critical eye for reviews, factoring in the writer’s experience and history.” Besides poorly informed bloggers, one should be especially wary of phony reviewers like PR people, competing restaurants and other biased parties. So what should you look for?

“If a restaurant opens and gets three or four glowing reviews the first day,” Rector says, “you have to wonder if they were written by the owner’s friends and relatives.” Also, question reviews that are outdated (restaurants do change), those that are “different from most other comments” or those “with an absence of specifics.” You can’t drop a bomb without a reason — if the food was intolerable, why? If a review is particularly out of place, check the poster’s profile or other reviews he or she made on the site.
Public opinion certainly matters, but putting subjectivity aside for the interest of the public might not be as easy as we think — maybe professional critics really do have a knack for this stuff after all.

Read complete post by clicking here!

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Today’s tip is brought to you by Inside Hospitality™, a comprehensive and innovative guest experience management and measurement company whose integrated suite of hospitality business solutions from restaurant focused mystery shopping to online reputation management achieves tangible results in the marketplace and is the choice for restaurant and hotels worldwide.

Contact us today and learn how Inside Hospitality™ can create a custom solution for your organization. We can be reached anytime @ (888) 260- 0380.

Click the “RingMe” button and we’ll call you back within 1 minute.

For complete event information please visit us at RestaurantSocialMedia.com

________________________________________________________________

Today’s tip is brought to you by Inside Hospitality™, a comprehensive and innovative guest experience management and measurement company whose integrated suite of hospitality business solutions from restaurant focused mystery shopping to online reputation management achieves tangible results in the marketplace and is the choice for restaurant and hotels worldwide.

Contact us today and learn how Inside Hospitality™ can create a custom solution for your organization. We can be reached anytime @ (888) 260- 0380.

Click the “RingMe” button and we’ll call you back within 1 minute.

Today’s Tip: Guests… can you hear me now?

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last few years, you know how the social media landscape is revolutionizing the restaurant and hospitality business. Never before have operators, managers and owners been able to engage directly with guests and potential guests with the click of the mouse.

We have heard people say that every restaurant and hotel needs to have a Facebook, Twitter or some kind of social media  presence. That’s crazy, no they don’t!

Why you may ask?

You need to be where your guest’s eyeballs are. If your guest demographic is a Yellow Book reading bunch, then having a slick Facebook fan site is a collassial waste of time.

That’s not where your guest’s eyeballs are.

Posting your daily specials on Twitter is swell (actually, we think it’s  an old transaction based tactic that doesn’t work.) But, if that is where your guest’s eyeballs are and how they want to be engaged with, that is where you need to be.

You need to ask. You need to listen. You need to react. You simply need to be where your guests are.

If your guests are on Facebook, FourSquare or the next 2.0 social media sensation that’s currently being built in a college dorm room, then that’s where you need to be.

Or you can take a shot gun approach and water down your message and hope to reach someone, by trying to be everywhere.

The choice is yours. Ask or guess. You can’t be everywhere and hit the target. You need to be where your guest’s are. Not where this weeks social media guru says you need to be.

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Today’s tip is brought to you by Inside Hospitality™, a comprehensive and innovative guest experience management and measurement company whose integrated suite of hospitality business solutions from restaurant focused mystery shopping to online reputation management achieves tangible results in the marketplace and is the choice for restaurant and hotels worldwide.

Contact us today and learn how Inside Hospitality™ can create a custom solution for your organization. We can be reached anytime @ (888) 260- 0380.

Click the “RingMe” button and we’ll call you back within 1 minute.