Effective Inventory Management

Mismanaged inventory is a silent profit killer. Excessive inventory costs you because you could have done something more profitable with the sitting money, while inventory run outs cost you in terms of food cost. And running out of staple items is simply poor management.

Yet there are four simple solutions of which the first one is about completing a regular undistracted inventory count. Allow yourself time to do it properly, not in the middle of a dinner rush or staff training.

The second solution is about valuing each inventory item in terms of days. When you divide your item count by your daily usage, you get an inventory count in terms of days. For instance, let's say that you have 235 chicken breasts and that your average daily usage is 25. So you have 9.4 days worth of inventory. Do you really need that much inventory? With 2 or 3 deliveries a week, you can reduce your par and the cash flow sitting in your walk-in.

The third solution is about food production. Instead of projecting your usage in count per day, project in terms of percentage of guests. For instance, instead of saying "I will need 5 chicken for Monday", say "10% of my guests order chicken on Mondays". So when your guest count increases, your par increases. When your guest count decreases, your par decreases too. By connecting your food projections to your guest count projections, you will eliminate excess inventory when revenues go down and, you will not run out when your revenues increase.

The fourth solution is to develop your menu in a consolidated manner, thus making sure that each inventory item is used in multiple recipes. Excessive single use items are time consuming to track, take too much space in your storage and will likely expire on your shelves.

So eliminate distractions, evaluate your inventory in terms of usage days, tie up your food production to your guest count projection and develop your menu in a consolidated manner.

Value of Training in Restaurants

From my observations, most operators do not see value in training. Even if they do have a training program, it is often treated as a "download program" by managers who don't understand value in education either. Training in restaurants is too often delivered by people who do not want to train, filled with shortcuts and without performance metrics. Then operators say that there is no ROI on training, when they don't set up effectiveness measuring tools.

A comprehensive training program needs to include management training not only in operations but in leadership, in communication, in risk management and in public relations. A restaurant manager with a high school diploma who can't spell right or talk in public, he will make a poor trainer. Managers who think that education is a waste of time, they will make poor trainers too.

Kitchen training should include presentation, flair, professional curiosity, guests relations and ethics, even at an Applebee's or a Denny's restaurant. The level of culinary sophistication of the American public has refined tremendously in the last three decades. Restaurants need to catch up without necessarily becoming presumptuous.

Dining room training needs to include attention to detail. For instance, bringing a glass of soda with the beverage dripping from the sides, that's poor service. A server, who does not understand the difference between egg white and low cholesterol eggs omelets, is a poor server.

Training helps is the consistent delivery of perfect service and food quality. It helps reduce food and labor costs. And it improves organizational effectiveness.

Proper training reduces food costs by way of the server who can explain recipes to guests and by correctly entering food orders. Part of performance management, restaurant operators need to quantify comps per guest count, voids per shift and the value of errors to sales ratio.

Proper training reduces food costs by way of the cook who properly executes recipes. At a popular steakhouse that serves over a dozen different steaks, they always have a steak inventory discrepancy at the end of the night. They produce some items instead of others.

Proper training reduces labor cost because it is a dominant factor in employee retention. As an example, I know of the case of a restaurant operator who has reduced management training from 12 weeks to 8 weeks and started hiring managers at $5,000 less because it is an employers' market. But the management turnover rate jumped from 30% to 150%. So instead of reducing management training cost by 40%, it just tripled.

Training is thus an important business factor in the restaurant industry, but not the only one. Operators need to measure their training effectiveness and correct their systems inefficiencies.

How to Retain Employees Without Increasing Labor Costs

This question is pertinent to our economic times. Many companies like yours are looking for ways to attract, motivate and retain quality employees without necessarily increasing labor expenses. In truth, to retain quality employees with financial strategies solely would not retain all your employees and, non-financial strategies don't always have enough traction to make everyone stay. So in the end, a measured combination would likely be the solution. Yet, this is what has worked for me in the past:

First: Defend your employees: sometimes customers are obnoxious, supervisors are abusive and employees are rude. So take the stand and publicly defend and support that employee on the receiving end. A customer who is belligerent to your employees is also likely to badmouth and disrespect your company. And not all customers are worth keeping at any cost.

Second: Protect your employees: Even in less hazardous industries, accidents and safety accidents happen. Raise awareness and help them prevent work related accidents. Show your employees that you are concerned and diligent about their own safety.

Third: Reward positive decision making: Employees who have gone the extra step to analyze a business risk, to craft a new policy or, to come up with a new solution to an old problem, they did it without being paid. So the money is not necessarily relevant in these cases. That is when reward such like being included in leadership teams or like additional valuable responsibilities would have a fuller weight. Let them choose which additional responsibility they would want and give it to them.

Fourth: Fair and consistent treatment: Everyone understands what fair and consistent means regardless of the education level. Ask any five year old. This concept is basic yet employers don't seem to pay notice. Fairness and consistency make the company and its leadership appears predictable and safe in a positive manner.

Fifth: and Do not seek to retain everyone. Not all of your employees need to be retained. Allow for a natural exodus. Some people will move on because it is time to move on and that is not necessarily bad for the employee or the company. So determine and accept that a portion of your employees will go no matter what you do. If you spend too much time and energy in retaining them then (1) you would only delay the inevitable and, (2) others would ask why are you so clingy?

Image: http://www.rantzaupartners.dk/assets/images/illus/iStock_000007412021Small.jpg

How to improve employees' engagement?

Employee engagement faces challenges in a workplace in pursuit of ever higher productivity metrics, with limited resources and the necessities of a politically correct society. We can easily make up a directory of excuses why it can't be done. In most managed workplaces, there is no agenda for employee engagement or not enough concern for it.

In truth, it is a matter of leadership. If leadership is the set of abilities and skills that gives someone the vision and charisma to influence a group of individuals towards a common goal, then leadership fails when employees' engagement fails.

In the restaurant industry, for instance, there is a definite lack of leadership at the unit level. Managers concern themselves with food cost, liquor cost, ... and labor cost, when in fact they should be more focused on employee engagement for three main reasons.

First, if they truly paid attention to their costs in order of importance, labor cost should come to the first place. If they add up direct wages, indirect wage expenses and training expenses, they would realize that labor mounts up to half their sales and more. So if they were to spend their time in proportion of their cost structure, employees’ engagement would certainly become a priority.

Second, other costs such as food, supplies, non-ingredients, risk management and even energy costs can be related in function of labor. A qualified and motivated cook is more likely than not to operate a clean and efficient kitchen. But this requires proper interviewing and selection procedures, complete orientation and training programs and, an engaged leadership with a vested interest beyond metrics. All of this is about the employee. And the same goes with theft, waste, breakage and other leaks than mount up to 5%-8% of annual sales. But if managers were to become relationship-oriented leaders, they would ripe long term profits in terms of cost savings.

Finally, if leadership concerned itself with their connection with employees, it would better understand their frustrations and motivations. This presupposes a good dosage of emotional intelligence; which is the ability to read, interpret and act upon non-verbal communication clues. And with that emotional intelligence, leadership would have a better grasp on how Maslow's hierarchy of needs applies to their own employees' motivations and sense of purpose within the organization.

So, as we understand that management leadership is essential in prioritizing labor related cost, in total cost containment and, in staff motivation and sense of purpose within the organization, we can grasp how leadership is the common denominator in all solutions to employees' engagement.

But leadership skills, when they don't figure in the manager's total performance evaluation, don't compute in his own work ethics. Furthermore, since leadership values are not taught in this specific environment, how could we expect managers to behave as leaders?

I view the solution, to improving employees' engagement, as the teaching of leadership skills to front line managers. If it is expected of them, they will come though. Make them understand that the measure to which they treat their employees, their employees will treat the customers.

Photo: www.naukrihub.com

Why most managers don't have leadership skills?

This is a great and relevant question in today's business environment. Here, I would like to offer six perspectives:

1. Technical skills v. conceptual skills: As people are promoted from lower ranks because of their technical abilities, they find themselves in unchartered territories when conceptual skills become predominant. It is the change in the nature of their job that renders them incompetent. I knew Regional Directors in restaurant concepts who were proud to have started as dishwashers. But how is one function relevant to the other? If it wasn’t for the need to demonstrate that they were self made men in the fashion of the wild west, they might realize the absurdity.

2. Leadership styles and effectiveness are often omitted from performance reviews and business statements. If they are missing, they must not be valued.

3. To teach leadership, you must first be a leader. In a blind leading the blinds environment of unvalued leadership, there is no-one to teach it right and there is no-one to know the difference. Soundbite leadership seminars and fast-food leadership literature have blurred more than defined authentic leadership.

4. Task-oriented v. relationship-oriented leaderships. A relationship-oriented leadership concerns itself with emotional intelligence, succession planning, talent development and career planning. It is the nature of the relationship between each leader and his followers that determines the business' success.

On the other hand, a task-oriented leadership is principally focused on metrics, ratios and charts; thus turning a blind eye to the hierarchy of needs, motivational theories and workplace satisfaction principles.

5. Nature v. Nurture debate. Although some believe that leadership abilities are qualities one is born with, others would argue that leadership can be taught. Both sides have their valid points.

But we need to understand that if one believes that leadership is a God given ability, then there is nothing one can teach. And that's why leadership doesn't get taught by some leaders.

In counterpart, if one believes that leadership can be taught, they tend to popularize it whether or not the receiver gets it or not. You can only teach a bird to fly because the bird has the abilities to fly without possessing the skills just yet. But you cannot teach a cow to fly for with all the good intentions, she will never succeed.

The difference resides in a truthful and exhaustive evaluation of who is the candidate and if the skills to be taught do match the individual's abilities.

6. Finally there is the dichotomy between management and leadership. Most confuse that the higher the management title, the higher the power, the higher the leadership. But that is not true.

While management concerns itself in the implementation and the follow-thru of processes, leadership is about strategic vision, charisma and conceptual skills. Furthermore, as the first one is more influenced with short-term consequences, leadership is long term by nature.

In conclusion, the question on the lack of leadership skills in management is a current and real concern, but also complex. Therefore a true answer is a bit complex too in the sense that it is multifaceted, multidimensional. I would love to read your comments.

Photo: compassionate-news.blogspot.com

Is it illegal for a prospective employer to request your pay stubs?

It is not illegal in the U.S. because information on your pay stub do not mention anything in relations to your civil rights. This said, there are two exceptions:

1. if your pay stub gives information about your marital status or the number of dependants in relations to your medical benefits. This is equivalent to asking you if you are married or if you have children. This information can also be deduced from your tax filing status

2. if the job you used to have is essentially/materially different from the one you are applying for. This is equivalent to asking you a question that is not work related.

This said, if potential employers insist on former pay stubs, there is nothing forbidding you from deleting what you don't want them to know. For instance, you can black out any or all information related to your medical plan or tax filling status.

Remember that your pay rate, your job title, your name, your social security number, your start date and your final date are not privileged information.

Photo: www.sommet.com

How to implement a successful sexual harassment policy?

This is a great question because companies are no longer monocultural. Your employees are going to be different on a primary (i.e. age, religion...) and secondary (i.e. position, education level... ) levels. An effective sexual harassment training needs to be developed within the context of diversity and, that diversity needs to be included in the company culture.

When you visit large corporations' websites, you'll notice that they brandish their diversity programs and initiatives. Yet if go to justia.com , you'll find out that there are 13,900 pending employment related lawsuits filed in the last calendar year in Federal district courts. And when you add Federal Circuit courts, State courts and regulatory agencies, over 100,000 pending lawsuits, since last year, about sexual harassment and other diversity issues. So what's the deal?
Many diversity programs have failed because business leadership has viewed the issue to be managed, to be shaped to fit the organization. Diversity has been mandated by laws, consent decrees and lawsuits and, so the “problem” is to be managed as part of a risk management equation and, leveraged by the marketing and public relations departments. Therefore the subject gets to be massaged in order to reduce risk exposure and maximize the return on the training investment that they have to do.

The human resource department or the training department, in conjunction with corporate counsel, devises a packaged “diversity in a box” program. And then it becomes an administrative procedure “please sign here…here…initial here...and here. Thank you, we are now covered” kind of mentality. But is this what the government and the civil right activists had in mind? Of course not.

Sexual harassment programs, and by extension diversity too, are not meant to be a method of managing conflicts but rather a new organizational model that enables individuals, that reduces psychological noises and preserves social identities. Our 21st Century American society is no longer monochromatic. It has become a multicultural environment of minorities. And it is an evolutionary necessity for businesses to not only recognize the change but also to embrace it.

People, by virtue of birth and socio-economic environment, already belong to a culture that they cannot disassociate from. Values, semantic differences and perceptions determine people’s motivations and their work ethics. These are integral features of their personality. And so, managers need to recognize these dimensions in their decision making process and in their own communication style. A computer managed training doesn't address these communication noises. Diversity without inclusion does not work because that wouldn’t support a synergy of creativities and talents.

So now, how do we go there from here? Well, the same way that individuals belong to cultural, religious, social and professional groups, they are also part of a business. The same way that they learn proper etiquette, negotiation skills and ethics from those groups to be applied within them, they can learn diversity in the workplace as another form of culture called corporate culture. Employees can acquire necessary skills about compassion, respect and acceptance of others. We can do this by reducing communication barriers through proper training and through individual diversity leadership initiatives that would cement bonds between employees.

Once they have internalized values associated with diversity, they know what to do to enable a co-worker and know what not to do to dissuade undesirable behavior. Diversity would no longer be an issue. In conclusion, I would like to finish by saying that any lasting sexual harassment training cannot solely be managed by an online course or a videotape. Human trainers are necessary to convey the human aspect of the issue and because people learn differently and that, the computer can not accomodate.

What to do if an employee is pregnant?

Companies, that I have worked for, never gave anything to a pregnant female employees for two dominant reasons:

(1) In compliance with Title VII Civil Rights Act and other Federal and State anti-discrimination legislations, a person should not be treated differently based on his/her protected status: age, race, nationality, citizenship, sex, gender orientation, marital status, military discharge or disability. Therefore to give a pregnant woman a gift, because she is pregnant, is the same as giving her money because she is a woman. This is a form of preferential treatment based on gender/sex; a discrimination.

Furthermore, even if you convince yourself to give said gift and, later on, another pregnant employee were to get pregnant but either doesn't get anything or gets a gift of lesser value but happens to be of a diferent race then, you would have discriminated based on race -another protected status.

(2) Pregnancy is determined as a medical condition in US employment law. And as such, since an employer may not disseminate any information covered by an employee's medical records, you may not discuss her pregnancy to any third party. And what you may say to the employee is covered within the Family and Medical Leave Act. As an employer, you can't even keep her doctor's note in her employee file.

Furthermore, if you give anything to an employee with a certain medical situation, in spirit of fairness, you would have to do the same with any medical condition. It's a matter of workplace performance and motivation. You need to be consistent. Now, let's say that she has a difficult pregnancy and that, following complications, she were to loose her child. What would you do? After each medical situation, will you give her a gift? Your kindness could quickly turn into a financial nightmare for your business. So what can you do?

For instance, you could wait that she makes her situation public. As she does, you can congratulate her in public and in such creating an opening for employees to relaxe a moment to be happy for her. You can ask her if she requires any reasonnable accomodation: work schedule flexibility, tasks reassignments, time off, modify workspace or help her through her government mandated rights and corporate policies. But in no way you should give any book or advice on any medical or legal subject. Just stay clear. And do not promise anything not covered in writing by your company policy as stipulated in the employee handbook.

Photo: http://www.thomchild.com/

On Restaurant Reviews

There is a prolific amount of restaurant review websites among which the most popular are Metromix, Yelp and Zagat. But do they actually help the consumer?

So I decided to check their relevancy as I was looking for a restaurant to take my parents out. I wanted to enjoy some fish and seafood, therefore I needed a good selection, but my parents were undecided which meant that the menu needed also to offer other selections.

Just to pick on one website only, I visited Metromix.com. With a "fish and seafood restaurants in Schaumburg" query, the search retrieved four answers: Bonefish Grill, Yu's Mandarin, Shaw's Crab House and Joe's Crab Shack. Although these are valid restaurants, I know that Schaumburg has more than four of them.

In fact I found 20 restaurants including Davis Fishmarket, McCormick & Schmick's, Benihana, Foster's Shrimp House, Dover Straits, Pete Miller's etc. And ten of them had reviews on Metromix but you had to hunt them under "Greek", "Japanese", "Steakhouse" and other categories.

Even though Weber Grill, for instance, is not specifically a fish and seafood restaurant, their level of service and quality of food in general would still affect me as a consumer. But the public needs to be aware of four issues.

Firstly, that people who write about restaurant visits are people who are passionate enough to share their extreme pleasure or disappointment about a visit. But since most are not in that category, the reviewers cannot represent the public at large. A restaurant like Shaw's takes care of an estimated 100,000 guests a year for only 12 wrote a review. We need to understand that although I value their opinion, how relevant is this sample?

Secondly, do you know how difficult it is to make one person happy? Now is it possible to make 10,000, 50,000, or 100,000 people happy all the time? Of course not, nor is it desirable. So a certain amount of public disapproval is inevitable but also necessary. If you were to devout your resources to appeal to everyone and to make everyone content all the time, you would inevitably loose focus but also your profits. So I caution readers about paying too much attention to the negative reviews.

Thirdly, whether your decision criterion is distance from your home, the menu selection, pricing or anything else, none of the website actually helps you compare restaurants. You get bits and pieces from one site and another but the decision is ultimately your responsibility alone.

And the fourth issue is that writing a restaurant review does not help restauranteurs with feedbacks to improve their performance. It is like completing your school assignments but the teachers only informing your classmates and not you, about your grades. Somehow it feels counterproductive.

So I picked up my collection of menus and began a selection process. Menus with seafood: 89. In Schaumburg: 25. With at least five dinner under $20: 12. With many seafood appetizers too: 3. My final selection dwindled to three finalists: the Greek Taverna, Houlihan's and Outback Steakhouse.

The Greek Taverna, already my favorite for lamb dishes, offers 11 fish and seafood dinners priced from $12.95 and $16.95. Houlihan's menu counts 7 dinners from $13.95 and $18.95 while Outback Steakhouse had also seven items between $8.99 and $20.99. Based on fish and seafood dinner price average alone, Applebee's and TGI Friday's would have been solid contenders.

In the end, my family and I chose the Greek Village Taverna on Golf and Plum Grove Road by the Ford dealership. We liked the place already. They had a wide selection of dishes I wanted for an average price of $14.04 which is very reasonable, and my parents could also find something they liked. Restaurant reviews were no longer a factor. Ten people on Metromix rated the food a 2.0 out of a maximum of 5.0. But my family and I were happy, and we will return to the Greek Village again.


The Greek Village Taverna is located at 795 E. Golf Road, Schaumburg 60173. (847) 885-4950.

What to do if an interviewee refuses to submit references?

Reference checks are of course a necessary requirement. There is no ifs or buts about it.

This said, if the candidate is reluctant to reveal references then as a recruiter you need to find out why.

I have witnessed supervisors "massaging" employee files by pre-dating or post-dating documents and supervisors who have committed unethical and illegal acts. As a candidate, you think you know that that same supervisor is going to be unethical with you as well but, you don't want to say anything because mentioning the situation leaves a negative feel on the interviewee's profile.

On the other hand, candidate massage their resume so much that it no longer truly reflects their competencies. In these times, as it is hard to find a good well paid job, may be some candidates feel necessary to lie in order to get what they feel they are worth.

So between being misguided, fear of rejection, fed up with the repetitive process or maybe resentful toward a past supervisor, some candidates simply elect to avoid the subject.

As a recruiter, the expectation of a reference check, an employment check, an education check, a criminal background check and maybe a credit check need to be addressed on the onset. It's part of the process of getting a new job.

Is Performance Management Essential?

Performance management is necessary but a difficult system to implement. From my sixteen years management experience, my general position is that it ought to be applied effectively, efficiently and consistently or forget it.

Dominant positive aspects of performance reviews are that they are (1) a training tool to make sure that everyone in the organization completes tasks individually for the collective efficiency; (2) a productivity tool because the management of human capital calls for increased individual productivities; (3) a cost containment tool because poor performances cost money; (4) a communication tool to make sure the reviewee and the reviewer are on the same page; (5) a succession planning tool because if you need to fill a position suddenly vacant, you would require to know in advance who is the best capable to fill it.

Dominant negative aspects of performance reviews are that they (1) are poorly administered because performance appraisers need to be trained too; (2) risk personality conflicts between reviewer -often the immediate supervisor- and reviewee cloud the objectivity of the review process; (3) could carry halo effects, whereby we tend to over rate and overlook a good employee's shortcomings and, excessively under rate and overlook a bad employee's positive results, are counterproductive; (4) flawded with stigmas. For most people, the process is cause of anxiety, discomfort and fear of being terminated as a result of a poor evaluation; (5) are disruptive because they take time away from regular duties. And if you are supervising a dozen people, this could easily take the whole week.

So to directly answer the question, I would say 'yes' but if you should decide to do it then do it right. If the company's culture is not favorable to the process, then you ought to start from there first.

How to implement a successful sexual harassment training?

This is a great question because companies are no longer monocultural. Your employees are going to be different on a primary (i.e. age, religion...) and secondary (i.e. position, education level... ) levels. An effective sexual harassment training needs to be developed within the context of diversity and, that diversity needs to be included in the company culture.

When you visit large corporations' websites, you'll notice that they brandish their diversity programs and initiatives. Yet if go to justia.com , you'll find out that there are 13,900 pending employment related lawsuits filed in the last calendar year in Federal district courts. And when you add Federal Circuit courts, State courts and regulatory agencies, over 100,000 pending lawsuits, since last year, about sexual harassment and other diversity issues. So what's the deal?

Many diversity programs have failed because business leadership has viewed the issue to be managed, to be shaped to fit the organization. Diversity has been mandated by laws, consent decrees and lawsuits and, so the “problem” is to be managed as part of a risk management equation and, leveraged by the marketing and public relations departments.

Therefore the subject gets to be massaged in order to reduce risk exposure and maximize the return on the training investment that they have to do. The human resource department or the training department, in conjunction with corporate counsel, devises a packaged “diversity in a box” program. And then it becomes an administrative procedure “please sign here…here…initial here...and here. Thank you, we are now covered” kind of mentality. But is this what the government and the civil right activists had in mind? Of course not.

Sexual harassment programs, and by extension diversity too, are not meant to be a method of managing conflicts but rather a new organizational model that enables individuals, that reduces psychological noises and preserves social identities. Our 21st Century American society is no longer monochromatic. It has become a multicultural environment of minorities. And it is an evolutionary necessity for businesses to not only recognize the change but also to embrace it.

People, by virtue of birth and socio-economic environment, already belong to a culture that they cannot disassociate from. Values, semantic differences and perceptions determine people’s motivations and their work ethics. These are integral features of their personality. And so, managers need to recognize these dimensions in their decision making process and in their own communication style. A computer managed training doesn't address these communication noises.

Diversity without inclusion does not work because that wouldn’t support a synergy of creativities and talents. So now, how do we go there from here?

Well, the same way that individuals belong to cultural, religious, social and professional groups, they are also part of a business. The same way that they learn proper etiquette, negotiation skills and ethics from those groups to be applied within them, they can learn diversity in the workplace as another form of culture called corporate culture.

Employees can acquire necessary skills about compassion, respect and acceptance of others. We can do this by reducing communication barriers through proper training and through individual diversity leadership initiatives that would cement bonds between employees. Once they have internalized values associated with diversity, they know what to do to enable a co-worker and know what not to do to dissuade undesirable behavior. Diversity would no longer be an issue.

In conclusion, I would like to finish by saying that any lasting sexual harassment training cannot solely be managed by an online course or a videotape. Human trainers are necessary to convey the human aspect of the issue and because people learn differently and that, the computer can not accommodate.

Restaurant Marketing Plan for Hard Times.

The vast majority of restaurant operators are very skilled in their trade; that is to produce outstanding and delicious food. But when the economic environment is on the downturn and guests don't even come, how can they maintain or boost their sales?

A low cost marketing plan should include a portfolio of ideas such as the following:

1. Local Store Marketing: this groups initiatives that are developed to target guests already in your restaurant. Examples could be:

a. Frequency cards
b. Business partners discounts
c. Promotional items / gifts
d. Ad signs / Lawn signs
e. Children coloring contests


2. Direct Marketing: these initiatives are designed to target potential guests within your trade area. First you need to know it, zone it and section it in relations to your competition. Because different level of aggressiveness and budget will likely depend on the strengths and weaknesses of your competition, this is an essential ground work. Examples could include:

a. Door knob marketing
b. Colleges / Universities flyers
c. Direct marketing
d. Bus marketing with complimenting businesses


3. Public Relations: this is about information that you would want to disperse about you, your business or your culture, for instance:

a. Press releases
b. Business networking
c. Fund raising events
d. Give lectures / seminars in colleges / universities
e. Community newspapers


4. Internet Marketing: For a certain demography, internet has become the dominant means of communication and source of information: email, IM, blogs, websites, search engines, reference sites... Therefore any internet marketing campaign needs to consider all these sources. Don't forget that President Obama raised more political money than his adversaries through these methods.


Even corporate restaurants ought to seriously think about this. Your customers are a local business. That's why attracting them should be a local project, whether or not your system is nationwide. But be cautious that your marketing campaign doesn't run your business aground. A 5-10% budget should be enough. Less and it wouldn't be effective enough to make it worth it. More and it would damage your brand image and drive you to bankruptcy. And if this is not effective enough, than you have bigger problems.

In good times as in bad, a well designed marketing plan is essential to attract and retain your business. Otherwise they'll go elsewhere.