In the News

Below is an excerpt of Jon Sooy’s article as published in this month’s Franchising World: Unleashing Marketing Creativity

When working in any business environment, keeping ahead of the competition requires constant innovation and reinvention. In the restaurant world, experimenting, not just with the food, but with systems and concepts is critical, and should be a constant priority. If not, competitors will leave your company wallowing in their dust, looking like last week’s lunch special.

Leveraging your staff’s thoughts can be vitally important, and enjoyable. Rather than the owners and managers taking it upon themselves to rack their brains for ways to stay current, there’s a whole staff in your restaurant, many with long pedigrees in the service industry who are potentially fantastic resources. When the company hired these people, it hired them for a number of reasons, not just their ability to perform the tasks their job requires. Our system conditions people to follow instructions, to color within the lines. Seth Godin, author of Linchpin, calls us a society of factory-workers. I agree with Mr. Godin and abhor this system and challenge others to break the mold. What companies will find is that ignoring their hired talent is no way to get ahead. In fact, by embracing the opposite and empowering the crew to generate ideas, dramatic results can appear.

Read the rest of the article here.

Naomi Catalina
Designer at Large

Below is an excerpt of Jon Sooy’s article as published in Franchise Times: When It Comes To Customer Service, The Truth Shall Set You Free

Two things:

1) In the restaurant business, the most powerful marketers are your employees.
2) Telling the truth can be difficult.

Wife to husband: “Does this dress make my butt look big?”
Boss to employee: “What do you think of my new necktie?”
Customer to server: “How are the crab cakes?”

I was blown away this past weekend when I asked a server that last question and she (let’s call her Julie) made a face of disgust and recommended that I go with the sweet potato fries! She told me the truth. It was quite clear to me that the crab cakes were not her favorite. At first I was astonished and thought perhaps training was not a high priority at this restaurant. The more I thought about it, I don’t recall this ever happening to me but I must say, I really appreciated being told the truth.

Read the rest of the article at franchisetimes.com…

Naomi Catalina
Designer at Large

Below is an excerpt of Jon Sooy’s article as published in QSR Magazine: Don’t Interrupt Your Consumer; Engage Them

The average American is blasted with thousands of advertisements every day. Rather than try to shout above the noise, marketers must learn to converse with their biggest fans.

How many advertising messages is the average American exposed to every day? When you consider almost every surface we see during the course of our day is invariably plastered with advertising, the numbers are high. From newspapers, magazines, billboards, and product logos, the acceleration of marketing and advertising messages over the past 60 years is astounding. When you also factor in electronic media from television, radio, computers, to smartphones, you begin to realize what a staggering amount our senses deal with on a daily basis. Savvy marketers today are referring to this onslaught as “interruption-based” advertising.

Some experts claim that we are interrupted with close to 30,000 messages per day. It’s a bombardment that would make the most well drilled artillery unit throw up their hands in despair and start taking notes.

Read the rest of the article at qsrmagazine.com…

Naomi Catalina
Designer at Large