Restaurant – Gabriel Catalano®

App aims to be Pandora for restaurant recommendations, and more – vía @springwise

The app is available for free on the App Store and Google Play. While Nara is currently concentrating on the restaurant vertical, reports suggest it is looking to move into doing the same for other fields, such as the hotel sector.

Vía springwise

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Created by a team consisting of “neuroscientists, computer scientists, astrophysicists, artists and entrepreneurs”, the app first asks users a few questions about the kind of eateries they like, based on food types, atmosphere and demographic, among others. When a suggestion is made, it can either be upvoted or downvoted depending on the user’s opinion, which can be logged either before or after they’ve tried it out. Foursquare check-ins are integrated to keep track of where users have been before, and which restaurants they like to go to regularly. By checking this against the decisions made by every other Nara user, the system quickly begins to intuit the kinds of decisions made by those with similar tastes.

Website: www.nara.me
Contact: http://www.nara.me/contact

Spotted by: Murray Orange

Are You Running Business: Impossible? Things To Outsource Now | inc.com

If your business needs an extreme makeover, it’s time to start outsourcing.

My family loves watching Restaurant: Impossible. The show provides an extreme makeover for restaurant owners who have little or no prior experience. Most of them are hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

In most episodes, Chef Robert Irvine decides that the restaurant leadership and expertise is out-of-whack. The auteur with the knife in the kitchen might not have the people skills necessary to manage the wait staff. The bubbly front-of-house staff might not be capable of ordering food deliveries or creating a menu. When people aren’t in the right role or are trying to do too much, they get frustrated and the entire enterprise suffers.

Starting and running a business, of any kind, is not something you should do alone. The best leaders know when to delegate or outsource, but some owners let years go by and delay critical business decisions because of arrogance, fear, or a lack of confidence.

I waited far too long to hire employees because I was afraid it’d take too long to train them and they’d never do things the way I wanted. Of course, the result was total suffocation and paralysis. Just like in the TV show, it wasn’t any fun being the owner, chef, server, host, accountant, marketer and dishwasher!

So when should you step back and let another cook in the kitchen?

1. Legal.
2. Accounting.
3. Insurance.
4. Benefits.
5. Marketing.
6. Tech Support.
7. Mindless.

Read full story

Local Search Insights: What Are Consumers Searching For Locally? | provenseo.com

provenseo.com

According to the 2012 third quarter Local Insights Digital Report from YP.com, financial services, restaurants and beauty service establishments are among the top categories of business that local searchers search for online.

YP.com’s research includes 2 billion searches yearly made by approximately 11 million unique users each month. These local search insights give us invaluable clues on what we should be doing when it comes to local search campaigns. Basically, you can learn which businesses, industries and verticals people are searching for locally.

What Does this Mean? Leer más “Local Search Insights: What Are Consumers Searching For Locally? | provenseo.com”

Whine and Dine: Georgia Restaurant Bans Crying Kids

1. Name dropping
If a patron mentions that his second cousin was a roadie for Wayne Newton or that he went to the same high school as Ice T’s hairstylist, he should be relegated to the sidewalk.

2. Carousing
Gents, hitting on a table full of women that you don’t know is generally kind of tacky. Unless they’re engaging you, leave the ladies to eat in peace or begone from the dining establishment.

3. Heated political conversations
Nothing is worse for the digestion than someone setting up her soap box and loudly arguing her political viewpoint. Keep it on the streets, and who knows, people might throw money at you in thanks for the show.

4. Cell-phone ringers
When you’re in a restaurant, your phone should be on silent or vibrate so that other diners don’t have to hear your Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom theme song ringtone. It’s only polite.

5. Poor table manners
Eating with your fingers at a fine French restaurant? Dipping your napkin in your water glass to clean up after ribs? Licking your plate? Be gone with you. After all, people are trying to eat.

MORE: McDonald’s Bans Arizona Mom After Health Expose

Plus, five other behaviors NewsFeed would like banned from restaurants
By MELISSA LOCKER | @woolyknickers | http://newsfeed.time.com

GHISLAIN & MARIE DAVID DE LOSSY/CULTURA/CORBIS

Does the sound of a crying child give you a stomachache? Grant Central Pizza in Atlanta has a novel, if slightly cold-hearted, solution. They’ve added an addendum to their menu that reads,

“Dear all present and future patrons: GCP is proud of its reputation as a family restaurant, a title that we will work to keep. Unfortunately a number of our diners have posted unpleasant experiences because of crying and unsupervised children. To ensure that all diners have an enjoyable lunch or dinner with us we respectfully ask that parents tend to their crying tots outside.”

That’s right, if your child is wailing, you need to leave the premises. While compliance with the credo is voluntary, the message is clear: crying is unacceptable in restaurants. Leer más “Whine and Dine: Georgia Restaurant Bans Crying Kids”

How Incentives Can Undermine Your Influence

I’ve studied the influence strategies of many leaders in the past 25 years but few more remarkable than Danny Meyer’s.

Danny is, in my estimation, the most influential restaurateur in New York City. In 1985, he started the Union Square Café with a disarmingly delicious American menu. And in spite of the fierce competition for Manhattan diners, he succeeded phenomenally in both culinary and financial terms. For his next feat, he opened Gramercy Tavern, where he struck gold again. In the past 11 years, Gramercy Tavern and Union Square Café have ranked among Zagat’s top 10 most popular restaurants in New York City. In 2004, after following with French, Indian, and Italian restaurants, Danny opened the renowned Shake Shack in Madison Park. Since then, six locations have followed. Today every one of his 10 restaurant brands have appeared every year in Zagat’s top 40 for New York City. I wanted to find out why.

When I asked Danny to explain his sustained success, he told me a story. The week before, a guest at Tabla, his Indian restaurant, was settling his bill and asked his server if he could recommend a place to find a great cigar. The server said, “I’m sorry, I can’t. But I know someone who can.” He hustled across the restaurant and motioned to one of the other servers, who had just returned from Puerto Rico with a personal stash of exotic cigars. Moments later that server not only presented the guest with one of his prizes but also took time to rhapsodize about its provenance and specifications in loving detail.

After relating this incident, Danny went on to explain that his goal is to influence his 1,500 employees to achieve that same level of customer service daily. “We serve 100,000 meals every day,” Danny told me. “What would happen to our growth opportunity if we could just make 5 percent of those experiences supremely and intimately special? Serving great food is what’s expected of us. Our opportunity to become people’s favorite restaurant lies in going beyond meal service to creating an experience of true hospitality.”

Too many leaders think money is the easiest—and best way—to get results. Take a lesson from restaurateur

By Joseph Grenny
http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/oct2010/ca20101027_825910.htm

Management

Danny Meyer

I’ve studied the influence strategies of many leaders in the past 25 years but few more remarkable than Danny Meyer’s.

La buena experiencia empieza por el personal

Desde hace más de treinta años los gerentes conocen la importancia de brindar valor y servicio de excelencia. Sin embargo, en la mayoría de los encuentros que los consumidores tienen con las empresas, el servicio no es extraordinario. En realidad, a menudo apesta. ¿Por qué?

Una primera razón es que son demasiados los ejecutivos que no aprovechan lo suficientes fuentes poco comunes para inspirar un propósito común dentro de sus empresas. Buscan las mejores prácticas en lugar de los mejores principios. Se concentran exclusivamente en el ROI (retorno sobre la inversión) y lo que obtienen es “retorno sobre no hacer nada nuevo”.El mundo necesita experiencias más auténticas. Los consumidores las piden a gritos.

Joel Kurtzman, en su libro Common Purpose: How Great Leaders Get Organizations to Achieve the Extraordinary, dice que para organizar experiencias distintivas para los clientes primero hay que organizarlas para los propios empleados. Esa es una lección y una práctica que ningún líder puede olvidar, dice James H. Gilmore en su introducción al nuevo libro.

Para tener una idea cabal de lo que quiere decir la oración precedente nada mejor que referirnos a una anécdota que el autor cuenta en un pasaje del capítulo diez. Empieza contando que viajó a Kyoto, Japón y que sus anfitriones japoneses eran ejecutivos de la industria automotriz. En lugar de llevarlo a un tradicional restaurante japonés eligieron uno italiano. Lo cuenta así:

Desde hace más de treinta años los gerentes conocen la importancia de brindar valor y servicio de excelencia. Sin embargo, en la mayoría de los encuentros que los consumidores tienen con las empresas, el servicio no es extraordinario. En realidad, a menudo apesta. ¿Por qué?

Joel Kurtzman, en su libro Common Purpose: How Great Leaders Get Organizations to Achieve the Extraordinary, dice que para organizar experiencias distintivas para los clientes primero hay que organizarlas para los propios empleados. Esa es una lección y una práctica que ningún líder puede olvidar, dice James H. Gilmore en su introducción al nuevo libro.