Does Your Menu Hold This Sweet Wine Disaster?

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Your customers have had a wonderful dinner. They are loving the world, they are singing praises of your restaurant to their waiter and sending back compliments to the chef—they’re even posting on Facebook about the great meal they just ate. Now, they’re ready to order dessert, and their good mood makes them want a great sweet wine with their dessert. They read the pairings that you’ve set up on your digital wine menu (hint, hint), and they order the most decadent dessert menu item you have: the Chocolate Cake with Buttercream. They’re really indulging, so they also order the champagne, which your menu has recommended as a great celebration pairing with that fabulous cake. They love the cake, and their champagne catches the light as they toast your restaurant. They love champagne. Then, they take a sip and disaster happens. Do you know what went wrong?

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A selection of craft beers

The Best Craft Beer to Add to Your Menu

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There are a lot of beers out there these days, and you have decided that it is finally time to add craft beers to your menu. But what craft beer or beers should you add? This week’s most popular searches were about Chimay beer, so we know that beer enthusiasts want Trappist ales today. But what about tomorrow? What craft beer will your customers want to see on their beer menu?

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“I Can’t Even Hear Myself Drink!” How Volume – Not Just “Volume” – Matters

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Audiologists consider a decibel level just over 80 damaging to our hearing. Sadly, it may come as little surprise to frequent diners in trendy restaurants that this is often just how loud dining out has become. While some restaurateurs might place a higher priority on restaurant décor than acoustics to draw in a young and hip crowd, it’s not only older customers who have increasingly had enough of not being able to hear each other during dinner conversation.

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Does Your Kid Friendly Restaurant Have A Great Kids Menu?

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Are you ready to build a loyal customer base who considers your restaurant the go-to for any occasion? Do you want customers who find your restaurant so delicious that coming back every day of the week sounds like a good idea to them? Well, have you considered making your restaurant kid friendly? Kid friendly restaurants can fill tables during late lunch or early dinner hours when your servers would normally be folding napkins, and because children build fierce loyalties (and have powerful methods of persuasion), your restaurant could become the new family dinner hotspot. First step: convince kids to come back again and again by building an awesome kids menu. Here are some tips to get you started.

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Ordering a Drink? There’s an App for That.

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These days, there’s nothing new about using technology to help expedite the process of ordering food at a restaurant. Once waitstaff at some restaurants started sending orders back to the kitchen using hand-held devices, it was only a matter of time before similar technology made it directly into the hands of customers – most commonly now through online delivery apps like Seamless and GrubHub. Today, some airline passengers, while they wait to board at the gate area, may even use iPad menus to order, with the assurance that their items will be brought directly to them within minutes.

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Diverse Wine-By-The-Glass Programs can Differentiate Your Restaurant

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It’s hard to differentiate your restaurant’s wine program among many competitors in your area and really make it stand out.  Nearly every restaurant considers it table stakes to have a well trained staff and diverse wine list so there is something for everyone on the list.  But did you know that expanding your by-the-glass offerings can be one of the best ways to appeal to customers and increase your sales?

Having a big, diverse list is great, but not if there are very few by-the-glass options.  Many diners want to try new and different things, but aren’t comfortable spending a lot of money on a bottle they’ve never had before.  Enter your glass program, where diners could taste multiple different wines without committing to a bottle.

Fleming’s, the national steakhouse chain, has done just that.  By providing 100 by-the-glass options to diners, the steakhouse has seen sales increase 4.2% this past year while all their competitors were declining.  Providing a diverse glass list can allow you to provide multiple pour sizes as well, by going smaller with a 3oz taste portion or providing a larger 9oz pour like Fleming’s does.

One of the challenges of expanding the glass list is having wine go bad if it isn’t ordered frequently.  There are several things you can do to address this and make glass pours more profitable with less waste: Read more

10 Top Food Industry Trends and Predictions for 2014

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2013 witnessed the rise of upscale pork bellies, gluten-free everything, and Dominique Ansel’s delicious cronut–a mix between a croissant and a donut–what new foods will the new year bring? Here are our predictions for food industry trends and foods that your customers will be craving in 2014.

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Three Ways to Make Your Restaurant Menu Stand Out

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It’s time for some hard truth here: today’s upscale restaurant menus all look the same. In fact, they’re usually written in French, which means that most of the menus in your restaurant class are advertising the exact same dishes. Is your restaurant falling into this trap? Are your customers as bored with your menu offerings as the people in the photo? Here are 3 much-needed updates that will make your restaurant menu stand on its own.

In 1970 Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking changed the culture of food as we knew it. At the time, America hung on every new French phrase, as Julia told them how to make Coq Au Vin, Steak Frites and even baguettes, but today’s chefs have expanded our palates so far past traditional French cuisine. Today’s global economy and increased travel have expanded our American food options significantly and everyone around is lining up to eat the next best thing. But a lot of restaurant menus haven’t caught up with the new and exciting food trends of today and are still selling the same old foods, and even worse, using the same language to sell them. Here are some totally new ideas that will make your menu shine. Read more

Keep Your Restaurant Business Hot in Winter

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Climate change is coming to everyone’s front doors this winter, including the hot kitchens of the restaurant business. We’re pleased that you’re staying open and furthering the cause of delicious food in the world, and we want to help you keep your reservation lists high, even when the temperatures are low. Here are 3 tips to keep your restaurant business hot in winter. 

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Top 7 Restaurants You Need to Try During Chicago Restaurant Week

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Everyone can agree that Chicago Restaurant Week is delicious and for adventurous foodies, the tastiest week of the year is a great time to splurge on exploring the exciting and unique food right here in our own backyard. We looked through the menus for this year’s Chicago Restaurant Week, and came up with seven of the most unique restaurants we could find. Some popular flavors this year included basil ice cream of two kinds and a ridiculously extravagant junk food dessert. There were also various pates, including a burger topped with pate which sounds so decadent that we have to try it. These menus are making us ravenous and our countdown has now officially begun for this year’s Chicago Restaurant Week.

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