Marketing

“Microdistilleriers are distilling booze with some offbeat ingredients,” reports Christopher Lawton in The Wall Street Journal. Duncan’s Spirits of St. Johnsbury, Vermont, www.vermontspirits.com “makes one vodka from 100 percent maple sap and another from milk sugar.” Its founder is “a former anthropologist … who studied Southeast Asian hill tribes.” That would explain it. Also in this mix are Bardenay Distilleries, makers of a sugar cane-based gin, and Essential Spirits Alambic Distilleries, www.essentialspirits.com, producers of “a beer-brandy hybrid called Bierschnaps.”

[Read more…] about Maple-Sap Vodka

Zimmerman’s Brandtailing. “The biggest problem marketers face today is connecting advertising to retail sales,” says former BBDO exec Bill Katz, as quoted by Ellen Neuborne in Business 2.0 (June 04). He adds: [Read more…] about Zimmerman's Brandtailing.

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/02/dining/02PLAY.html?8hpib
Last November, PlayDine opened downstairs at Big City Bar & Grill, 1600 Third Avenue (90th Street). The space is used as a late-night lounge, but Mr. Lowenstein convinced Stephen Ryan, an owner, to try his fledgling operation in the daytime and early evenings. For $10, a child between 18 months and 9 years old may play in the space before and after a meal, for as long as his or her parents are seated in the restaurant. (Two children are $9 each; three children are $8 each, and tipping is encouraged.

[Read more…] about The New York Times > Dining & Wine > Children on the Side, Baby Sitters on the Menu

Mr. Propstra’s Burgerville. When the big, national fast-food chains moved into his neighborhood, George Propstra, founder of a Vancouver, Washington-based restaurant chain called Burgerville, knew he needed to do something different, reports Brian Libby in The New York Times. “We needed to focus on what we do well,” says Jack Graves, Burgerville’s operations chief, “and that’s our relationship with local growers and ranchers and dairies.” And so Burgerville, www.burgerville.com, which has about three dozen locations in Oregon and Southwest Washington, unleashed a parade of local seasonal specialties. [Read more…] about How to be different

The View-Master — produced by Fisher-Price — is a great way to display kids’ menus and specialty-drink menus, the company says.

May 23, 2004 — A decades-old toy made its debut Saturday at the National Restaurant Association’s 2004 Restaurant, Hotel-Motel Show.

View-Master, traditionally used to view cartoons or pictures of vacation destinations, has been embraced by foodservice operators for its versatility.

View-Master officials say Burger King uses View-Masters in employee training. Other restaurant companies, like ESPN Zone, use the seven-slide cardboard reels and handheld plastic viewers to display their children’s menus. Health-care institutions such as Children’s Hospital in Cincinnati allow young patients to take their View-Master menus home after their hospital stays. [Read more…] about View-Master offers 'reel' fun menus

Given their focus on customer service, it should come as no surprise that developing robust loyalty solutions has been a prime focus at Hard Rock Cafe. Beginning in 2001, Hard Rock began a concerted effort to get to know their most loyal customers. We really didn’t understand who our customer was, where they were coming from and what their preferences were because we didn’t have a way of tracking them …..

se the full article: https://www.htmagazine.com/HT/archive/0504/0504_4.shtml

More than 75 percent of 367 patrons of a restaurant here said they would be willing to dine during off-peak hours in exchange for discounted prices, according to a research paper produced by Cornell Hotel School Professor Alex Susskind and published in a recent issue of the Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly.

Two of every three respondents even said that they would be able and willing to change their dining time to earn such an incentive.

?Study results suggest that restaurant managers who do not take reservations may want to consider using incentives to increase business during off-peak hours,? Susskind said.  ?That strategy could result in both increased revenue and a more satisfied customer base, one that no longer must endure long waits for a table.?

Respondents completed questionnaires while queued up for dinner at this popular, casual-dining restaurant, which does not take reservations.

Other key findings:
[Read more…] about Cornell Study Shows Most Restaurant Patrons Willing to Dine Off-peak if the Price is Right

The Monterey Bay Aquarium , www.mbayaq.org, is “the prime mover” behind a campaign to convince consumers to accept “only seafood that is plentiful and sustainably caught,” reports Elizabeth Weise in USA Today. The aquarium began its campaign back in 1997, as part of “an exhibit on sustainable fishing practices” by creating a “pocket buying guide.” More than 3.6 million copies of the “business-card-sized” guide, which lists “fish that have been overfished or caught or farmed in ways that harm the environment,” have been distributed to date. “We’ll go to the fish market and I’ll whip out my little card, and say, ‘No, we don’t want to eat that,” says one card-carrier. “There’s always a better choice available.” Yeah, I’ll take the tilapia, please.

read more https://reveries.com/cool_news/2004/may/may_14b.html