Mike Hohnen

Coaching for personal growth, change and development

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19% of patrons in the casual dining segment are currently following the Atkins diet plan

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From www.Justfood.com:

T.G.I. Friday’s is to partner with Atkins Nutritionals to
offer Atkins-approved, carb-counted, menu items at its
restaurants. It’s the diet that just won’t go away, isn’t
it?

From this week, the low-carbohydrate menu options will be
available at the chain’s more than 520 US restaurants. The
companies said that 19% of frequent restaurant patrons in
the casual dining segment are currently following the
Atkins diet plan, quoting T.G.I. Friday’s own Diet
Awareness and Usage Report.

The foodservice sector has been gradually latching onto the
opportunities presented by low carb enthusiasts, but this
is the first time a restaurant chain has officially
partnered with Atkins Nutritionals Inc. The idea is to make
it easy for consumers to stick to the diet during eating
occasions outside the home (ever noticed how we don’t have
‘meals’ anymore, we have ‘eating occasions’ instead?).
Securing official endorsement is quite a coup for T.G.I.
Friday’s; phase two in the companies’ alliance involves
co-branding ready meals and desserts for sale through
supermarkets.

The ABC of Effective Employee Incentives

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I am personally a BIG FAN of Jim Sullivan – and my copy of his book ‘Mind Your Own’ Business is dog-eard from over use…
Mike
——-

?America?s most underutilized resource is recognition.? 
– Dick Kocenivich, Wells Fargo

Using employee incentives, contests, recognition and rewards is commonplace in our industry. But even the best intentions can cause indifferent results if your incentive ideas don?t resonate with the team you?re trying to inspire to perform better. Over the last five years, I?ve had the pleasure of designing and implementing employee and manager incentive and recognition programs for over two dozen of the Top 100 restaurant chains and thought I?d share a few basic guidelines and creative ideas you can use to measure, incent and recognize  improved performance among your hourly and management team.

Recognition is Different than Incentives.
The first step is to clarify the difference between employee recognition and employee incentives.  Both you and your team need to understand how incentives and recognition differ in order to reap the benefits of both.  Incentives are usually rewards that are promised in advance of a desired action; a bonus for exceeding a service goal on Mystery Shops, or exceeding a check average sales goal by 5 percent, for example.  Recognition, while it may also be financial, is an after-the-fact event. Recognition is often in the form of a reward, but should always include praise, either public or private when it happens. In other words, if you see it, say it. [Read more…] about The ABC of Effective Employee Incentives

Survey: Hotel fitness rooms need to shape up

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An new study of business travelers conducted by Lieberman Research Worldwide for Westin Hotels & Resorts finds that working out on the road is an excellent way to relieve stress, a powerful antidote for jet lag and good for your image among business associates.

However, many respondents stated that hotels do not offer adequate fitness facilities for travelers.

The survey of 300 business travelers titled “Road Runners: Working out on the Road,” illustrates just how important exercise is to hotel guests. For instance:

– 90% of travelers surveyed said exercise relieves stress on the road
– 60% of travelers surveyed said exercise helps alleviate jet lag
– 78% of travelers surveyed said workouts are a good way to get over a rough day
– 70% of travelers surveyed said that working out is a good way to bond with colleagues
– 53% of travelers surveyed said exercising is good for their image among business
– 62% of travelers surveyed said they check to see whether a hotel has a workout room during the reservation process
– 59% of travelers surveyed said that the quality of hotel fitness facilities is an important factor in their choice of hotel
– 69% said that a “state-of-the-art” fitness facility would favor that hotel in the selection process
[Read more…] about Survey: Hotel fitness rooms need to shape up

Order a meal for seat 24B

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High quality meals that you can order from your home or office and that are delivered to you ON the plane.

One of the most interesting first movers in this space is Alpha D’lish. Passengers flying on a number of Virgin Express flights from London, Brussels or Amsterdam can now choose and order from a menu on the Alpha D’lish website (up to 48 hours before their flight), which includes delectables like the ‘Fresh Start Breakfast’ (Bircher muesli with fresh berries, a Waldcorn roll with smoked salmon, cream cheese and chives, followed by a salad of exotic fruits, a Danish pastry and fresh orange juice) and the ‘Oriental Feast’ (handmade smoked salmon and tiger prawn nigiri sushi, a fillet of char-grilled salmon with cucumber, caperberry and wasabi. On the side a sesame noodle salad topped with lemongrass-skewered tiger prawns marinated in Thai herbs and mixed peppers).
[Read more…] about Order a meal for seat 24B

In a hurry? How about falafel and kebabs to go?

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Pasha’s, a new Mediterranean restaurant chain, opened its first two Miami-Dade locations last month.

There are Italian, Chinese and Mexican quick-service restaurant chains, so why not Mediterranean?

That’s the goal behind Pasha’s, which in the last month opened its first two Miami-Dade locations with plans for another before the end of the year.

Ellek has dreamed for years of finding a way to bring healthy and flavorful Mediterranean food to the United States in the form of a quick-service restaurant.

Pasha’s menu offers a collection of Eastern Mediterranean dishes that run the gamut from spinach pie and hummus to kebab platters and wraps with falafel or grilled veggies. The majority of the items are under $5, and everything is less than $10.

”The food from that part of the world has a lot of healthy components that fit well with today’s trends,” said Ellek, who is part Turkish and grew up in the Mediterranean. “We’re trying to do something that has not been done before.”

[Read more…] about In a hurry? How about falafel and kebabs to go?

Co-branding: Fast food finds strange bedfellows

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The latest trend in fast-food growth has to do with location. Myers is now the chief development officer for Church’s Chicken. He said one of the keys to growing the Church’s brand is making Church’s available to consumers in nontraditional locations. Of the 58 Church’s in Atlanta, nine are in convenience stores (or c-stores), where customers come inside after filling up their cars with gas.

“The original fear was that people would associate your restaurant with the sort of dirty job of filling up the gas tank or changing the oil,” Myers said. “But when you walk into a Church’s in one of these locations, there is always a clean separation of the restaurant from the area of your car. We have 145 c-store locations around the country.”

In addition to adding more convenience store locations, in the next three to five years Church’s hopes to become the Big Chicken on Campus. Church’s has stores near many schools but not on any campuses. In hopes of enticing universities and private contractors to carry the Church’s brand, the company has developed “Church’s On the Fly,” a portable product.

“There is so much competition for real estate these days,” Shumacher said. “If I’m an owner of a small Dunkin’ Donuts and I can either spend $300,000 on a location for a stand-alone store or spend $300,000 on my store and co-brand with Baskin-Robbins and Togo and move into a million-dollar location, all of a sudden co-branding makes all the sense in the world.”

[Read more…] about Co-branding: Fast food finds strange bedfellows

Carbohydrates: How low can we go?

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The furore surrounding the popularity of the
low-carbohydrate diet is one of the most fiercely debated
issues in the food industry at the moment. Seen as a threat
to the bread and potato industries, the diet has spawned
increasing numbers of ?low-carb? products, such as Heinz?
low-carb version of Ketchup, and Hain Celestial?s Carb Fit
range.

In an effort to fight back, the carbohydrate industry has
been keen to stress the healthy nature of some of its
products. In the UK, some bags of potatoes carry ?Fab not
Fad? stickers from the British Potato Council that
emphasise the low fat and salt content of potatoes.

If you would like to see how big the this low carb thing is becoming just try and Google ‘low-carb’

Golden Boomers

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These are the figuers for the US but the picture is very simelar in Europe:

Golden Boomers. “The 45-plus market is the new customer majority, ” says Lori Bitter, as quoted by Kenneth Gilpin in The New York Times. “This isn’t anything we are making up,” she says, “This is real. It’s huge.” Lori is a partner of J. Walter Thompson’s Mature Market Group, and if you don’t believe her, then just take a look at Census Bureau estimates that “roughly half of the nation’s population will be older than 40″ by the year 2010 … Right now, about four million people a year are turning 50,” and that’s a trend that will continue for years … in addition, more than 40 million Americans are already 65 or older.”
[Read more…] about Golden Boomers