April 2010 Archives
Respect yourself, your food, and your community: it all adds up to your identity
No CommentsTo me, a chef's identity goes beyond who he is on the plate. It's also about his role in his community of fellow chefs as well as vendors/farmers. There are a few reasons why this may be the ultimate connection, from the obvious camaraderie to -- without being cynical -- the inevitable press bump.
When you work with fellow chefs on joint projects, you tap into their customer base (and they, yours) as well as give local press a way to write about you beyond the structure of your restaurant. Working in tandem breathes a little life into a story, dialogue instead of monologue. Now I am not referring to those huge "grazing" social events, where a dozen or more chefs serve hand-held food from makeshift tables. I mean when like-minded chefs team up and work together on a special menu. For example, two of my favorite Philadelphia chefs take turns hosting each other in their respective restaurants for a theme menu. This time, it's a "Night in Morocco," based on one of the chef's family recipes.
And when I am researching a story, I always go to the chef/vendor community for referrals. When the story is about vendors/farmers/food sources, I ask chefs. And when I need suggestions about which chef might work in what story, I ask vendors.
At Garden & Gun, every single chef I've used has come to me through insider referral. For example, when I needed a fried oyster expert, Mark Kelly, the marketing director for Lodge cast iron, led me to Chef Linton Hopkins who got two beautiful pages in the February/March issue and then, because Hopkins is so good at talking about his food, another of his recipes got a full page in the May issue of Esquire.
And when I was researching a story on heritage breeds, chefs Sean Brock and Bryan Voltaggio led me to a fascinating guy named Craig Rogers at Border Spring Farms who has since introduced me to several young Southern chefs and possesses such a wealth of knowledge and enthusiasm for his animals, I guarantee you he will show up in other stories.
Let's think of it in food terms: a referral from another chef or vendor/farmer is like using ingredients straight off the farm instead of industry processed product. Cooks up better.
Respect yourself, your food, and your community: strength through fellow chefs and shared vendors
No CommentsDuring the recent recession, there were all sorts of attempts to respond to (by capitalizing on) the economic downturn. Suddenly everyone -- even the fancy types -- sent out email blasts pushing macaroni and cheese, as though the only time we crave it is when we feel poor. However, despite some truly misguided attempts to commodify the economic climate, the most cynical press release I got was from a chef who decided to serve more reasonably priced food one night a week. The program was called "Frugal Fridays," a bad idea that probably sounded good to a bunch of people sitting around a table in some office.
Then I read something that seemed like very smart PR but also sincere and proactive. Chef Michael White announced that he was waiving Alto's customary $60.00 corkage fee and he didn't equivocate. No "fine print" stipulating before 5:18 on every other Tuesday or after 9:43 on the last Friday of the month. White kept it simple and direct: If you want to bring your own wine, Alto would waive its corkage fee on one bottle per table through September.
Sure he wanted business. But the gesture was responsive to the current climate without seeming desperate.
In keeping with that tone, White's publicist skipped the blanket press release and placed the item with one source. In turn, that writer devoted an entire column to White's decision, explaining in detail the depth and quality of Alto's 2,600 bottle list, including several background paragraphs about the chef's hospitality philosophy.
By providing all-important context, White's announcement became news instead of ending up as just another entry on a list of what restaurants were doing to drum up customers. This is a great example of a chef and publicist working together to maximize a story.
Respect yourself, your food, and your community: clichés kill
No CommentsThere is an entire strange world of people who watch chefs on TV for the wrong reasons: to see them fight or to see them fail. So I can understand how easy it is to get sidetracked into thinking that "conflict" is what makes for a good or long or interesting career.
To complicate things further, it seems that the whole "bad boy" chef posse is getting all the press these days.
But if you pay attention, I believe you'll see what a short game that can be. Although a recent James Beard's "Rising Star" chef was photographed with the requisite tattoos and stony beat-down stare (the kitchen version of "Blue Steel" from the film "Zoolander") this year, he's making pizza. (Yes, he's doing it for one of New York's most prestigious hospitality entrepreneurs. But still.)
And I will also point back to the Gourmet cover photograph of "rock star" chefs (their words) using kitchen utensils like musical instruments as early evidence of the editorial miscalculation that ultimately led to the magazine's closing.
There's a valuable lesson to take from these two examples: clichés kill. Based on British evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley's wisdom that "Sooner or later false thinking brings wrong conduct," here are three quick suggestions to take to heart.
Even though it might be hard to see clearly when you're dazzled by the spotlight glare bouncing off the chefs-of-the-moment, always remember one thing: beyond the gift of ever-evolving culinary abilities, the greatest quality a chef can possess is that rare combination of humility and pride.
- You're a chef. Wear your whites.
- If you're being photographed, don't do that phony tough-guy stare while crossing your arms over your chest, especially if you are wearing a short sleeve shirt and have tattoos below the unemployment line (a.k.a. your elbows).
- And do not allow anyone to photograph you holding a live chicken in your arms or with a dead pig slung across your shoulder. Seriously, paparazzi snaps of a panty-free Paris Hilton sliding out of a car aren't as humdrum as these poses.
It will last you a lifetime.
Respect yourself, your food and your community: watch your language
No CommentsOn a cold January evening in New York City a few years ago, I met two publicists at a restaurant being touted for its seasonal market-to-table philosophy. Looking over the menu, I read that there was "fresh" pineapple in the dessert section. When I asked one of the publicists about that, she waved me off and offered the notion that pineapple was in season somewhere in the world. True story.
When important culinary concepts fizzle down to mere press release-speak, it's time to think past overused terms and focus on real ways to talk about your food. Even when your heart is in the right place, stock words and phrases lose their meaning. So here's a good exercise to help define what it is you do. List all the hackneyed phrases you can think of and then have your kitchen staff try to come up with a new but sensible way to say the same thing.
Warning: Just substituting words as in paddock-to-plate or farm-to-fork isn't the point.
The exercise is meant to get you and your staff talking about what it is you all do. I believe that when the conversation starts in the kitchen -- when the people who actually have their hands on, and their hearts in, the food are encouraged to express themselves -- you will discover inventive and meaningful ways to describe your cooking philosophy.
- For farm-to-table, maybe you'll call it "connected cooking," meaning that you respect the source of your food as well as the end user: your farmer is connected to your customers with you and your staff as the critical link.
- Instead of nose-to-tail -- which isolates the act of cooking -- maybe "full circle" better explains your cooking as a vital step in the cyclical process of livestock harvesting and shows your respect to the animal.
Respect yourself, your food and your community: the golden link
No CommentsI believe that the best thing you can do to ensure career longevity is the same thing that will ultimately garner media attention: respect yourself, your food, and your community. When you honor that relationship -- when you stay true to yourself -- success follows.
Here's something I saw happen in my own city of Philadelphia: Several years ago, this incredibly buoyant chef named Peter McAndrews opened a dinner-only BYOB, thinking it would be a local joint. Although the price point turned out to be a little out of range for his transitional neighborhood, the place became a tremendously successful destination restaurant -- every-seat, every-night successful. Then last year, McAndrews opened a second business directly across the street: Paesano's, a take-out sandwich shop with a couple of counter seats and a take-out window.
The new business was true to his BYOB rustic Italian concept but also true to his neighborhood, including that new urban mix of hipsters, laborers, and trans-generational residents. As a result, he added a loyal lunch following to his dinner customers, each with their own price point, plus so much local press (Philadelphia loves its bread and melted provolone) that I rode my bike up there to meet him. A few months later, when I asked him to participate in Esquire's new "Eat Like a Man" series, he gave me an authentic red sauce from his wife's family recipe -- what Philadelphians call "gravy" -- and it was so right for the magazine, as well the country's mood, that a photograph of that sauce simmering away in a pot ran as the double page opening spread.
This year the chef opened a second larger sandwich shop and added 4PM to 8PM Sunday service at his new BYOB. He calls it SUGO (Italian for sauce), a fixed-priced family-style meal served with an irresistible come-on: "No menu. Just tradition."
To me, this is a great example of the golden link: when success comes because a chef is true to himself, his food and his community. The lure of fame seems to derail great cooks who decide they need to be famous chefs. But the truth is, respecting oneself, one's food and one's community can take you a lot farther. It can land you a double-page spread in Esquire.
Go big ... or what's the point?
No CommentsNow there's a promotion I can get behind! It has everything the media wants: relates to topical news, is unique, shows a human side. Love it!
Only, the relief they were offering was "reimbursement of the $2.25 train fare from O'Hare." What the WHAT? At first, I couldn't figure out if they were serious or if I was being Punk'd.
I suggested they go big with comping dinner for anyone showing up with a timely European plane ticket. Now that people are starting to come home, what better way to make friends with Chicagoans than comping dinner this week to anyone who comes in with their plane ticket from the snafu?
That'd make news! It is potentially expensive, sure, on the off chance a million people come waving their plane tickets and demanding free food. But it's also a slam dunk of a promo, a surefire way to garner some good press while simultaneously reaching out to a community and being entirely gracious. (Gracious always wins.) The expense of the redeemed dinners would surely pay off in spades.
I could hear the client on the other end of the email, "Hummmmm." And then the promotion died on the vine.
This is not the first time I have seen such things, which I lump into a general category of "restaurants who are afraid to go for the win and instead, end up losing out."
For anyone who reads this blog, my disdain for discounting probably is great enough that it reaches out from your computer screen and grabs your shirt collar. I hate discounts that cheapen a brand. And any discount that any restaurant does to simply wrangle in customers is gonna cheapen the brand (some brands, already cheap, can benefit from such things, sure, but again, I am talking about the chef-driven sector).
But hurtling out a discount into a great abyss and praying everyone who shows up "gets you" is far different than using a great promotion to get some great press and generate a huge amount of good will. That kind of activity doesn't cheapen your brand, it builds equity.
The thing is: it's gotta be big to make enough noise to make the whole thing work. If it is a watered-down idea, you are gonna get watered-down results.
The $2.25 train fare would likely result in the restaurant being ridiculed or the promotion being completely ignored. Dinner for just-home travelers could result in TV coverage -- you can see it if you think about it, the anchor interviewing the just-home traveler about what it was like to be stranded and how it feels to be home, the restaurant owner sound bite about "just wanting to welcome them all home from what must have been a harrowing experience."
Hell, there would be the possibility of a national round-up of great things the country is doing to welcome the stranded travelers home.
Going big has its risks, sure. KFC went big and ended up running out of factory-farmed chicken for their promotion. They looked pretty stupid.
But going big often also pays off, even if it flops. Because if you recall, that KFC promotion also got on Oprah.
Am I fascinating?
No CommentsThere is, apparently, a book about being fascinating. I am embarrassed to say that I will likely be buying it and reading it over the next few days. No, no, I am not interested in whether or not I am fascinating. I pretty much know that I am rather boring, or at least aspire to be.
But I will admit to wondering what makes certain chefs fascinating, and others, even if they are talented, not. Because really, some are and some aren't.
There's a test to see what your {F}Score is, so I took it. It takes a good deal of self-knowledge and also understanding of how one differs from one's peer groups to be able to answer questionnaires like this. And despite my years of experience taking questionnaires in the likes of Glamour, Cosmo and Self, I apparently still miss the mark sometimes. Case in point: Question 27 was I seek out excitement, novelty, and new experiences. I was clicking "sorta not me" when my butch chicken started her faux crowing. Hum, so right, I don't travel much but I do tend to hurtle myself into projects most people wouldn't.
The results of my {F}Score indicated my primary trigger is Vice. What the WHAT? I barely leave the house. And yet with further inspection, I was delivered this:
For the record, I also possess the Power trigger (specifically, I am not a power-monger but am power-comfortable) but not the Prestige trigger, and the thing I am least is Lust, meaning I am "an intellectual more than warm and fuzzy." You already know that if you read this blog.We're all occasionally tempted by forbidden fruit, and you're certainly no exception. You're curious, independent, and entrepreneurial. Irreverence is sprinkled throughout your conversations, and you probably wield a keen sense of wit. Maintaining your independence is essential; anyone who tries to force you to play by their rules might just end up losing you.
That devil sitting on your shoulder, whispering in your ear? What he's whispering to you is vice. When told you can't have something, or shouldn't do something, this trigger of fascination can take hold and make you want it more. (You'll try anything once, right?)
Using vice, you're remarkably skilled in tweaking traditions, changing long-standing routines, and updating even the most established norms. If you also possess the power and prestige triggers, you'll be more likely to bring your unconventional ideas to life as a pioneer, inventor, or creative force.
A little vice goes a long way, and overuse leads to unreliable behavior or erratic messages. Since vice is your primary trigger, you might want to increase your use of other triggers (such as trust or prestige), in order to establish a more consistently effective approach.
Now I am supposed to do things like: balance my Vice with things like trust and prestige to establish a more consistently effective approach, hone my power to gain greater respect, bigger audiences and more loyal advocates, and I would also benefit from infusing my message with a little heart and soul, dearie.
I am not sure how all this is supposed to make me more fascinating -- are you more fascinated after reading my {F}Score? But I get the concept of why it is important to understand, when it comes to a personal brand and marketing a restaurant.
Marketing a restaurant isn't about having the best food or the greatest room or the most hospitable service. That's all opinion and up for debate. You might love the room and its energy, I might find it unbearably loud and inhospitable.
Marketing a restaurant is, in fact, about being fascinating in some way. It is about standing out in the crowd and about somehow inspiring passions.
Too often, chefs tend to approach marketing with cold facts (we'll have real towels in the bathroom), opinion (we have the best fried chicken), or they just give up and leave it all in someone else's hands (PR firm, Groupon, whatever). All of that could provide some temporary boosts. None of that is a recipe for long-term success.
Understanding and maximizing what makes one's restaurant compelling -- fascinating -- is. It's a tough thing to learn and a harder thing to apply, but spending time and effort on figuring it out is going to get you a lot farther in success than any quick-fix marketing scheme.
Maybe this book is a good first step.
Be obvious
No CommentsA friend passed along Paul Graham's latest post about startups. In it, Graham notes that the most successful startups create products that the founders wished they owned. His example is Apple. Apple, it likely comes as no surprise, does quite well for itself.
We did that at RIA. The moment I realized I needed an online platform for media information that was available even when I wasn't, I was running on the lakefront, after hours. That day, a journalist called me to ask for a copy of a press release right then and there. "I can get it to you in about two hours," I said. "Can you get in a cab and go get it now?" she asked. I paraphrase.
SpoonFeed, our clients' new digital dashboard, was the second part of the holy grail of publicist tools. It was built because I kept on emailing chefs for stuff and they kept on ignoring my emails. They didn't have time, they said, to deal with all the emails. Of course, I happened to notice they were also Facebook addicts.
So, we started building Facebook for chefs. We rolled out a gamma version in December (I might have just made up gamma as a version, I am not sure, but if you know your Greek alphabet, you know that it comes after beta so, consider me clever).
SpoonFeed was great and all, but it was missing one really big thing: the ability for our clients to mashup on the actual SpoonFeed platform.
This mashup, let's call it The Kevin, was actually built because a client of ours needed a way to oversee what his chefs and mixologists were responding to and how they were responding. If he could just be looped into what was going on, without having to participate in group emails (chefs often don't get the finer points of carbon copies anyway), he could step in and crack the whip when needed but leave well enough alone if at all possible.
It took us three hard months of thinking, coding, reconfiguring and testing to get that right. But we did, and it is launching.
Next up, we are building in scheduling for Facebook, Facebook Pages and Twitter right in SpoonFeed. I am calling this The Ellen because, well, I want this so I can more easily post our clients' news on Facebook Pages and Twitter and have them see what I am posting. Who wants to ever have to remember to tweet? I don't. But if there is a platform for the restaurant (and me), as a group, to schedule stuff? Well, now, wouldn't that be handy?
Next up, The Mikey. The Mikey is a platform for chefs to upload pictures and ideas while working out dishes. A chef client of ours sort of thought it up when we were talking with him about SpoonFeed one day. He said he wants to connect in other chefs from outside the restaurant and allow for group discussions on what people are reading, eating and seeing.
The thing is, I find when we build stuff that is precisely for one person, we end up building the right thing. Because it is needed. And really, restaurants would do that when they decide who their customer is and focus in on that one person.
So often, restaurants tend to answer "who is your target audience?" with "everyone!" It is a recipe for disaster. After all, at 46 and struggling to be a recluse, I generally don't want to go to the same place as a 30-year-old hipster looking to be seen.
You get that part, right?
Do I end up at the same place sometimes? Sure. But that doesn't mean you can, or should, attempt to build a place that will essentially make both me and that hipster happy.
Deciding to focus on one customer is scary because it means letting go of the idea of everyone else. But if you don't, your message about who you are and when people should choose to dine with you isn't crystal clear. And that's what you want. You want to be the obvious choice.
So, my question to you is this: take away the idea of "my food is better/best" because that is your opinion. And then tell me: How obvious a choice are you? And how obvious is that to your potential diners?
Possible clue to what makes certain chefs successful?
No CommentsNote to all the "I'm too busy chefs" out there ... she said HE had called her. Not an assistant. Not a publicist. Him.
Amazing. Because last I checked Eric Ripert is a busy man, though I will admit it seems like he is sailing or hanging out at a beach in many photos.
But one can't help but wonder if this kind of persistence and sticktoitiveness, and not just his being generally hot, has anything to do with his continued media success.
Dear John Letter to Media Folks
No CommentsDear Media Folks,
You might find this shocking to learn but the PR agent's job is not to make you happy. The job is to make the client happy. It is unfortunate, unfortunately, that many times making the client happy actually means making you very unhappy. In the job, though, the publicist can't really care as much about that as you'd like -- or even as they'd like. They are too busy worrying about keeping the client happy.
And that is why they don't take you off their media list, even if you likely aren't going to write about their client. Because keeping you on the list keeps the client happy.
In fact, in case you were wondering, keeping a client happy could mean sending you information way too late. This happens because the publicist received it way too late and the client insists they send it, even if it is a moronic waste of time to do so. The publicist knows you media folk think it is the publicist, always the publicist doing things last minute. Really, it isn't. They know better. But they are not in charge.
For the record, misspelled words in a release could be misspelled because the client insists that the word be spelled a certain way, no matter what the dictionary says. This happens. Shocking though it may seem. And sometimes, the publicist is too tired to fight that battle when there are oh so many other battles to be fought. Like trying to explain to the client that sending hate mail to a reviewer isn't a good idea. Really, does a typo even matter in comparison to keeping you from receiving hate mail? I think not.
While I am at it, you should know that the desire to keep the client happy could mean having to call you to get some sort of follow-up answer. Often clients Have. To. Know. Now. if you are thinking about them. They can get mighty obsessed. No matter how much the publicist dreads and puts off that follow-up call. In the end, your ragefest about the unnecessary call is not as bad as living with the obsessed client. After all, you, dear media folk, can't fire the publicist.
In fact, since I am rambling here, I have to tell you a story. Once, back when I did restaurant PR, I was bidding on business and the potential client asked me about my follow-up with media. I let him know that my policy was to follow-up when necessary but to take a cue from the journalist and follow-up only when it was going to be useful to them. He didn't like that answer At. All. In the end, I didn't get the job because the potential client told me he wanted a publicist who would "pummel the media ... beat 'em up ... make them write the story."
I remember those quotes even though nearly ten years have passed.
I chose not to beat the crap out of you on behalf of that potential client, but it also meant I wasn't making enough money because I needed that job. Of course I was lucky -- I worked for myself and had no staff to pay. I could at least walk out of a meeting like that just broke. Not broken. Most publicists are not in that position and that's why some seem to be beating you up. The client wants it that way.
And then again, in the end, this blog isn't written for journalists, it's written for chefs. And really, I wanted them to read this because, well, they should know how some of the requests and demands they make go over in the real world.
Finding Connections: Keep it real
No CommentsThis continues our (nearly)
week-long
series on Finding Connections from Francine Maroukian. Francine
is a freelance writer who writes about chefs and food. Her bio is found
on our blog's "Pages."
In the February issue of Esquire,
you saw the results of something extraordinary that recently happened to
me. I asked a chef named David Katz (at Mémé in Philadelphia) to do our
inaugural "Eat Like a Man" recipe page. My editor wanted something
about winter grilling, and I knew the chef had a home grill on the roof
of his restaurant. I explained the parameters of the recipe -- must be
accessible for the home cook; easy on the exotica in both ingredients
and technique -- and told him I would need a first draft so I could test
it and discuss it with him before the recipe went to the stylist and
photographer. "Do you mean someone else is going to make my food?," he
asked. "Why don't I make it myself and use my own photographer."
I've wrangled recipes from dozens of chefs and not one ever asked me this before. I was so shocked I said I would check. It might not seem like an unusual request but believe me, within the territorial hierarchy of editors and art directors and photo editors, it is HUGE! The reason I did this -- the reason I actually took the time to go to battle for him -- is simple. I respected his request because he is connected to his food. Unlike some ego-driven chef who makes unreasonable demands (like the guy who told me that his wife wanted the Esquire byline because she helped him compose his thoughts for his recipe essay interview), Dave Katz asked in a modest, practical way. He was not grandiose or demanding. He was simply a guy who was concerned about how his food would look and even taste during the photo shoot. He didn't want some "stylist" plunking down a few sprigs of mint on top of his crusty double-cut Berkshire pork chop because she thought it looked too "brown." He wanted to be represented in print for who he is and what he does. So that's how I presented his case to my editor and my editor said yes, he would make an exception. Well, for the first time in my work at Esquire, a chef was in total control, making and styling his own food and working in tandem with his own photographer. Because I stood next to him while he cooked and took notes, we were also able to run the recipe in narrative form, just as Chef David Katz spoke it. It was a good day.
Finding Connections: Find a champion
No CommentsWhy do you think there are a rat's nest of chefs who seem to get all the national press? Do you think they are so much better than you at their jobs? If so, you're close. Their popularity is often linked to job performance, just not always their own. Most of them have publicists who are constantly lobbying on their behalf to editors who are constantly accepting that free meal ticket. It's the media's idea of a relationship.
If I sound cynical, I am. Let me give you an example. Last September in a travel magazine's "food issue," there was an article about where New York City chefs go at night. In the double spread photograph, I noticed that every chef was represented by the same publicist (with the exception of one guy who is ubiquitous in magazine pages). The "writer" is reputed to have taken dozens and dozens of free meals from that publicist and hence, those chefs. (Rumor has it that one of the chefs had the audacity to present her with a check on her umpteenth personal visit and she threw a fit. They are now feuding.)
But more than being cynical, I'm disappointed for all the quality chefs around the country doing solid work who can't get coverage because their restaurants aren't in New York City. Or when the New York food press-types come to visit their town, the chef may not have a plugged-in publicist to smooth the way. So how do you penetrate this white noise of hype? Find a champion -- and to do so, "Think global, act local."
Every town has a newspaper, every city has a magazine, and every region has a radio station. You know those food bloggers who are everywhere? One of them might be a good person. Everything covered by local press surfaces on Google. Doesn't matter where the link comes from and who knows where it goes. I've found some of my favorite chefs by inadvertently linking to their blogs, see "Get connected: Focus on your own food."
So befriend a local media person. Don't try to be all smarmy and slick about it. Just be yourself. Identify someone who seems as though he or she might be a good fit for your work. Read their stuff: does their opinion mesh with your own? Use your six degrees and ask around: does anyone you know them? Can you get a phone number? If so, give them a call and introduce yourself. Or send an email. Ask them to come to dinner and tell them why: It's a new season and you have early ramps, you have a new idea, a new cheese, a new farmer. Clearly state you don't know what their rules about media dinners but you would love to host them. If they can't come for dinner, invite them to come by before service for a taste. Seriously -- ask them to stop by. It's fun and insider-y, and I can tell you from experience that these things work. I've been writing about chefs for a long time, and I still love to stop by before service and get an advance taste of a new dish.
If someone takes you up on your offer of a media dinner, by all means come out of the kitchen and introduce yourself. When you send food to their table, try carrying one of the plates yourself. This is your chance to connect. And who knows, that connection may turn into a real friendship: it's happened to me.
Finding Connections: Focus on your own food
3 CommentsThis continues our (nearly)
week-long
series on Finding Connections from Francine Maroukian. Francine
is a freelance writer who writes about chefs and food. Her bio is found
on our blog's "Pages."
I'm not exactly sure when the food business got so crowded. But between the mad scramble to get known (chefs) or seem knowing (food writers and their editors), I feel like I'm at a party in a monkey cage. Television cooking shows mislead viewers (and thus, potential diners) about what constitutes cuisine and now anyone with a camera phone qualifies as a critic. However, food criticism is not easy because the ability to translate taste into words (that people can actually understand) is a rare skill. Not a lot of folks have it. But a lot of folks do it anyway (professional and amateur), and I'm as disillusioned by that as you are. I don't know what to say about the type of blogger who comes into your restaurant, takes a photograph of your food and then posts it alongside what he or she considers a review: "Awesome," or "Awful." Sure it sucks when anyone who can pick up a fork feels empowered to write about your food and can do so without the filters of print publishing (like fact checking and editorial discretion, however minimal). But there is a bottom line: Why let someone you wouldn't even trust to cut an onion in your kitchen define your work? "Fire" them and forget them. Don't respond, no matter what they write or how much you may want to defend yourself. Seriously don't do it. Because that exchange just hangs out there forever and can attract even more misinformed and belligerent people in one of those demented comment chains, where every fractured sentence is comprised of half CAPS and the rest exclamation points !!!!!!!, the grammatical equivalent of insanity.
A digression: Irresponsible food reviewing in the service of entertainment and at the expense of a chef/restaurant isn't new. A zillion years ago in Manhattan when cotton was high and cuisine was tall, I took a freelance assignment for the Zagat Survey. My job was to sift through page after page of readers' comments (covering the two hundred and ten restaurants that started with the letter "c") and then string together a bunch of phrases into one of those telegraphic-style paragraphs that pass as reviews. While the work only took about a month, the misery of the experience never left me. It was corrupt and heartbreaking to read those clumsy comments, always mindful that jobs and reputations were at stake, while under the corporate dictum to pick out the most "colorful," as though the more bizarre the statements, the better the review. Today the Zagat Guide is no longer relevant--although they try and try to hang on--and now, we have Yelp! Same issue; different millennium. I understand the legitimate concerns about Yelp! ratings, yet to me, Chef Craig Stoll at the great Pizzeria Delfina in San Francisco had the perfect solution: He printed his worst reviews on tee shirts for his staff to wear: "This place sucks."
Now we can sit around and drink and talk about how unfair this all is. Or you can take command of your cuisine in the simplest and most significant way: Connect. Get your message out there and do it yourself. Use every avenue open to you -- from Facebook to Twitter to Flickr to a blog and of course Restaurant Intelligence Agency -- and communicate directly with the dining public and press about your own food. Explain your own dishes. Post your own photographs. And if you think this takes too much time, perhaps you'll be inspired by something that happened to me. Since it's my job to find good food/chefs/products/ideas around the country, I put in a lot of research time cruising about online, reading city magazines and alternative newspapers (you can learn a lot about a local food scene), and linking to restaurant sites (a worthwhile place to invest money and time to establish an identity, but more on this later). Anyway, link-by-link I found my way to the blogs of Chef Lee Richardson at Capital Hotel in Little Rock and Chef Bryan Caswell at Reef in Houston. Now, I've never met either of these chefs nor have I ever been in their restaurants; I've never eaten any of their food that didn't come out of my own kitchen via their recipes. But I've still used both chefs several times in Esquire as well as Garden & Gun because by reading their blogs, I felt connected to their food. I felt their truth. Corny. But it worked for us. Maybe it can work for you, too.
Finding Connections with Francine Maroukian
2 CommentsThis week, we will present a (nearly) week-long series on getting connected from Francine Maroukian. Francine is a freelance writer who writes about chefs and food. Her bio is below.
I love chefs.I do. I love you guys. Long before I became someone who writes about food for a living, I was someone who served food for a living. And that was years before the cult of the celebrity chef. In those days, there weren't a lot of Ivy Leaguers who wanted to "pursue a career in culinary art" working the line. In the untelevised kitchens of my youth, guys cooked for two reasons: they cooked for money, and they cooked for love. (Oh yeah, and a few to keep their parole officers off their backs.)
Maybe I seem as naïve as one of those self-proclaimed "foodies," romanticizing chefs out of proportion. But I think I do it for the right reasons. You have my admiration because while kitchen life can be tough and unforgiving, there's still a sense of deep and abiding camaraderie under the right leadership. I like the fact that you can make order out of chaos, be controlled perfectionists and still find room in your plan to be spontaneous when the need arises. I like your catastrophic sense of humor that typically shows up when you get in the weeds. You work so hard and can still make wicked jokes when shit happens -- shit that would crush a civilian.
For the best chefs, the high-pressure situation they function under every single night fuels their creative imagination and makes them good problem solvers. And not just in the kitchen, but in life.
Today it is my job -- my mission really -- to bring the full expression of a chef's food to the home cook. At Esquire, I work with chefs around the country to adapt their recipes so that enthusiastic home cooks can actually have success with a dish that may be beyond their capabilities. I don't have a lot of patience with chefs who want to intimidate rather than inspire a home cook. And I've got nothing but love for those of you who still believe that food -- no matter how cerebral it has become -- is supposed to bring us together, not separate us.
Over the coming week, I will be writing about exactly that: connecting to the world -- from diners to media -- through your food. And I'd like to start a discussion with you about these connections. So, please, join in the conversation and let's find some answers to the questions you have about the media, about connecting with diners, about all those people taking pictures of your food or posting about your restaurant on Yelp!
I look forward to hearing from you and am happy to answer any questions you might have.
Francine Maroukian, who specializes
in recipe-driven kitchen/chef-culture stories, American city/signature
food packages, and culinary history of the country's site-specific
foods, is a contributing editor for Travel
+ Leisure, Garden
& Gun, and Esquire,
where her work includes "The Steak Almanac," winner of the 2009 ASME
National Magazine Award in the "Leisure Interests" category. She,
along with Jon Reiner and Esquire, is also a 2010 James Beard
Nominee for Magazine Feature Writing with Recipes for "How Men Eat."
Her essays have appeared in The
New York Times column
"Modern Love," Town &
Country's "Social
Graces," the collection, "What
Would MacGyver Do?" (Hudson
Street Press), and she is a contributor to NPR's "The Splendid Table"
on diverse subjects such as how to build a home cookbook library to
America's craft coffee roasters. She is also the author of "Town & Country's
Elegant Entertaining" (Hearst/Sterling), "Esquire Eats: A Manual for Men" (Hearst/Sterling), "Chef's
Secrets: Insider Techniques From Today's Culinary Masters" (Quirk) and "The Handbook of Style: Expert
Fashion and Beauty Advice" (Quirk).
Getting extra mileage from the customer newsletter
No CommentsMost restaurants have had newsletters since TTBSM (the time before social media). Now that both newsletters and social media are a part of your marketing program, it is important to use each as leverage to complement and amplify the other, and make your overall marketing more successful. Social media, like Twitter and Facebook, can get you more emails for your newsletter list and your newsletter can get you more friends, followers and fans on social media sites.
That's the main reason to integrate social media into your newsletters. Other reasons: It can save you time by putting existing content to best use, teach you about your customers, and connect your fans and followers to the community -- and brand -- you're building. Keep reading.
How to promote sharing
You have to make it easy for people to share your stuff -- which you can do with share buttons. Share buttons are those small buttons on most web sites that allow you to click the favicon for, say, Twitter, to share the content from that page on your Twitter feed. Easy, huh? Seems obvious, but a recent study by eMarketer shows only 13 percent of newsletters include share features that make it a no-brainer for their readers to share content on their social networks. The missed opportunity is astounding, especially when compared with these findings from a study by Marketing Sherpa: Adding share buttons to e-mail newsletters increases reader interaction by 25 percent, and creates a huge boost in incoming traffic from social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Obviously, this works, so ask your newsletter designers to add share buttons.
Here are things you can do to increase sharing:
- Link your social media accounts to your e-mail signature. Include a simple "call to action," such as "Follow me on Twitter" or "Sign up for our newsletter" to encourage people to connect with you on social sites. Hyperlink these calls to action to your corresponding social media profile.
- Add those same "call to action" links to your newsletter template (yes, in addition to the share buttons!)
- Finally, do a little cross-promotion with the audiences you have by periodically reminding your Twitter followers, Facebook fans, and LinkedIn contacts to sign up for your e-mail newsletter.
Tips for getting more mileage from your Facebook content
You know those lovely and unexpected swoons that occasionally show up on your FB fan page or come over the wire on Twitter? Ask the person if you can print their compliment in your newsletter. Have you recently received a fabulously informative link to newsletter-worthy information from one of your LinkedIn contacts or Twitter followers? Retweet it, but also share it with your newsletter readers, perhaps in the "Great Stuff I'm Reading" or "Restaurant News" sections.
Ways to mine your social media networks for even more content
Facebook fans love questions, so consider posting an update on your page that poses a question that will provoke answers made for your newsletter. For instance, maybe your next newsletter is timed for Mother's Day. Ask your readers what their Mom's best dish is and let them know you'd like to use the best responses in your upcoming newsletter. Or challenge fans to post a five-ingredient recipe for this season's hot ingredient and print your favorite in the next newsletter. Facebook is an audience hungry for (workday) distraction and connection; get creative with that, and you'll be surprised at the content you can generate.
Finding customers ... for the customer newsletter
No CommentsBuilding and managing a customer e-mail list is more complicated than simply keeping a list of names and e-mails, but it's worth the effort: A house list -- more specifically, a permission-based list of your customers who have self-identified that they want to receive information from you -- is an invaluable asset in all of your marketing efforts, not just your newsletter. Here are some dos and don'ts to help simplify the process, respect your customers' boundaries, keep it legal, and build your audience.
Don't dump e-mails into the "Send" field of your personal e-mail and hit send. It's considered terribly poor practice, even in personal e-mails, to not use the BCC function. And your customer e-newsletter should be coming from the restaurant, not you. Avoid both of these gaffes and lots of others, by following the next tip.
Do use a reliable e-mail newsletter service provider. Even if you have an in-house Customer Relationship Management system that organizes your customer contact information, a good e-mail newsletter service provider can take a lot of the hassle out of delivering your newsletter, improve targeting by segmenting your list, and ensure you follow the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, which set forth requirements for business-to-customer e-mails to thwart spammers.
Don't buy a list! This should be painfully obvious, but it's important to spell out: Your customer newsletter is about building relationships with regular and new customers. These are people who come into your restaurant, at which point you can get their e-mails for free! More importantly, there's no point in sending your customer newsletter to someone who doesn't want to receive information that way. Here's more good advice from Constant Contact:
Federal law recognizes your right to send e-mail to people with whom you have a pre-existing business relationship provided that you include a working unsubscribe link or instructions, however, be aware of the difference between your legal rights and best practices. Blasting off an email campaign to all of your past customers will likely engender bad will and get you a high complaint, or abuse, rate. First, forget about the customers who are more than one year old if you haven't emailed them before. To your remaining list, you may want to send a permission letter that reminds customers of their relationship with you. Then, encourage them to unsubscribe if they do not want to receive your future mailings. Your permission letter reassures your customers that you care about their permission, minimizes complaints and starts you off with a cleaner list.
Don't sign up people unless they ask to be signed up. Once more, with feeling!
Do remind newsletter subscribers that they signed up. Even if your customers do sign up for your newsletter, they may forget that they did so when the first one arrives in their box. Add a line to the top of each newsletter that reminds people they are receiving the newsletter because they signed up to receive it. Offer an opt-out option, in compliance with CAN-SPAM.
Do add a "Join our E-newsletter" button to your web site. If folks are coming to your web site for information, maybe they want more. Give them the option by providing a sign-up form for your e-newsletter. Be sure to include a link to your web site or company's policy on how it will and will not use information, so that people feel safe signing up.
Do ask people to sign up when they visit your restaurant. Slip in a sign-up form with their check and ask waiters to flag it for customers. Post a printed version of the newsletter in the waiting area with a sign-up list nearby.
Do add a "Forward to a Friend" button to the newsletter. If your customers dig your restaurant and the newsletter content they receive from you, they just might recommend it to their friends. Make it easy for them by including a "Forward to a Friend" button in each newsletter.
Do send your newsletter about once per month so people don't forget about it and start treating it as spam. If you send less frequently, you run the risk of people forgetting they signed up -- and then treating your newsletter like spam. Try to keep to a regular schedule, for instance, fourth Thursdays, so that your newsletter remains familiar -- and gets read.
Designing the customer newsletter
No CommentsHere's our best advice: Don't skimp on hiring someone to design your newsletter. Too often, independent restaurants figure they can get by on the cheap, by hiring a friend of a friend or an employee's kid who can do a serviceable job. These folks may be super-nice people, but unless they are actually working graphic designers, they are unlikely to create something worth sending to your customers. Designing your newsletter is a one-time expense, and it's worth hiring a pro who will do it right the first time.
That said, here are 10 design features most pros agree are essential to a well-designed newsletter.
Feature one "story." By story, we mean one focal point of each newsletter. It could be a story, video, photo slideshow, or multimedia, but it's one idea that you feature prominently and want to convey in that issue of the newsletter. Make it clear from the design that this is "it."
Provide two or three sidebars. Offer additional information, but think of those pieces as sidebars or secondary to the feature story. The design should set them apart from the main event, using placement on the page, color, size, etc., to distinguish them.
Use one main font. Keep your design elegant: avoid Wingdings. Seriously, there's no reason to confuse people by using different fonts all over the page. Keep it clean, and people will find your newsletter much easier to read.
Make it scannable. Use that font in different weights for headlines that guide the reader. (Note: This is one of those tips that a professional designer can execute blindfolded, but the rest of us can easily botch up. Hire a pro!)
Provide HTML and plain text options. Most e-newsletter service providers will give you this option; take them up on it. Though many of your customers will read your e-mail on Outlook, Gmail, Hotmail and the like and, therefore, will be able to see your HTML text (with formatting and links in place), some will read it on their mobile devices, not all of which display HTML properly. So use the plain text option, too.
Offer a web-based version. Another way to get around potential e-mail clients FAILS is to offer a web-based version of your PDF and link to it prominently at the top of your e-mail. That way, if someone pulls up your newsletter in their browser and it's all gobbledygook, they can click the link and be redirected to a nice PDF version of the newsletter on your web site (be sure to make the PDF interactive!).
Carefully select images. When people read e-mails, they expect text. So don't go overboard with too many visuals. Stick with just one or a few, and carefully select them to reinforce your text, not compete with it.
Don't use images for key information. Often, people's browsers default to block images. If that's the case, and you've used an image with no text to tell a story, it's highly likely the reader will miss it completely. Again, use images to complement, not replace text.
Test on various e-mail clients. Set up a test group of reliable folks with different e-mail browsers (such as Gmail, Outlook, Hotmail, etc.). Before you pull the trigger on sending each issue to your full audience, send it to this test group and ask them to be sure the images and text all display properly. You'll be glad you took the extra time to double-check.
Well-written subject line. This one may not seem like it belongs in the "design" section, but think about it: Your subject line is the first thing people will see. Write something that will draw people in, and test out various subject lines over time to see what seems to stick.
Tackling content for your customer newsletter
1 CommentHere are some tips for creating entertaining, informative and useful content your readers will look forward to receiving each month.
Don't just sell, sell, sellObey The 80/20 Rule. If your customers sign up for your newsletter, they'll expect some amount of sales talk. After all, you're a business and they're a customer. However, experts say customers will delete your e-mail faster than you can say "Best deal ever!" if your newsletter content is more than 20 percent promotional.
Some go as low as 10 percent!
Here's the interesting part: The rest of the articles should sell the idea of your restaurant, by giving readers more information about you, your food, the restaurant, or the menu; vendors, staff, other customers, and local business partners; and tips they can use at home, or ideas to inspire them. Put yourself and your passion on paper, and you won't have to rely on the hard sell to keep readers and customers.
Be authentic.
Give your newsletter an authentic voice. Above all, be real, whenever you are communicating your brand to your customers. The tone of your newsletter shouldn't be the tone of your PR agency or rep. It should be the tone of your restaurant, the tone of your own voice. Are you a playful chef, or are you funky, serious, edgy, energetic, familiar, friendly, or something else entirely? Think carefully about this before you write because tone can tell readers a lot about you.
In fact, your customers can tell a lot about you by your voice.
Get inspired.
Here's a list of the types of departments and articles you might consider working into your newsletter. Ask yourself, "Will this help me tell my story to people?" and "Will my customers be interested in this information?" If the answer to both is yes, you have a winner!
- "News You Can Use." Where can your customers find the fantastic smoked sea salt you use as a finisher? What's the easiest way to peel a tomato? This great post from Simon Payn explains how to develop content that answers the question readers are always asking: What's in it for me?
- Reader questions. Ask readers to send in their burning questions, and you'll pick one each month to answer.
- Industry trends. What's the hot ingredient of the season, and how are you using it on the menu? What did you learn at the trade show? What's the coolest technology available right now?
- Staff/vendor profiles. If you care about building local connections, your readers probably do, too. Expand their sense of community by introducing them to the people who bring your food to them.
- Personal insights. Chef loves music? Why not have a Top 10 song list each month.
- Personal charities. If your restaurant supports a charity, leave space each month to tell a mini-story about the charity. Bonus: The charity's PR person probably would be happy to provide you with the content if you just ask nicely.
- Holiday-driven content. Thanksgiving coming up? Your newsletter could offer up recipes and how-tos for a full-on Thanksgiving dinner.
Revise, rethink and revolutionize the customer newsletter
No CommentsI get a lot of restaurant newsletters. With little exception, they
pretty much tend to be advertising vehicles for the restaurant's events,
menu changes and activities with a seasonal
recipe thrown in. With little exception, I tend to delete them before I
even read them. They're full of so much sales pap that they seem like
just another ad.
Which made me think: Restaurant newsletters are
in need of a Heidi Montagesque overhaul. So this week, I'm gonna get out the scalpel and make some adjustments, mostly not minor.
But before we begin, we need to start with the very essence of the newsletter itself: audience. You must understand how the newsletter fits into your broader PR and marketing goals. If you don't, creating a newsletter would be akin to hammering some two-by-fours together without a blueprint. What are you building? Who knows. So take some time to understand how tools such as your newsletter, blog, Facebook, and Twitter build toward a comprehensive marketing strategy. Then hammer away!
Now, here are a few ways your newsletter can benefit your overall strategy.
1. Keep existing customers.
Here's the simple math: Keeping an existing customer is a heckuva lot cheaper than attracting a new one. Some marketing experts suggest it's 10 times cheaper, in fact! (Don't believe me? Here's a great post with some stats that back up this general claim.)
Keeping your customers requires keeping in touch with them in between visits. That's where your newsletter comes in. Like a Trojan horse, your newsletter should come riding into their in-box every month or so, chock full of interesting and entertaining information and -- oh, yeah! -- a reminder that you're there next time they get a taste for the world's most amazing sweetbreads.
2. Make it easy for your customers to recommend you.
"You gotta try this place!"
"What's it like?"
"Well, it's awesome, the most amazing food. Really great ambiance. You just gotta try it!"
Customer referrals are a fantastic source of new business, but not all of your customers will have the descriptive skills needed to adequately sing your glory. Your newsletter can be a tool for them, too, especially if you send it via e-mail. With your latest newsletter in their in-box, they're likely to avoid vagueries and instead simply type up a simple note ("Free next Friday?") and forward your newsletter to their friends.
3. Talk with your customers, not just to them.
Like today's newspapers, the vast majority of which offer message boards and comment sections as a standard alongside articles, your newsletter also opens a two-way conversation between you and your customers. Yes, it's an opportunity for you to share news and thoughts with them; it also should encourage them to talk back to you, either through a simple reply function or via an online message board. You might even experiment with interactive content, such as a customer survey, recipe contest, naming contest, etc. People love to be heard, so be sure to use your newsletter as a listening tool as well as a news vehicle.
4. Elevate your existing marketing efforts.
The beauty of the newsletter is that it doesn't have to be 100 percent unique content. Work in excerpts from your blog, use photos from your recent shoot, link to your web site. Use it to get the most from the work you've already done, while giving regular readers some fresh content to keep them interested.
How to save time
No CommentsWell, I'll tell ya why, it wastes time.
Most phone calls are like that. Instead of sitting down to write a clear email, people tend to pick up the phone and call. A lot of times, they'll claim what they want to talk about is "too complicated" to cover in an email, then they simply ask you for a referral or something else that, really, is easily dispatched via email. Any time someone emails you to ask you to call them, it is pretty safe to assume they are just foisting their lazy ways on you. My advice: call back when the only other thing on the to-do list is "teach the dog how to read" and not before.
Another situation that is ripe for fuzzy thinking opportunities is the meeting. You may have noticed that no actual work gets done in meetings. That's because meetings are usually just an opportunity for the meeting-caller to get some brain clarity. There are a few kinds of meetings of this type. The first and most obnoxious is the "let's-have-everyone-update-me-so-I-know-what-is-going-on" meeting. This meeting is usually painful, mostly because it is regularly scheduled. So, instead of an isolated flare-up, it is chronic pain. Chronic pain needs mind-numbingly strong medication if you wish to stay sane. I think I just suggested you take a Valium before your next staff meeting.
Another kind of meeting is the "I-have-a-problem-I-can't-get-a-handle-on" meeting. They are generally called because hauling everyone into a meeting is a lot less work than standing in front of a whiteboard, alone, and doing a brain dump on a project or problem. I am guilty for calling these kinds of meetings, I have to admit, because often my brain is so full of ideas I can't figure out what should happen next. In order to ensure that the staff time is not a complete waste of time, I at least try to do some whiteboard work before anyone walks in the door. If I can at least know what I want the end of the meeting to look like, I can make sure we walk out the door with something that resembles success.
A third type of "do-my-thinking-for-me" meeting is the brain-picker meeting. That kind of meeting someone usually schedules casually, so they can mine you for all your ideas. Usually, you can tell at the beginning of the meeting if the whole thing is going to be a waste of time or not based on how the meeting-caller prepared. If they didn't -- you'll know because they have no questions, they just want you to share your thoughts on a topic -- the meeting is going to be a waste of everyone's time. If, on the other hand, they show up prepared, this kind of meeting can be a great opportunity to help someone else. My advice: ask the meeting-caller to prepare an agenda and specific questions before you commit to a time. This forces them to at least drill down if they actually need your help or if they are just meeting with you because they think it somehow plays into their idea of success.
The real problem with all these scenarios, really, isn't even the time suck. The real problem is that people feel the gratification of accomplishment when they do any of the above. The caller gets the referral -- and it was easy! The person who calls the meeting gets updated -- and they feel so large and in charge! The problem-solving meeting caller gets the problem solved -- and it only took an hour (they forget that it is an hour per person).
All that gratification means they fall into a trap of doing it more. And more and more. Next thing you know, they need a staff person to handle their email because, well, it is easier to have them handle it!
Where marketing begins -- determining your difference
No CommentsMost restaurants, when you talk to them about their marketing strategy and how they position themselves, first thing they tend to say is that they have great food and awesome service. Great, great, that's you doing your job.
Now, what makes you different? To that question, they begin to answer a litany of tiny random things they'll do different than the next guy, like they'll pour by-the-glass wine at the table instead of plunking down the glass. Or maybe they'll have real towels in the bathroom instead of paper. If you've asked a chef, they'll rattle off the actual dishes they will make. All that stuff makes the experience of dining in your restaurant great, sure; and all that stuff makes up bits of your marketing, you are right.
But none of this stuff, really, constitutes a marketing strategy.
I mean imagine yourself at a party, meeting someone new. The someone you meet works at Walmart, a store you've never heard of. What would you think if the Walmart staffer started listing all the products and prices they have? It's impressive, sure, but you'd have celebrated two birthdays and possibly be dead by the time they finished, your eyes glazed over by item number four. And in the end, would you "get it?"
Instead, what if that person said "Walmart is all about being the cheapest store for anything and everything you could possibly need." Well, if you were a single mom, working two jobs, with two kids and living in the kind of rural town where Walmart started, you'd get it.
Applying this to restaurants: Chipotle is about gourmet burritos, Alinea is about elegant performance art for dinner, Chili's is about cheap food that everyone can think is "ethnic" and yet isn't scary. No one confuses these restaurants for being anything other than what they are. And none of them pretend they are something they are not.
Chipotle doesn't pretend it's Alinea, and Alinea wouldn't serve you a burrito the size of your head.
Most of the time, defining oneself isn't all that easy. We've always struggled with it over at RIA as we navigated the waters from my being a restaurant publicist to our selling tools for restaurants so they could manage social media and PR. But easy or not, it is crucial to drill down as much as possible so you can be something unique, and understandable -- thus memorable, thus successful.
Helping you determine what you are that is unique is really not something anyone could hope to manage in a blog, but there are a few tips and hints that can get you started:
1) Taking a tool from the Internet toolbox, make a list of all the keywords someone could use in a Google search about you, honing the words more and more so that you end up with a few that would ultimately deliver a search to your restaurant that excluded your address, name and the word restaurant. It's tough, try it.
2) If you're already open, ask five people how they would describe your restaurant to someone from out of town. Beg them to be honest. In fact, tell them they can't use any superlatives in their description -- so no "greatest" or "most amazing" or anything else. In fact, no qualitative adjectives at all now that I think about it. It's tough, but worth it.
3) Buy a whiteboard (oh, just do it; I hate office supplies too but this is your business, you can spare the 50 bucks for a big one) and start to jot down all those keywords and descriptions and erase the ones that could easily be applied to a bunch of other restaurants. So, out go "small plates" and "fresh food" and, at this point, "farm-to-table" and "classic cocktails" and a bunch of other things that used to set restaurants apart and now seem to be everywhere. Circle the ones that are pretty unique. Then, try them out on a few people and see what they say -- not your partner or best friend or sous chef, either, you need some more objective minds.
Your goal here is to have something that defines you and makes sense -- something that will influence other people's behavior, in your favor. And keep in mind what Ernest Dichter knew -- people aren't rational. They won't buy from you because it makes sense, they'll buy from you because of how it makes them feel. So ditch the laundry list of amenities and concentrate on how the unique experience you deliver fills a need that no one else can.
