I don't plan anything I don't need to plan. I don't make decisions until I need to make them and usually, I don't even seriously think about something unless I have to. For the record, though it has nothing to do with this blog post, I hardly remember anything that isn't mission-critical.

That said, in yesterday's tech meeting, we were at a place where we could project out to a stealth launch and a Beta launch of our new RIA products: spoonfeed, mediafeed and soapbox.

Spoonfeed is a web-based marketing and communication tool for chefs. It solves just about all the problems I encountered as a restaurant publicist. It's a closed social network for restaurants around the country to engage with each other and take their shoes off. It seems that many chefs are really attracted to this idea. On FB they have to be more on-point because they can't get away from diners or media.

It's got:

• A private social networking site for the restaurant industry -- giving, say, GEB, a chance to mouth off "publicly" but without as much fallout
• A calendar for charity event information where we store the paperwork and can loop in staffers involved -- because they always want to know what events are coming up and I always got sick of resending the paperwork a million times because the chef "lost it"
  
• A platform for collaborative communication so everyone knows what everyone else is saying without having to hit "reply all" -- cause most restaurant staffers didn't read the instructions on "reply all"
  
• A way for us to ask a lot of chefs a lot of questions (cause we need to ask little piddly questions like "what kind of food truck would you open?") and yet chefs get justifiably frustrated about receiving "too many emails, some that are a waste of time" in the middle of finding out the fish order never arrived
  
• A scheduled pinger for holidays so no one has to remember to ask if anything is going on -- cause no one ever remembers to plan far enough in advance for journalists since only journalists have editorial calendars to remind them
  
• And a few more bells and whistles specifically designed to make chefs want to visit the site each day -- cause they aren't gonna go online and get their marketing work done unless we make it rocking awesome
  

Mediafeed is our portal for media of all kinds. It solves the problem of tracking media requests and making sure answers are completed fully.

It's got:

• Search and filter functions designed for finding chefs and restaurants -- because a good search system can really make life a lot easier
  
• Structured communication tools to help journalists understand all the questions a restaurant has when they get a media request -- cause no one would ever believe the confusion that reigns when journos ask for a simple photo
  
• Structured distribution of the request to ensure it gets to the right person who is gonna make things happen, not just the person the journalist thinks they want to talk to (why, just yesterday I got a nasty email from a journo who was upset the restaurant owner hadn't responded to a photo request)

Driven by spoonfeed, Soapbox is a public-facing website that features structured, lifestream-style biographies for restaurant personnel. This solves the problems of 1) dated, dusty biographies that all contain a reference to grandma and her recipe for short ribs, and 2) the fact that LinkedIn doesn't really work for restaurant personnel and Facebook is too general.

It's got:

• Essential and extended information that answers the basic questions of employment, education, awards, stages, accolades -- cause Facebook totally misses the great opportunity of sharing chef stages and accolades in an organized way
  
• Structured profiles for various categories of restaurant staff, starting with the glamoury ones of chefs, mixologists, sommeliers, owners, etc. -- because each job has its own unique and compelling stories to tell
  
• Questionnaires that cover everything from inspirations, off-duty passions, philosophies, ideas on the state of the industry, etc. -- because we realized that although chefs need to blog to share who they are, they don't really know what to say (but we do!)
  
• The opportunity for chefs to tell their own story, as it unfolds, each day -- because one dinner can change a chef's inspiration and focus and his bio should change with it so we understand who he is today and not who he was when his bio got penned
  

So, we launch in stealth on August 6. What that means is that we'll invite in a bunch of free beta users -- all the Chicago-area people who have inquired about RIA in these last few months since we stopped taking clients so we could concentrate on all this work -- and all our friends from around the country. If you've already inquired with us via email, you'll get an invite. If you called me and asked for a meeting and didn't follow up via email, I am sorry I am quite sure I forgot (see last sentence, first paragraph). If you want to get on the list, email GJ at restaurantintelligenceagency.com and it's first-come, first-served until we hit capacity.

This will give us a few weeks to redesign the site (currently the design is based on RIA and our best guess how it will work) and make the necessary changes we discover with actual usage. It also gives users a chance to fill out the questionnaires and spruce up their profiles.

Then, on September 17, we launch our Beta -- and we'll get to see if I aimed right when I started building this bomb a few years back.