As spotted by TheDailyWhat, these are two burgers currently being offered by the restaurant BLT Steak DC:

(TheDailyWhat)

Would anyone buy a bottle of Corona if it didn’t come with a lime? Isn’t Stella Artois a lot like many other beers on the market except that it’s served in a Belgian Chalice. What about Guinness? Doesn’t the two part pour make it unique? And wouldn’t Crispin Cider be just another standard cider if it wasn’t for the fact that it has a ritual of being served over ice?

Rituals are what separate these products from their competitors. The ritual is what makes the customer remember and what allows for exceptional marketing opportunities. Marketing that can be so powerful that a customer who doesn’t get a lime in their Corona will ask for it to be delivered. So it’s clearly not about the beer and consequently, not always about  the product when so many comparable products exist in the marketplace. It’s always a bout the ritual and it’s always about the show.

Your bar/restaurant is one of many similar businesses in your area, and probably serves many of the same foods and beverages as your competitors. What can you do to stand head and shoulders above the competition?

Create a ritual and put on a show. It’s what you’ll be remembered for.

Who hasn’t turned their heads to see a sizzling szechuan meal with steam and smoke trailing behind it as it’s brought to a table. There is a restaurant near me that offers a signature Fondue dish complete with all the showmanship you imagine goes with serving this elaborate dish!

Then there’s the bar that also offer their specialty Smores complete with a large saucepan of chocolate served on a mini gas stove at your table with a flame to melt your marshmallows. Everyone passing a table with this dish soes a double take and asks the server what it is.

Take one or two items from your menu and build a ritual and show around them. Make sure these items are profitable and worth selling. Train your servers to always push your signature item and refer to them as “Murphy’s Famous Smores” (as long as your name is Murphy and the signature dish is Smores!)

So start today: Identify your signature items, train your staff in how to sell and serve them and build your marketing campaigns around these new items!

Taking advantage of the beautiful sunshine yesterday, I headed downtown for a bite to eat.

I found the perfect place, a restaurant with a nice patio with tables where I could enjoy the evening sun. Prior experience had told me to ask the server if they are actually open/serving food/trading before seating myself down. My query as to whether food was being served was met with a:

“I’m afraid it’s only the evening menu being served”.

Now, I’m not sure what’s wrong with the evening menu, or why the waitress felt the need to apologise in advance for it.

Was it that it was, in her opinion, overpriced and she was softening the blow before releasing it from her clutches? or was it that the daytime chef had gone home and that the evening chef is not the most able in the kitchen?

Did I look like I wasn’t the type of customer that would be interested in/able to pay for anything more fancy than an appetizer?

In any case, I took my chances and had a great meal.

There really was no need to apologise at all….

Heston Blumenthal, consistently rated as one of the top chefs in the world recently closed his UK restaurant The Fat Duck due to food poisoning allegations. More than 400 customers canceled reservations immediately, 500 past customers were said to be affected and the spin-off negative publicity might have done long term damage to his brand and business.

According to the Health Inspector’s Report:

“The outbreak continued for at least six weeks because of ongoing transmission at the restaurant. Such transmission could have occurred either through continuous contamination of the foods prepared in the restaurant or by person-to-person spread between staff and diners, or a mixture of both mechanisms.”

The incident will however leave a bit of a bad aftertaste as the investigation by the health board did find that some of the staff who also had contracted the virus might have returned to work too soon and the whole incident is estimated to have cost Blumenthal over £500,000 in lost business.

There are very few businesses that could withstand such an impact.

If you want to avoid food poisoning in your own kitchen, have a look at this information on food hygiene. It’s a series of articles broadly similar to the course offered by the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health for its Food Hygiene Certificate.