Houston’s Berg Hospitality Group opens two new Italian concepts this week

When B.B. Italia Kitchen & Bar opens this week, Houston will finally get to taste the Italian restaurant that owner Benjamin Berg had in his mind when he first acquired the former Carmelo’s on Memorial near the Energy Corridor.

The path to B.B. Italia’s opening on May 2, however, wasn’t without its setbacks. Berg acquired the space at 14795 Memorial in late 2017 and reopened it a week after Carmelo’s closed on Christmas Day 2017. Along with his brother and partner, chef Daniel Berg, the restaurateur known for his B&B Butchers & Restaurant and B.B. Lemon renamed the restaurant Carmelo’s Cucina Italia with a big new menu and major plans for remodeling. That was in spring of 2018.

During that time Berg Hospitality Group was busy: it opened a B&B Butchers in Fort Worth and a new concept, B.B. Lemon, in the Washington Corridor in Houston. Carmelo’s, meanwhile, was looking to find its audience as it dealt with its renovation plans.

The Bergs apparently said basta, and closed Carmelo’s Cucina Italia in January 2019 with plans to reopen with a new concept and name.

“Daniel and I promise to reopen with a new and improved concept that we are confident will be received well by the community,” Benjamin Berg said at the time.

For the Berg brothers, B.B. Italia is a fresh start on their goal for creating a contemporary version of a classic Italian-American restaurant. Daniel Berg’s menu offers upscale takes on checkerboard-tablecloth Italian-American dining with iconic dishes such as shrimp fra diavolo, veal chop parmigiana, lasagna and spaghetti and meatballs. The menu is completely different from the Bergs’ Carmelo’s days.

A pasta connoisseur, Berg and his team are making all pastas in house daily. Pasta options include shells with hot Italian sausage and mini meatballs in a Sunday ragu; tagliatelle with veal Bolognese; linguine with shrimp scampi; rigatoni with spicy vodka sauce; fettuccini Alfredo; bell-shaped pasta carbonara; linguine with clam sauce; three-cheese ravioli in gorgonzola sauce with pecans; Grandma’s Ravioli stuffed with short ribs and glossed with a mushroom and Marsala sauce; and a 20-layer lasagna.

Other entrees: Eggplant parmigiana; chicken parmigiana; chicken with hot Italian sausage and peppers; Italian fried chicken with garlic and Calabrian peppers set on Italian grits; salmon piccata; Chianti-braised short ribs on whipped potatoes; jumbo diver scallops saltimbocca; and pork ribs glazed in a hot Italian cherry pepper sauce.

Starters and salads will include whipped ricotta with grilled bread; beef carpaccio; crab fingers sautéed in oregano, garlic, parsley and breadcrumbs; fried zucchini; fried mozzarella; prosciutto and buffalo mozzarella; minestrone; Caprese salad; roasted beets, oranges, fennel and candied pistachio salad; and antipasto salad with salami, provolone and cherry peppers.

B.B. Pizza, meanwhile, is a separate operation with its own substantial menu of 12- and 16-inch pizzas. And more: hot calzones, sub sandwiches (chicken parmigiana, eggplant parmigiana, meatballs, sausage and peppers, Italian cold cut combo, roast beef), salads, meatballs, fried calamari, fried zucchini and garlic knots.

B.B. Italia’s 8,000-square-foot space has been redecorated in a modern design with a dining room that can seat 100 and a 20-seat horseshoe-shape bar (the bar area also has booths and high-top tables) and boxwood-lined patio for al fresco dining. There are six semi-private and private rooms, too.

Berg Hospitality staff are lending their talents to the new Italian enterprise: B.B. Lemon’s beverage director Monique Cioffi-Hernandez has created a cocktail menu and B&B Butcher’s sommelier Lexey Johnson is rolling out an Italian wine list with bottles priced between $30 and $300.

Source:https://www.chron.com/entertainment/restaurants-bars/article/Houston-s-Berg-Hospitality-Group-opens-two-new-13803665.php

School of Hospitality Business Management receives global recognition

Washington State University’s School of Hospitality Business Management has received recognition from two global ranking organizations.

The school was ranked 15^th by the Academic Ranking of World Universities in hospitality and tourism management. The ranking, done by the ShanghaiRanking Consultancy, focuses on the strength of academic research in the social sciences.

The ranking confirms “the caliber of our hospitality faculty’s research and their prolific output,” said Nancy Swanger, Carson College of Business senior associate dean and director of the School of Hospitality Business Management.

The hospitality program, which started in 1932, is part of WSU Carson College of Business. The school has a worldwide reputation for hospitality and tourism research.

Swanger said she was pleased to see the school advance in both global and national rankings. Over the past year, the school moved from a 27^thglobal ranking to 15^th. Among U.S. programs, the school moved from a 9^thplace ranking to 7^thplace.

CEOWorld Magazine also ranked the school 15^th globally among hospitality and hotel management schools. That ranking measured academic reputation and job placement rate, among other factors.

Source: https://news.wsu.edu/2019/04/24/school-hospitality-business-management-receives-global-recognition/

How Brands Are Improving Customer Experiences in the Travel and Hospitality Industry

Technology has been steadily improving customer experiences (CX) across a breadth of industries, with travel and hospitality among them. But to truly see how CX marketing is changing how we vacation, consider how we now book trips. What once started with a trip to a local agent, who you entrusted to take your needs and wants—and hard-earned cash—and translate them into the excursion of your dreams, now begins with an interactive online experience where consumers can not only consider reviews from other travelers, compare prices, and even live chat with customer service representatives, but they’ll also get tailor-made recommendations on when best to fly, package deals to consider, and inspiring and informative marketing content on locales when they’re booking their trip on their own, straight from home.

Sounds good, right? But what exactly is CX? I’m partial to this definition from HubSpot, which looks at both the context of CX and what brands must do to create it: “If customer experience (CX) refers to the sum of every interaction a customer has with a business, both pre- and post-sale, the customer experience strategy defines the actionable plans in place to deliver a positive, meaningful experience across those interactions.”

So how have technology and customer-centric marketing converged to improve CX in both travel and hospitality, and what can brands learn about improving customer experience from their example? Let’s dive in.

The Travel CX Is Not a Static CX: Prepare for Dynamic Customer Journeys

Technology is changing everything, from the way we book trips to how we experience destinations on the go. Think about it: You get a week off, so what are you going to do with it? A few years ago, you would have called a travel agent and said something like “I want to go to Ireland,” or “I really like vacationing by the sea. What’s on sale in June?”

Today, you talk to friends. You read travel guides. You browse TripAdvisor. And then you start searching—online. Maybe the bleak winter has left you tired and uninspired and you’re determined to get to Hawaii. In today’s market, you could end up at a branded resort on Waikiki, Airbnbing a spare room on a farm on Oahu’s north shore, taking a luxury cruise through the islands, staying on a houseboat, or booking a B&B package with a car rental. From the way you learn about the options available to you, to the ways people experience activities, all aspects of the travel experience have completely shifted as a result of CX marketing.

In large part, the customer journey has shifted from a chance to pick a standard trip to an opportunity to design a unique adventure. And in this journey, the touchpoints are nearly endless for consumers to discover brands, learn more about said brands, and ultimately make a purchase or enjoy products or services the brand specializes in. In a nutshell: The customer journey is no longer static.

So how can modern marketers continue improving customer experiences online while leveraging the latest technology? And what are some ways to look at this process systematically and creatively throughout the customer life cycle?

As Aberdeen notes, “Customer journeys, however, are dynamic; customer behavior evolves rapidly, and so do the related journeys. Therefore, to keep up with changing buyer behavior, companies must have real-time visibility into customer journeys. Only then will firms deliver truly omni-channel interactions.” Hospitality and travel brands have found ways to gather real-time customer data and create feedback loops that feed that information into the CX delivery system. Typically, that starts with effective technology-driven data gathering to power a dynamic customer journey.

In hospitality marketing, strong data can make the difference between attracting a stampede of customers and struggling to fill rooms. Beverly Jackson, MGM Resorts International‘s VP of social and content strategy, wanted to find out if her ads resonated with audiences on social media. She went through marketing insight company TrackMaven, which joined forces with Skyword in late 2018, to get to the bottom of it.

In an interview with TrackMaven, Jackson said: “People come to our resorts not to have a bad time, people come to our resorts to be entertained, to be wowed, to be inspired, to be delighted. The opportunity to retell their stories on social media, the opportunity to inspire them to have great fun and experiences and make lifelong memories, that’s the absolute best part of my job every day.”

In part, Jackson and her team seize that opportunity by using customer data to inform a smart, competitive CX marketing strategy. The company also works to meet the needs of different tiered properties, with ad effectiveness being one area they wanted to explore.

“What we wanted to really see was whether or not our television commercials were resonating on social with our audiences,” she explained. “What we were able to do with TrackMaven was to go in and see the ads we set out on Facebook, (and determine) what was the role of that ad in terms of bringing new customers into the mix … we were able to see in Vegas a couple of months that we have a competitor in the marketplace who, for the first time, was going big into video. TrackMaven was able to show us how our video campaigns, even at the organic level, were resonating in a way that their paid campaign was not. And that’s a very powerful piece of data for us.”

MGM’s inquiry showcases a critical reality in today’s complex environment: Things happen quickly, so quickly that without real market data, you’re at a disadvantage. By using data-gathering and analysis technology, you’ll be able to better understand how effective your campaigns are and narrow in on what steps you can take next to better reach your customers.

Technology Helps Solve Common Complaints

Vacations are meant to be a great escape, not a stressful event. Yet, too many of us have wrestled with the horrors of bad travel—delayed flights, screaming baby seatmates, hotels with bedbugs, poor customer service across the board—to not be wary when booking, or even resort to praying the vacation gods will smile down on us for this one, much-needed trip.

But times are a-changin’, as CIO notes, “For an industry that has been resistant to incorporating evolving technology into the mix, travel and tourism is ripe for disruption that will touch on every phase of the customer experience, from arranging plans to discovering new destinations with a local perspective. Service providers will also benefit, but it ultimately depends on all stakeholders embracing the valuable technology ecosystems being touted by the newer entrants to the industry and their plans to shake the foundations of the tourism industry.”

Currently, the travel and hospitality industry is improving customer experiences by using emerging technology to address common complaints. Hotel guests who don’t want to have to call the concierge for a wake-up call or to get room service, for instance, can simply ask the Alexa device in their hotel room or make a request using a hotel app on their smartphone.

Disney made waves with its MyMagic+ band, which not only made it easier for guests to access their whole itinerary and pay in the parks, but the technology created a data collection feedback loop for the brand to take advantage of as well.

The goal of the tech team who developed the MagicBands was to “root out all the friction within the Disney World experience,” according to Bernard Marr at Forbes. Some ways the bands leverage personalized data to build these seamless experiences include having restaurant hosts greet you and your family by name or having your child’s favorite Disney character meet them in line for a certain ride.

By putting technology at the heart of individual touch points, resorts and other travel businesses are getting foundational aspects of their CX right.

Liz Alton is a technology and marketing writer, and content strategist, for Fortune 500 brands and creative agencies. Her specialties include marketing, technology, B2B, big data/analytics, cloud, and mobility. She’s worked with clients including Adobe, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Twitter, ADP, and Google. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and an MBA. She is currently pursuing a master’s in journalism from Harvard University.S

As CX marketing moves to the forefront of business models, companies need better strategies for deploying technology that improves the customer experience. Gathering data, eliminating chaos in the customer journey, and taking a touch point application on implementation can turn technology into a powerful asset. For marketers, there are opportunities at all stages—prospect, buying in, experience, and post-purchase—to integrate technology and provide a personalized customer experience, which can help your brand earn stripes in the eyes of prospective travelers and truly stand out in this competitive industry.

Source:https://www.skyword.com/contentstandard/creativity/how-brands-are-improving-customer-experiences-in-the-travel-and-hospitality-industry/

Smart Hospitality Industry Business: Impressed Guests Are Return Guests

NATIONAL REPORT—Any hotel manager who has tried to increase year-on-year sales is familiar with the marketing investment needed to achieve even modest incremental growth. And always, those marketing dollars could also be well spent on facility repairs and upgrades or a range of other business needs.

A cost-effective option to pursue increased sales while holding down costs is a renewed focus on impressing and delighting the guests you already have. Happy guests often make a point of returning again and again and recommending your location to family and friends, which can increase demand and revenues with minimal new investment.

The best way to impress guests is to focus on what’s most important to them—cleanliness. A recent study indicated that, for a whopping 97% of hotel guests, clean rooms and common areas were the single-most important factor in assessing the quality of their stay.*

A great way to ensure your hotel is clean is to provide your cleaning staff with the machines to address any kind of mess, whether high or low, in tight or open spots, during busy or quiet times or near or far from electrical outlets. The solution? Making sure your cleaning toolkit includes cordless upright vacuums, backpack vacuums and wide-area vacuums.

Cordless upright vacuums allow cleaning staff to easily and safely focus on efficient and powerful cleaning, even in crowded environments. Staff members don’t need to constantly find outlets, and guests don’t need to avoid dangerous cords.

The new Sanitaire^® QUICKBOOST™ cordless upright offers the added benefits of operating for up to 47 minutes on a single charge** and at less than 70 dBA. With Carpet and Rug Institute (CRI)-rated cleaning performance, the lightweight and agile QUICKBOOST™ easily tackles both day-to-day and emergency 24/7 cleaning.

Backpack vacuums offer unique comfort and convenience advantages. Cleaning staff don’t need to push them around, freeing them to easily clean cluttered spaces, tight spaces, stairs, drapes and high-up spots like ceiling vents, to name a few. And when a backpack vacuum is lightweight, its even distribution across an employee’s frame makes it almost incomparably easy to transport and operate. The CRI-rated and LEED-qualified Sanitaire^® TRANSPORT™ QuietClean^® backpack vacuumweighs less than 12 pounds and includes a comfortable harness.

For larger, open areas like ballrooms, banquet rooms, conference rooms and lobbies, debris is both widely dispersed and easy to spot across large interior spaces. Delight your guests with dirt-free floors that were cleaned in a fraction of the time it would take with a traditional vacuum.

Wide area vacuums can cut cleaning time in half, especially if they include the right features. The Sanitaire^® SPAN™ Wide Track^® vacuum has a two-and-a-third-ft.-wide (28-in.) cleaning path for maximum efficiency. A 60-ft. cord and seven-gallon dust bag mean minimal stopping and starting. And most importantly for your guests, the SPAN™ wide area cleaner is CRI rated, ensuring a best-possible clean.

Source:https://www.hotelbusiness.com/smart-hospitality-industry-business-impressed-guests-are-return-guests/

7 work management best practices for the enterprise

The new, always on, always connected, digital and social world provides amazing opportunities for smart marketers to develop, test, and launch outreach programs, and generate results in far less time than it would have taken in years past.

As companies race to digitize work, they’re too often doing it piece by piece rather than with a holistic view. One department adopts an application here and another department adopts a different application there – all without giving proper attention to how these different pieces of work come together across the entire enterprise.

Put another way, while digitization has brought seemingly infinite possibilities, it has also brought new pressures that today’s organizations are not equipped to handle. Pressures that add up to create what we might call the digital work crisis.

New tools enable us to gather more information and work faster, but they also add to the activities we have to track. As a result, it’s no longer enough to only manage individual projects. We must also manage the fabric of work itself, especially at the enterprise level.

We’re talking about the difference between project management and work management.

What’s the distinction?

Project management is about managing a set of initiatives, each with a start and end date.

Work management includes these initiatives, but it also extends beyond them to include all work across the enterprise at every level.

Work management gives the extra insight that enables knowledge workers to execute on deliverables, managers to execute on projects, VPs to execute on objectives, and executives to execute on growth. It also enables everyone at each level to see how their work rolls up into the company goals.

This requires new processes and technologies, including a system of record for work. Here are seven best practices to implement such a system – and some stories of customers making strides.

1. Find one place to manage work

More than anything, a system of record for work must show activity across all tasks, content, and conversations so each person can see at a glance all the work that touches them. This brings transparency to priorities, work progress, resources, and outcomes to empower you to orchestrate enterprise work with the precision and certainty you run the rest of your business. In this way, the system of record for work diminishes the pressure of the digital work crisis. For instance, ATB Financial implemented such a system and saw a 30% increase in productivity – with five times the information to track – and reduced the cost to manage a job by 60%.

2. Build for people

To fully address the problems that arise from the digital work crisis, all processes and technologies should be familiar and intuitive, able to effortlessly connect every team and organization. Of course, people who regularly use the system must have the power to configure settings to their liking. With front-line users in the business engaged, you’ll have the ability to build cross-functional, connected workflows across an organization in motion. After implementing this system of record for work, Fender reduced time spent in meetings by 30–40%, and project managers eliminated two hours of daily busywork while significantly improving project visibility. That’s what can happen when the tech is built for people rather than getting in the way of people.

3. Keep using what you have

When the number of possible apps out there can be overwhelming, work management should connect all your technology across the company, allowing information and processes to flow seamlessly across teams, departments, systems, and locations. It should save valuable time through automation and multiply the value of your other platforms and systems as they connect with the platform to amplify productivity.

4. Move at a new pace

A true system of record for work brings together collaboration, content, and tasks throughout the lifecycle of work. This means the platform must be flexible enough to keep pace with constant technological change, including the tech of tomorrow. On this front, Citrix improved collaboration with 40 task owners across multiple organizations and teams that were evolving their technology needs, all while seeing a 50% reduction in time spent during compliance meetings.

5. Optimize for safety and security

Built-in security and compliance measures allow you to confidently audit your work, ensuring you maintain the enterprise-level control you need to safely operate in the digital economy. Put simply, there are certain tasks you don’t want visible to everyone in the company, especially if the tasks contain financially sensitive information. A system of record for work must be flexible enough to keep such information secure from those who shouldn’t access it.

6. See everything

The executive team must be able to see everything that’s happening across the company. This doesn’t mean that they will need to micromanage – In fact, just the opposite. It means that they will be able to see and deliver the results of the work that employees are doing so that they can pivot company strategy accordingly. Trek Bicycle achieved global collaboration and company-wide project alignment and then regained 30% of their time for innovation and improvement, after implementing work management.

7. Measure anything

The platform should contain a deep record of all work while delivering analytic-driven insights that empower you to analyze and optimize everything you do. Because you can measure anything, managers can see the results of knowledge workers, VPs can see the results of managers, and executives can see the results of VPs. Everything rolls up into the company goals so that everyone knows how the company is doing when it comes to fulfilling their vision.

With these measures firmly in place – both on the process and technology front – companies pave the way for full control over what’s to come and unifying work across the enterprise. In this way, they’ll effectively address the problems that surface from the digital work crisis, enabling a unified and streamlined approach to work management across the enterprise.

By: Heidi Melin – Source: https://diginomica.com/7-work-management-best-practices-enterprise/

Why Happy Employees Matter Just as Much as Happy Customers to Your Company’s Bottom Line

Who is more important to an organization: customers or employees? originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.

Which comes first, the chicken or the egg … the customer or the employee? However this question is debated, there is a clear answer, but perhaps not the answer you are thinking.

ARGUMENT: The Customer is King:

If a business does not have a source of revenue, it will fail. No surprise there. This is an absolute whether it is a corporation, sole proprietorship, non-profit (foundation or charity), religious organization, e-commerce, or even a government entity. A business needs to have a source of revenue to pay the bills, invoices, employees, and expansion, etc. Customers support that. Without revenue, you cannot hire or support employees. But can an organization have hundreds or thousands of employees but little to no revenue and stay in business? Hasn’t Facebook and many other start-ups done that? Yes, but at some point investors need profits or they pull their funding which translates into a need for “customer comes first” or “build it and they will come” mentality (ie: Great products = Customers = Profits) Don’t customers need to receive excellent products and services in order to open their wallets? Of course yes, but who is going to provide them this exceptional product or service? Employees of course. But what happens if the employees are miserable in their jobs? How will this affect morale, innovation and customer relationships? Does it translate into a great product and/or service? Does it make sense to say, “build it and they will come?” Perhaps for Apple and their newest iPhone, but for the rest of us, it is not that simple.

One can argue that customers are more important than employees because without revenue, no business even a non-profit (Charities have 3 months funding in reserve) will not survive. A VC funded business will eventually dry up without revenue/customers. When the customer stops taking out their wallets, employees get laid off and a business teeters on the brink of filing for bankruptcy or closing. The customer is king!ADVERTISING

ARGUMENT: Employees Come First

There are millions of websites that run on auto-pilot or have evergreen contentwhere employees are not needed to maintain the page. An example might be a site like Ebay or Amazon where you don’t need employees to run a business. But we are looking at businesses that have employees who have direct contact with customers. How important are they, really? Can’t business owners simply hire new bodies as the old ones exit through the backdoor?

Happy employees tend to exhibit their enthusiasm when interacting with customers. How employees are treated, or the atmosphere of the internal culture, will dictate how your employees feel. Attitude is tied to an employee’s performance and is transformed into the quality of their work. Ultimately what is felt and experienced by customers from employees, turns into a decision to return back to your business or visit a competitor (assuming there is nothing wrong with the product itself and your business is not the only business selling a particular product).

REAL LIFE CASE: Happy vs. Unhappy Employees

In early 1994, Continental Airlines’ culture was toxic. Employee moral was virtually dead and the company experienced ten CEOs in ten years’ time. The low morale translated into being ranked last in every measurable airline performance category, and the airline was on the verge of its third bankruptcy. Then, Gordon Bethune took over as President in October of 1994. (In 1996, Bethune became the CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors.) Bethune changed the culture of Continental by changing the culture starting at the top, the Executive Floor at the Corporate Headquarters. With a new “open door” policy, he eliminated company restricted access to the 20th floor, the Executive Floor, that could only be accessed by Senior Vice-Presidents with a key card. Security had patrolled the floor to remove any employee who was not a VP. That stopped and he removed key-card-only access and invited any employee to access to the floor. He fired 39 senior VPs who had trouble adjusting to this new “employees first” mantra. By looking inside, at the core of Continental’s culture, and starting with themselves, he transformed the airline from ranking dead last in every customer service ranking, to winning more J.D. Powers and Associates awards for Customer Service than any other airline in the world. The stock price rose from $2 a share to over $50 a share and the company was ranked as one of the top 100 companies to work for by Fortune Magazine.

Yes, there are unhappy employees at companies that generate profits but this will always be a short-term gain. If employees are not putting their hearts into their work, service can’t help but suffer, and innovation is repressed, killing any chance for the product to evolve and satisfy the customer’s growing needs. This is why every business owner should look at themselves and ask, “Are my employees feeling good about where they are?” Managers should be asking themselves the same question. Are your employees happy? Change must come from the inside if change is to take place and morale is to climb. This is true with all of us. Are you performing at your best when you are stressed, down and out or feeling blue inside? Chances are the answer is no. Controlling how an employee feels is in direct correlation to how happy a customer feels about their experience and whether they return to you or go to a competitor.

So which is the answer? Your customers are your lifeline. They pay the bills, salaries, and provide the resource needed for infrastructure, like expansion. Happy employees put their hearts into their work and can produce innovative ideas, products, and services which benefit both customer and company.

With unhappy customers and unhappy employees or with happy customers and happy employees, either way you slice it, the answer appears to derive from a cyclical process. How can we say which is more important? Each has their own unique qualities that are important, no, critical to the big picture and success or failure of the company.

When it comes down to it, we have come full circle and are back to asking what we first asked, which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Which is more important to an organization, the customers or the employees? To answer the question, lets think outside the box.

Who or what is the force to which we can turn to and say, “Without ______ (fill in the blank)” both customer and employee are either happy or unhappy? That force sets the course, tone and culture of the business as the “Captain of the ship”. This is the person setting the course for both customer and employee satisfaction and that person is your most senior executive, the President. Your senior leadership, specifically, the #1 person in charge at the top sets the tone for how happy or miserable both your customers and employees are. It is the leader who determines, even dictates the culture of the company. Without the Captain of the ship directing the culture by his or her own actions and where the team can see his/her actions in play, the question will pretty much remain a debate. It is an inside force leading both employee and customer. That inside force is the leader of the business, the CEO, the President, the owner. Employees and customers are both affected by how leadership runs the company by virtue of the product or service that the customer receives, which generates recommendations and more business, even repeat business (see Continental example above). Mr. Bethune changed the culture of Continental by setting a new course and the employees at the time were either with him or against him. You can conclude where 39 Vice-Presidents stood when he told them that in order to change to a profitable company, they needed to change the culture. I guess they ended up standing in the unemployment line.

When a company does not have to tell its customers why they are the best in their market, and it is naturally a business we gravitate to because we feel good about paying the company because the product is very good and the customer service is very good, we can conclude that employees have put their heart and soul in a great product, service and company. The employees radiate and feel it, the customers experience it and, the company benefits from all of it.

Source: https://www.inc.com/quora/why-happy-employees-matter-just-as-much-as-happy-customers-to-your-companys-bottom-line.html

Eight Ways NOT to Respond to a Whistleblower Report (and Three Ways You Should)

What hotel or restaurant veteran hasn’t heard the phrase “time to lean, time to clean”? We ensure our properties are spotless inside and out, maintain dress codes and scripted phrases for every interaction, and I would challenge any high-fashion magazine cover model to look more polished than a GM walking through their lobby or dining room to greet a VIP guest.

Who’s afraid of Google?

Google, whose mantra used to be ‘Don’t be evil’ (until it dropped it for the motto ‘Do the right thing’), is almost omnipresent in our lives these days. We use it for all sorts of online searches, whether it’s trying to access arcane information or find our way from A to B.

Duty system can promote healthier attitudes towards alcohol

The ALMR has responded to HM Treasury’s consultation on alcohol structures encouraging the Government to adopt an innovative alcohol duty system that encourages products to be sold and consumed within the supervised environment of pubs, bars and restaurants.

HM Treasury has been consulting on new bands for cider, perry and still wine to encourage incentives for the production and consumption of lower strength products. The ALMR argues that this would provide greater choice for the sector’s customers and support industry initiatives to facilitate healthier lifestyles.

The organisation has also highlighted future opportunities to reform the duty system, either through a revision of the current EU Directive or post-Brexit. This could include differential duty rates, allowing lower duty to be charged on drinks sold through the on-trade.

ALMR Chief Executive Kate Nicholls said: “New bands for lower-strength wines, ciders and perries could reduce costs for both producers and retailers and help stimulate demand for high quality on-trade drinks. Brexit provides the opportunity for a more creative look at the duty regime to further incentivise innovation.

“We have evidence to show that lower-strength products are predominantly consumed in the supervised environment of a pub or restaurant. If the Government is serious about promoting healthier attitudes towards alcohol, a tactic would be to promote responsible and supervised consumption within our venues.

“High quality products that come with a lower strength and reduced price tag could help precipitate a shift in drinking habits that aids businesses and supports the Government’s plans to promote healthier lifestyles.”

Source: http://www.hospitalityandcateringnews.com/2017/06/duty-system-can-promote-healthier-attitudes-towards-alcohol/

1,190 Independent Restaurant Owners Share Their Thoughts on Over 100 POS System brands

RestaurantOwner.com released the 2017 POS Survey Report today. The report summarizes input gathered from 1,190 independent restaurant owners from around the world regarding over 100 different brands of POS systems, focusing on several critical aspects including cost, installation and support experience, and features. The results of this survey provide unique insight into the POS system market and emerging trends, all of which are valuable to independent restaurant owners.

The average cost for a restaurant POS system has notably decreased since 2012. In 2012, the average expenditure for a POS system was just over $18,000, as opposed to $13,344, currently.

The top seven POS solutions were Aloha POS, MICROS, Digital Dining, Clover, Adelo POS, Future POS, and POSitouch. These top seven POS systems accounted for 47.5% of the market. Beyond the top seven, all other POS brands each accounted for less than 3% of the market share.

We identified a shift toward cloud-based systems and POS solutions offered by credit card processors. Clover, Dinerware, Harbor Touch, and Square were the top credit card processor provided POS solutions, accounting for nearly 11% of total market share.

Despite the increased use of cloud-based and mobile systems, less than 10% of independent restaurant owners indicated they use pay-at-the-table devices. Moreover, only 31% of restaurants reported using EMV compliant POS systems. This is particularly noteworthy considering the fraud liability shift that took place in October 2015, mandating that merchants upgrade to EMV chip technology or accept increased liability for fraudulent transactions.

Improvements in plug-and-play components, increased Wi-Fi capability, and a tech savvy labor pool are allowing many restaurant owners to opt for self-installation and remote support. As a consequence, only 74% reported using an authorized POS vendor for programming, training, and support.

Source: http://hospitalitybusinessnews.com/20170127040/1190-independent-restaurant-owners-share-thoughts-100-pos-system-brands