Tony Crolla has won plaudits and prizes for the quality of his log fired pizzeria, La Favorita and for the Italian cuisine on offer Vittoria on Leith Walk and Vittoria on the  Bridge.

Now he is ensuring the dining experience extends well beyond the three venues by become the first Italian restaurants to interact with customers on their favourite online venues.

Tony has launched both Twitter and Facebook pages for La Favorita and Vittoria, giving his customers the chance to keep up to date with the latest restaurant news, events and offers.

The social media sites also give his customers a platform where they can express their views on the restaurant, inviting them to make suggestions and improvements, ensuring that they get the ultimate dining experience.

Continue reading . . .

Will electronic media eventually eradicate paper products? The transition is eventual, however one restaurant in Australia is taking the digital step early by ditching its paper-based menus and wine lists. Instead, it will offer customers an iPad running a special application designed to not only list the establishment’s menu, but apparently their ingredients. and other useful information.

“The thirst for knowledge from consumers these days is massive,” said Chris Lucas, owner of the Pearl restaurant located in inner-city Richmond. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s ingredients, origins of produce or wine, and particularly Old World wine, this platform can provide as little, or as much, information as each customer wants. This is not a gimmick. I really reckon this is going to set a precedent.”

Continue reading . . .

Report from the Department of Inevitabilities: Michael McCarty, the 57-year-old owner of the eponymous New York City restaurant that feeds $36 Cobb salads to the expense-account-fortified media elite, is getting into the content generation business.

This year, he launched a blog and a YouTube channel that airs, for instance, videos with the sommelier. Like any who’s who in media, Mr. McCarty has started contributing to the Huffington Post. A recent entry described a dinner party he cooked for his son’s college buddies. (His son called him, said, “Wassup this Saturday?” and Mr. McCarty served wild salmon and white wine to a crew more used to Taco Bell and Budweiser.)

Continue reading . . .

An Australian restaurant has ditched printed menus and now hands diners the latest tech-craze, Apple’s touch-screen iPad computer, from which to choose and order their meals.

Risking damaging wine spills and customers taking an iPad “to go”, the Global Mundo Tapas eatery at the Rydges Hotel in North Sydney introduced its new menus this week – within a week of the iPad’s Australian release.

“One of the points of difference for our restaurant was to have a unique menu,” the hotel’s general manager Craig Simpson said on Friday. “Everyone’s excited about the iPad and we’re jumping on the back of that.”

Continue reading . . .

Since it opened in Midtown Miami, Sugarcane Raw Bar Grill has been well known in the local “twitterverse” for its interaction with followers and diners. Responses are so immediate and personalized you have to wonder if someone’s hiding somewhere in the restaurant monitoring it all. No one is. The person behind the tweets, Joanna Cisowska, is based in New York at the corporate offices of SushiSamba and Sugarcane. And she makes it no secret that she’s a little crazy about Twitter, a tool she hadn’t used much before she started tweeting for Sugarcane.

Cisowska credits Lee Schrager with helping popularity on Twitter. “He came to the restaurant the second or third night we were open and he tweeted about the chicken. That started a huge conversation about the chicken on Twitter. So a big thank you to him.”

Here’s what she told Short Order about her Twitter responsibilities and why she won’t give up tweeting for Sugarcane. She made sure to specify that she does have a life.

Continue reading . . .

“We’re pretty small and nimble. Up until [four] weeks ago, I was a one-man show for our digital marketing efforts,” said Natalie Bass, Houlihan’s digital marketing manager. Last month, it brought in a contract worker to assist.

With 100 restaurants, Houlihan’s competes with the likes of Applebee’s, which has more than 2,000 restaurants, and T.G.I. Friday’s, which has more than 900 restaurants – and presumably bigger marketing budgets.

Developing a digital marketing strategy at Houlihan’s has meant making tough choices. Houlihan’s did not plunge into developing a branded Facebook page or Twitter account – it just launched @houlihans and plans to roll out a national Houlihan’s page on Facebook in the coming week. The company’s initial social efforts centered on an invite-only online community, called HQ, established in January 2008. And a year later, Houlihan’s expanded into mobile promotions with its Foody Call Club.

Continue reading . . .

With evidence mounting of  flagrant abuses of PCI-DSS security standards, two attorneys are on the verge of announcing the official filing of a national lawsuit against one of the hospitality industry’s biggest point-of-sale (POS) technology providers and one of its system resellers.  The targets of the upcoming legal action will be Restaurant Data Concepts, Inc. of Warwick, Rhode Island – creators of the POSitouch™ system – and CC Productions of Hoboken, New Jersey, the reseller. POSitouch technology is installed in more than 20,000 restaurants nationwide.

According to the attorneys preparing the lawsuit, Charles Hoff (the Law Offices of Charles Y. Hoff, PC, Atlanta) and Shiel Gallagher (Gallagher & Gupta, PC, Chicago), the companies allegedly sold and installed POS systems that contributed to identity thefts at multiple restaurant locations.  Gallagher and Hoff are still being contacted by new plaintiffs who wish to join the lawsuit, and there is hope that RDC and CC Productions will decide to resolve the situation before it goes to court.

“Frankly, I have seen all kinds of abuses of PCI standards in the industry, but this is as flagrant as it gets,” said Hoff.  “POS vendors have a responsibility to do their part to ensure that their customers use only PCI-certified system applications. These systems should never store sensitive customer credit card information that could be stolen by hackers.” In addition to his hospitality law practice, Hoff lectures on PCI-DSS issues to the restaurant industry and is called in by restaurant associations to assist their members when security breaches occur.  

Hoff and Gallagher have issued notification letters about the developing lawsuit to restaurant associations in all 50 states so that they may alert members.

PCI-DSS is a comprehensive set of technological requirements and consumer protections created primarily by the major credit card companies as part of a PCI Security Council to safeguard merchants from internal security breaches and identity theft. POS system vendors must follow these standards, and any businesses accepting credit cards for payments (such as restaurants) are contractually obligated to use equipment and software from PCI-DSS compliant vendors.  The penalties for retailers that have their systems breached can be massive, even if the problems are the fault of the hardware and software vendors.

At the core of the allegations in the developing lawsuit:

1) POSitouch’s POS system failure: The facts emanating from a forensic audit reveal that POSitouch sold a system that was non-compliant with PCI-DSS.

2) CC Productions’ mismanagement: This POSitouch reseller engaged in flagrant violations of PCI standards that gave rise to the security breaches.  When companies such as CC Productions engage in the support and management of a merchants’ POS application system they need to ensure that they are not engaging in suspect actions that open up the ports so that hackers may penetrate the entire system through malware.     
 
“POSitouch and CC Productions have not been responsive to our efforts to resolve this situation on behalf of their customers,” said Gallagher. “We know there are many more restaurants across the country that have used these companies and could potentially be facing similar frustrations. Our goal is to give all of these customers a voice and resolve the issues that are putting diners at risk.”

While the exact amount of the identify theft losses to banks, the financial losses to the restaurants, fines, investigatory costs, fines imposed by the credit card companies and other costs attributed to fixing the computer systems’ security breaches are still being tallied, the lawsuit is seeking compensation to repay the penalties levied by the credit card companies and the massive costs to track down and repair the POS system problems. According to the attorneys, damages “could run well into seven figures.”

“There are many restaurant owners who are not aware that there may be a potential crisis lurking in their systems and that their businesses and customers may be at risk due to these companies,” said Gallagher.

Restaurant owners using POSitouch and/or CC Productions who are concerned about risk exposure can contact Gallagher and Gupta – (312) 841-1141, positouchclaim@gallagherpc.com.

Rare is the restaurant that doesn’t have a website these days. Even rarer is finding a good one. Elegantly designed and / or witty sites that deliver accurate information swiftly are at a premium. Earlier this month I had to gently point out to a Michelin-starred venue that someone had misspelled ‘restaurant’ in 28-point font on their homepage. That is how seriously many restaurants treat their websites.

Precisely what errors, on a website, might put you – the potential customer – off, may well be a matter of taste. Personally, I can tolerate the odd spelling mistake and, even, the occasional out-of-date menu. Neither inspires confidence, but restaurants are hectic places. Peripheral details can be overlooked. Plus, I am not sure there is a direct correlation between someone’s ability to cook my tea and their punctuation. They’re very different skills.

More damaging, to my mind, are websites which whether by omission or clunky design lack basic information. Lee Rosy’s Tea is a nice cafe and Aumbry an interesting restaurant, but how would you know, when neither website carries a menu?

Continue reading . . .

Domino’s is the latest big brand to incorporate Foursquare as a promotions tool. The Ann Arbor, MI-based company has launched an initiative in the U.K. where customers who use the geo-social application can earn free pizzas by accruing “check-ins” at store locations, according to a report yesterday in New Media Age.

“Check-ins” record how many times people use the mobile app to show they’ve arrived at a retail store, nightclub, restaurant, etc. When patrons check in more than anyone else and become “mayor” of a Domino’s location, they could get a free pizza. The quick-serve giant’s 553 U.K. and Ireland locations will reward a pizza to the current mayors once a week on a designated day.

In addition, every Foursquare user will get a complimentary side dish when spending more than 10 British pounds. Domino’s piloted the program in a group of stores before deciding to roll it out nationwide, according to the NMA article. The pizza brand’s U.K. digital agency, Vexed, reportedly orchestrated the deal.

Whether or not Domino’s plans to roll out similar Foursquare promotions in the U.S. remains to be seen.

Continue reading . . .

Ask Michael Sangregorio how his restaurant ended up on all the top 10 listings that matter and he’ll tell you getting the word out has been easy. In fact, it costs him only $20 a month.

The owner of Local Kitchen & Wine Bar in Toronto says getting on board with a subscription-based email marketing service to manage his mailing lists, distribute his newsletters and crunch some numbers has proven to be a very smart investment. “We didn’t do much besides sending an email newsletter and opening the door. It’s been hard for customers to get a seat ever since.”

He started his email campaign a few months before the restaurant’s launch just to generate interest. “Every day, people were coming by to ask about us, so we told them to sign up for the newsletter. We got 1,000 subscribers.”

Continue reading . . .

The nation’s restaurant industry – known for being “high touch and low tech” – must become more tech savvy or lose a future generation of technology-minded customers, industry experts said Sunday.

“We’ve been slow, really slow” to embrace technology, said Wally Doolin, former chief executive of both Dallas-based La Madeleine and Carlson Restaurants Worldwide, the parent of TGI Friday’s. “Now we find ourselves in a situation where technology starts to make a whole lot of sense.”

 In the 1970s and 1980s, with restaurant sales growing and labor plentiful, restaurants didn’t need a lot of technology, Doolin told restaurateurs and technology vendors at the annual trade show of the National Restaurant Association.

Restaurateurs were comfortable with a hands-on business model, and many were wary that too much technology would create distance between them and their customers.

Continue reading . . .

Social media continues to gain ground for those in the restaurant business during the 91st annual National Restaurant Association (NRA) show running Saturday to Tuesday in Chicago. There were video screens on the show floor with live Twitter feeds, and educational sessions designed to help educate restaurateurs and vendors on capitalizing the different digital marketing options.

Social media isn’t just a marketing strategy for full-service restaurant operators. Quick-serve restaurants are increasingly tapping into new media strategies to drive traffic and loyalty. 24 percent of adults surveyed by the NRA in November 2009 say they would likely sign up for email notifications of daily specials, and 17 percent are likely to sign up for text message notifications.

Quick-serve restaurateurs are listening. More than half of quick-serve operators plan on adding a Facebook page in the next two years, and 38 percent plan on launching blogs about their restaurants, according to the NRA.

Continue reading . . .

If you make an online reservation at a restaurant these days, chances are you’re using OpenTable.com Inc. The company—with 13,000 participating restaurants—is the market leader by a wide margin.

On Thursday, Urbanspoon, a well-funded competitor, is expected to unveil plans to launch a computerized restaurant reservation tool—one that will compete directly with OpenTable Inc. At the same time, a small start-up, Reservation Genie, is attempting to take a bite of the business in the Southwest.

Urbanspoon, a website that offers dining features including restaurant reviews and receives 7 million unique visitors each month, plans to launch its system, Rezbook, nationwide in early June, says co-founder Ethan Lowry. RezBook is currently being tested by five restaurants in Seattle. Urbanspoon is owned by IAC, a New York-based company that owns high-profile websites includingCitysearch, which lists nearly a million restaurants nationwide.

“A year from now, we should be in multiple major metro areas around the country,” Mr. Lowry says.

The competition comes at a time when OpenTable, like many ubiquitous, much-loved services, is feeling some backlash.

Continue reading . . .

Restaurant promotion is going high-tech.

Franchise restaurants have long tried to drum up business on the local level with newspaper ads and with mass mailings of coupons and other promotional offers.

But now franchisers have a host of new ways to drive business to individual stores, thanks largely to the explosion in recent years of technologies that recognize a user’s location.

Among others: Burger King Holdings Inc. is test-marketing an iPhone application that helps users find its restaurants and view local deals, and Quizno’s Corp. and Applebee’s International Inc. are readying similar apps.

Mooyah, a regional burger franchise in Texas, is offering location-specific giveaways and specials to its followers on Twitter, while Papa Murphy’s International Inc., a pizza franchise based in Vancouver, Wash., with restaurants across the country, plans to offer location-specific deals to customers nationwide by using technology that recognizes the whereabouts of visitors to the company’s website.

“It’s like modern-day ZIP Code marketing,” says Darren Tristano, executive vice president of Technomic Inc., a food-industry research firm in Chicago.

Continue reading . . .

Managers can expect workplace issues with social media to become more frequent since employees are spending more time on social media sites.

Employment attorneys say they expect the issue to be confronted in the courts. In a groundbreaking case last year, servers at a Houston’s restaurant launched a password protected MySpace group where they vented about work.

Sometimes the online remarks became offensive and sexual. A manager gained access to the MySpace group and began monitoring the posts. He fired the servers, who responded by filing a privacy lawsuit against the company.

The servers said they were “just joking,” according to court documents. A New Jersey jury sided with the employees and found a company was guilty of violating privacy laws since the group was password protected.

Some companies are writing clearer policies and are cautioning employees about putting work gripes online.

Still, there are some employees who view social media as a personal outlet for complaining.

Continue reading . . .

The humble 144-character tweet is changing the way we eat–even at lunch trucks.

A plethora of food trucks serving hip and exotic cuisines are rolling into cities and towns across the country, and they’re using social media tools like Twitter and Facebook to advertise their gastronomic offerings and provide up-to-the-minute location information.

In the Los Angeles area, Kogi BBQ’s trucks have nearly 63,000 followers on Twitter and more than 10,000 on Facebook who come for short rib tacos and Kimchi in quesadillas.

Seattle’s Skillet Street Food “airstream trailer,” which serves up bacon jam and burgers made from grass-fed beef, has more than 6,000 Twitter and Facebook followers.

Continue reading . . .

Mobile applications have opened several new doors for restaurant operators looking to extend their reach, but technological advancements over the past two years have left many in the industry trying to catch up to what new mobile marketing opportunities have to offer.
 
“Mobile marketing is very much of a wild west right now,” said Bryce Marshall, director of Strategic Services at Akron, Ohio-based Knotice. “There’s been so much advancement in mobile devices just in the last two years in terms of technology that’s available. And they are morphing very quickly. I don’t think there’s an established game plan for success.”
 
While Foursquare and others easily and inexpensively tap into the native ability of smartphone devices to actively identify the location of a user, geolocation capabilities extend far beyond a user’s ability to ‘check in.’
 
For example, if a user is in a new city or wants to research restaurants in a specific area, their cell phone browser, based on the users location, has the ability pull that information.

Continue reading . . .

Snapfinger, an online and mobile ordering and e-commerce solution for the $4 billion take-out food market, is available as a mobile application for the Android platform. The Android app joins an already released iPhone app. In addition, the company recently signed new partnerships with Boston Market and Firehouse Subs.

Snapfinger enables users to access more than 28,000 national restaurant chains in its network, find nearby locations, order food, and complete the payment transaction in a matter of minutes. Snapfinger is fully synchronized with the restaurant’s POS system, ensuring order accuracy, real-time menu updates, and accurate prep times.

Continue reading . . .

Tasti D-Lite hopes to keep customers cool with a summer of social media. The frozen treats chain has set up its loyalty cards program so that customers who use Foursquare, Facebook, and Twitter can automatically share when they earn rewards points from in-store purchases.

Foursquare users will be able to simultaneously “check-in” and earn Tasti D-Lite rewards points whenever a cashier scans their loyalty card. As part of Foursquare’s locations-based game, the check-ins will help customers earn badges and become mayor of that particular store. And when their loyalty cards are scanned, the activity feeds of Facebook and Twitter users will reflect new purchases/earned rewards points.

Around 30 of the brand’s 44 locations are taking part in the initiative. B.J. Emerson, social technology officer for the Franklin, TN-based Tasti D-Lite, said his company will also test incorporating coupon links into customer messages that appear in the social streams.

“So the automatically generated post would include a coupon for their friends,” he said. “It’s not just a boring message where their friends are thinking, ‘OK, that’s great. I see you’ve checked in there.’ We are adding value to their feed.”

Continue reading . . .

Some of the biggest brands — once known for favoring mass over efficiency — are turning the marketing matrix on its head by targeting promos at consumers using social media exclusively.
No TV. No radio. No print ads.

Instead of mixing traditional and non-traditional media, they’re focusing very targeted promotions via Twitter, Facebook or even Foursquare on a small number of consumers who they hope will reward them with social buzz.

American Express is doing it with the cult hit TV show Glee via Twitter. Papa John’s is using its Facebook page to prompt fans to create, name and earn a slice of profits from the sales of a consumer-designed pizza. And Pepsi, which shook Madison Avenue by spurning the Super Bowl for social media, has asked Mountain Dew’s Facebook fans to help it create, name and market a new Dew.

“Social media is the hottest thing out there,” says Janet Fouts, a social-media coach. “The ones who succeed are the ones who will land the tech-savvies, the Gen Y’s and the Gen X’s.”

Continue reading . . .