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.

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Restaurants are increasingly using social media as a marketing tool, but a New York City burger chain launching next month is redefining the strategy.

4food, which on July 6 is to open its first of 11 planned locations, will allow customers to use iPads to place orders.

Customers also have the option of naming and branding their creation, and posting it on Facebook or Twitter. When ordering from home, they can create commercials on YouTube.

The branded burgers and commercials are then featured on a 240-square-foot media wall at the restaurant that also streams from Foursquare, a social-networking site where users can check in at restaurants and other locations. Every time someone buys one of the concoctions, the creator receives a 25-cent credit through their account.

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With a landslide victory at the polls, pizza lovers across the country have united to keep Pizza Hut’s $10 Any Pizza deal – any size, any crust, any toppings for just $10.  From May 11-June 10, 2010, Pizza Hut asked America to vote on the fate of the incumbent deal at Facebook.com/PizzaHut.  An overwhelming 98 percent of voters clicked “Yes,” resulting in a resounding victory for the $10 Any Pizza deal.

“America has voted and the $10 Any Pizza deal will be extended at Pizza Hut,” said Brian Niccol, Pizza Hut Chief Marketing Officer.  “The one-sided victory shows that pizza fans remain hungry for the combination of great taste and value.  We’re excited to continue offering that combination with our $10 Any Pizza deal.”

With a determination to keep the $10 Any Pizza deal alive, Pizza Hut Tweetologist Alexa Robinson packed up campaign materials and embarked on a tour across America to rally support.  As campaign manager, Alexa visited state capitols, engaged voters at city landmarks and made media appearances in New York City, Philadelphia, Little Rock, Richmond, Va., Columbia, S.C., and Des Moines, Iowa.

“From New York City to Des Moines, I met with hundreds of loyal Pizza Hut fans who voiced their support of the $10 Any Pizza deal,” Robinson said.  “And that support resulted in an overwhelming victory in the Facebook vote.  The $10 Any Pizza deal at Pizza Hut is clearly a popular choice.”

Alexa tracked her progress on Twitter (twitter.com/pizzahut) and Foursquare (foursquare.com/user/pizzahut), giving Pizza Hut fans exclusive news of her whereabouts and access to photos from the campaign trail.  Fans can also visit Flickr (flickr.com/pizzahuttwintern) to view photos from the tour.

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.

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Can you sum up your dad’s character in 140 characters or less? Give it a shot on Twitter – using the hashtag #AllProPapa – and your All Pro Papa could win a year of free Papa John’s pizza!

This Father’s Day, Papa John’s is teaming up with Super Bowl XLI winning head coach Tony Dungy and his charity, All Pro Dad, to recognize fathers for being heroes in their own homes.

“All Pro Dad’s daily ‘Play of the Day’ e-mails emphasize that it’s the little things that make a big difference in a home, whether it’s having breakfast together, discussing the day’s events before bedtime, or building a rapport with your child’s teacher,” said Dungy. “Twitter provides the perfect venue for people to describe the simple acts or family traditions that make their dad an All Pro Papa.”

To be eligible for the grand prize of free Papa John’s pizza for a year, entries must include the hashtag #AllProPapa. Papa John’s and All Pro Dad executives will determine the winner, judging submissions on creativity and love for dads conveyed in 140 characters or less.

In addition to the Twitter contest, $1 of every Papa John’s gift card purchased online during the month of June, up to $30,000, will be donated to All Pro Dad, a national, non-profit organization dedicated to helping men become better fathers.

An organic burger restaurant in midtown Manhattan is using social networking for menu development, marketing, entertainment and even social change. Its delicious plans suggest ways that businesses of all kinds can transform themselves by “crowdsourcing” not only marketing, but product development as well.

When the 4food eatery opens its doors at the corner of 40th and Madison on July 6, it just might usher in a new era in the integration of social networking with the real world.

A 240-square-foot monitor in the restaurant will constantly stream Foursquare check-ins, tweets from Twitter, and restaurant information. In other words, the restaurant itself will be a social networking application.

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Edlynne Laryea swears she’s not a geek. Before last spring, Laryea, 33, had never met a stranger from the Internet in person. But few of her offline friends share her passion for food, so Laryea, a digital marketing strategist, started discussing her culinary adventures with fellow food lovers on Twitter.

Now she spends a lot of time with friends she’s made online. “I never thought I’d say it, but I’ve made a lot of good friends through Twitter,” said Laryea. She and a group of five other foodies on Twitter organized an eating club to test out dim sum restaurants. Later they set out on a mission to discover the city’s best burger.

Many foodies in Toronto have taken to the web to connect with others and set up dinners and trips to local markets on sites like Twitter and Meetup.com. In May of last year a group called Foodie Meet held its first event at Brassaii on King St., which was attended by Laryea and about 100 other foodies.

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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.

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As state primaries heat up across the country and the American public grapples with today’s issues, Pizza Hut is reaching out to voters with another monumental task — saving the $10 Any Pizza deal.  Pizza Hut announced today that its famous $10 Any Pizza deal is on the ballot in 2010.  Supporters can participate by visiting Facebook.com/PizzaHut today through June 10 and voting ‘YES’ to keep the $10 Any Pizza deal.

In keeping with the American democratic process, the outcome of this important pizza poll will be decided by majority vote.

“We started a pizza revolution when we introduced the $10 Any Pizza deal,” said Brian Niccol, Pizza Hut Chief Marketing Officer.  ”Now it’s up to the people to put pizza first and vote ‘YES’ to keep the $10 Any Pizza deal on the menu at Pizza Hut.”

To help push this issue to the top of the political agenda, Pizza Hut Tweetologist Alexa Robinson will serve as campaign manager for the $10 Any Pizza deal and visit communities across the country canvassing for votes.

“Voting is one of the most basic American rights and pizza fans should have the ability to exercise this right as well,” Robinson said.  ”There are many issues being decided at the polls this year, but the future of the $10 Any Pizza deal is at the top of our list.  I’ll visit Pizza Hut restaurants, national landmarks and political hot spots to gather support for the $10 Any Pizza deal.  Join us in putting pizza first in 2010.”

$10 Any Pizza deal advocates can follow Alexa on Twitter (twitter.com/pizzahut) and track her progress on Foursquare (foursquare.com/user/pizzahut) for exclusive updates.  The “Keep the $10 Any Pizza Deal” campaign tour kicks off today in New York City with scheduled stops in the following cities:

Pizza Hut, America’s Favorite Pizza, delivers more pizza, pasta and wings than any other restaurant.  The only pizza company to be named a top ten franchise in 2009 by Entrepreneur Magazine, Pizza Hut began 50 years ago in Wichita, Kansas and today operates nearly 10,000 restaurants in more than 90 countries.  Pizza Hut, Inc. is a subsidiary of Yum! Brands, Inc. ( YUM).

Nothing annoys some Twitter users like reading tweets about everything someone else has eaten. But when you’ve visited a good restaurant, made something particularly interesting to eat, or you’re enjoying a particularly good dish or drink, you’ll want to share it with your friends so they can join you the next time you go. If you have an iPhone, Fiddme is an app that allows you to share the food and drinks that you enjoy, the restaurants you’ve visited, and what you thought of the meal with friends and earn points in the process.

Fiddme is a free app, supports iPhone 3.0 or higher, and works just as well on the iPod Touch and iPad as it does on the iPhone. Once you have the app installed, you can set up an account for yourself and begin connecting with other people in your area, or inviting your friends to the service.

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The best way to learn about the Sioux Falls dining scene is still probably word of mouth.

Your neighbor loved a recent lunch out. Your co-worker had a great date at a bar.

People love to share good food stories. And just like everything else now, they share a ton of them online.

Sioux Falls is no different. In addition to traditional advertising, businesses are using everything from Facebook to Twitter to a variety of local online dining guides to drum up business, spread the word and offer freebies.

Sanaa Abourezk of Sanaa’s 8th Street Gourmet regularly posts her menus on Facebook. Become a fan and you can find out if that day’s lunch is vegan or gluten-free.

The Phillips Avenue Diner runs occasional contests – recently asking for fans to share a photo of their kid eating at the diner.

Queen City Bakery lets Twitter followers know what freshly baked cupcakes, scones and muffins are on the day’s menu.

Woody’s text messages specials and deals to fans.

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When the co-owner of a Capitol Hill bistro is out running errands or standing in a line somewhere, he uses his cellphone to get the word out about a half-price wine special he’s offering that night or to throw out a nugget of information about his native Italy.

Likewise, when a downtown Seattle chef received a shipment of Moroccan lamb sausage, he “tweeted” about it to his Twitter followers, asking them for suggestions about what he should prepare.

With perishable product and an economy that has made people think twice about going out to eat, the need to embrace social media such as Twitter and Facebook is proving especially crucial to the restaurant industry — particularly neighborhood eateries that rely on customer loyalty and repeat visits.

Compared with traditional forms of marketing, social media are fast, easy and mobile, and can create the sense of urgency that tech-savvy food enthusiasts find enticing.

“It feeds this instant need,” said executive chef Brian Cartenuto of Wallingford’s Cantinetta restaurant. “People want to know what’s going on at that moment.”

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A Valley company combined Twitter with dining out and the response has been overwhelming.

Foodies Like Us started their Twitter Dine Around events last year and every one to date has sold out.

“These are places I’ll never get to on my own,” said Jason Anania, who took part in the most recent Twitter Dine Around.  “I get exposed to them and I’ve got all these new places I can go.”

Anania and dozens of others get shuttled to three different restaurants, tweeting about their experience along the way.

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I’m not totally convinced that Twitter is a sign of a healthy society. I mean, do we really need to know what everyone is doing RIGHT NOW?

But Ledo Pizza in Federal Hill Locust Point may just convert me. Twitter, it seems, is the killer app for stray pizzas.

“Anyone want a free medium pepperoni & sausage pizza that no one picked up? 2 hours old but should heat up lovely,” LedoFedHill Tweeted at 2:03 p.m. on March 4.

“chicken, meatballs & anchovies. (don’t ask) FREE to the 1st person that comes in for it!” reads a tweet the next day.

Ledo manager Tim Trolinger has been tweeting for the restaurant for about six months but only recently started using the outlet to help homeless pizzas.

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• 99 Ways To Make Money Using Twitter
• Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time
• The Twitter Book
• Twitter Marketing For Dummies
• Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighborhoods
• Twitter Marketing: An Hour a Day
• Twitter Tips, Tricks, and Tweets
• Twitter Revolution: How Social Media and Mobile Marketing is Changing the Way We Do Business & Market Online
• All a Twitter: A Personal and Professional Guide to Social Networking with Twitter
• Twitter Marketing: Promote Yourself and Your Business on Earth’s Hottest Social Network

Until last year, James Flinsch’s contributions at Pazzaluna were strictly IRL (that is,’in real life’ in cyberslang).

As wine steward at the popular downtown St. Paul Italian restaurant, he often rescues diners at a loss for a killer pairing. Hired as a waiter in 1999, Flinsch still whisks dishes onto tabletops with some regularity.

While on paternity leave with a lot of late-night hours on his hands, though, he glimpsed another, online role for himself at his beloved restaurant. He noted that the establishment’s management company had created a Facebook fan page but failed to cultivate much of a following.

I can do that, he told his superiors. Let me do that.

Before long, Flinsch had become the eatery’s social-media liaison with virtual fingers in Twitter, Foursquare and YouTube as well as Facebook.

Flinsch and Pazzaluna are in growing company. Local restaurants, breweries, ice-cream parlors and the like are increasingly dabbling in social media to fortify connections with their clientele. Some hire public-relations firms to help. Others, like Pazzaluna, depend on social-media-savvy workers.

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The word went out on Twitter: Look for the truck on College Street. Jessica Van Deren got the message—and set out in search of a tasty rainy-day lunch.

Van Deren, who works in admissions at Albertus Magnus College, showed up at the Caseus Cheese Truck at 11:30 a.m. Huddled under an umbrella with two co-workers on the College Street sidewalk, she ordered a Combo #1: grilled cheese and a tomato soup.

The Cheese Truck, a project of Caseus restaurant, debuted last week. It has already caught on, with some new-media help.

With a fully outfitted kitchen on wheels, the Whitney Avenue bistro is using social media tools like Twitter to attract customers to the roving lunch spot.

The Cheese Truck follows in the footsteps of the Cupcake Truck, which also tweets its location each day and has attracted a loyal following.

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Great American Cookies® is celebrating one of the brand’s signature creations this spring – the Double Doozie®. A Double Doozie is two cookies sandwiched around a layer of white icing and is one of the company’s most decadent offerings as well as a customer favorite.

During the celebration, Great American Cookies is encouraging customers to “Tweet” for a chance to win a $100 American Express gift card. To enter the sweepstakes, customers must follow Great American Cookies and include a special hashtag (#doubledoozie) with their Twitter posts. The sweepstakes, currently underway, ends April 4, with winners selected at random each Monday throughout the giveaway, with the final winner being selected on April 5. The sweepstakes is supported by NexCen Franchise Management, Inc., a subsidiary of NexCen Brands, Inc.

Great American Cookies will also highlight all Double Doozie varieties in store by offering a “Buy 3 Double Doozies, Get 1 Free” deal at participating locations. Additional varieties of the product include Double Doozie Big Bites, Cookie Cakes and Cookie Cakes By-the-Slice.

Customers can stay up to date on all of Great American Cookies’ new products and promotions online in three ways:

• Great American Cookies on Facebook: www.facebook.com/greatamericancookies
• Great American Cookies on Twitter handle: www.twitter.com/Gr8AmCookies
• Great American Cookies e-mail fan club (CookiE-mail): www.greatamericancookies.com

Great American Cookies was founded in Atlanta, Georgia in 1977 on the strength of an old family chocolate chip cookie recipe. For over 30 years, Great American Cookies has maintained the heritage and integrity of its products by producing original cookie dough exclusively from its plant in Atlanta. Made famous by its signature Cookie Cakes, trademark flavors and menu of gourmet products baked fresh in store.

NexCen Brands, Inc. is a strategic brand management company with a focus on franchising. It owns a portfolio of franchise brands that includes two retail franchise concepts: TAF® and Shoebox New York®, as well as five quick service restaurant (QSR) franchise concepts: Great American Cookies®, MaggieMoo’s®, Marble Slab Creamery®, Pretzelmaker® and Pretzel Time®. The brands are managed by NexCen Franchise Management, Inc., a subsidiary of NexCen Brands.

• 99 Ways To Make Money Using Twitter
• Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time
• The Twitter Book
• Twitter Marketing For Dummies
• Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighborhoods
• Twitter Marketing: An Hour a Day
• Twitter Tips, Tricks, and Tweets
• Twitter Revolution: How Social Media and Mobile Marketing is Changing the Way We Do Business & Market Online
• All a Twitter: A Personal and Professional Guide to Social Networking with Twitter
• Twitter Marketing: Promote Yourself and Your Business on Earth’s Hottest Social Network

If you’ve been to a Denny’s restaurant recently, you may have noticed that on the bottom of the back page of the dinner menu, the company invites you to “Join the conversation!” by, among other things, visiting it on Twitter at twitter.com/dennys.

There’s just one problem: that Twitter account is owned by a Taiwanese man named Dennys Hsieh, and of the 272 tweets he’s posted–the last of which was on July 19, 2009–none appear to have anything to do with the ubiquitous always-open restaurants with the yellow signs visible from freeways throughout America.

According to Alan Miller, the co-owner of Filter Creative Group, which manages Denny’s social-media initiatives, the menu snafu was a simple misprint. Indeed, Miller said, Denny’s is fully involved on Twitter, keeping two separate accounts, twitter.com/DennysAllNightr–for its late night customers–and twitter.com/DennysGrandSlam–for early birds–flowing with all kinds of promotions, information about the company’s restaurants and feedback for customers.

And, Miller said, the restaurants’ breakfast and late-night menus aren’t marred by featuring the wrong Twitter ID.

Still, there’s little doubt that this is the kind of social-media error that’s bound to get the word “fail” bouncing around, especially since the erroneous menus first were put into Denny’s more than 1,500 locations last October, and the company has done nothing customers can see to fix the problem.

Continue reading . . .

• 99 Ways To Make Money Using Twitter
• Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time
• The Twitter Book
• Twitter Marketing For Dummies
• Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighborhoods
• Twitter Marketing: An Hour a Day
• Twitter Tips, Tricks, and Tweets
• Twitter Revolution: How Social Media and Mobile Marketing is Changing the Way We Do Business & Market Online
• All a Twitter: A Personal and Professional Guide to Social Networking with Twitter
• Twitter Marketing: Promote Yourself and Your Business on Earth’s Hottest Social Network

New York City’s restaurant world has never been cuddly, but last week may have seen its first shouting match prompted by a Twitter post.

During last Wednesday’s snowstorm, the owner and chef of JoeDoe restaurant in the East Village, Joe Dobias, tweeted that his deliveries from upstate purveyors had arrived, but not fish from a local supplier. He didn’t post the supplier’s name, but the next morning, Robert DeMasco of Pierless Fish — who also delivers to restaurants like Daniel and Esca — called Mr. Dobias to tell him that his business was no longer welcome. Then things became loud.

Mr. Dobias, who has been airing grievances on the Internet since opening the restaurant in 2008, shrugged off the conflict in an interview on Thursday and said that he had found a new purveyor. “What are we, teenage girls now?” he said. “How is it good business to make decisions off some lame thing you read on the Internet?”

Mr. Dobias is an extreme example of how chefs are now going online to confront customers, bloggers, critics, rivals and sometimes even their bosses.

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• The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success
• The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web
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• The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Blogs, News Releases, Online Video, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly
• Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (The New Rules of Social Media)
• The Social Media Marketing Book
• Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day
• Social Media Marketing For Dummies
• Internet Marketing From The Real Experts

The quick-serving restaurant (QSR) chains in India have found an easy and inexpensive platform to connect with their target audience—social networking sites. Many QSR chains like McDonald’s, Mainland China, Pizza Hut or the new entrant Jus Booster Juice have opened accounts in Facebook or Twitter. They connect with their fans and followers on a daily basis, provide them updates and special offers.

“Our parent company McDonald’s has been using social networking sites for quite long and that too very successfully. McDonald’s India started it last year and we are looking at it very seriously. In a couple of months’ time we will prepare a plan on how to use these media for marketing the brand more effectively,” said Arvind Singhal, director, marketing, McDonald’s India.

McDonald’s has 17,20,234 fans in Facebook (FB), while McDonald’s India has gathered 29 members. Pizza Hut has 11,37,245 fans in FB while it has 25,938 followers in Twitter. Mainland China, the Chinese QSR brand of Speciality Group of Restaurants, too has 114 fans in FB, while it has 85 followers and follows 221 members on Twitter.

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