You have a phone call at the hostess stand.

The statement "you have a phone call at the hostess stand" was heard quite frequently in restaurants not to long ago. The fact was emphasized when I was watching a movie the other evening where a restaurant diner was directed to the hostess stand because he had a call.

The world has changed in a very short time. No one calls the restaurant to see if so and so is there. They text, call on cell phone or check location based services to determine where the individual is.  

The evolving coupon space

Kristen Burnham reports on the developments in Groupon

Groupon Stores will let businesses create and launch their own deals whenever they want and as frequently as they want, without waiting several months to be featured as the deal of the day.

Merchants that claim their store, which Groupon says only takes a couple minutes, will have their deals promoted via e-mail, Twitter and Facebook. There's no upfront fee, and business will receive 70 percent of each promoted Groupon sold, and 90 percent of each non-promoted Groupon. (This differs from being featured as Groupon's Deal of the Day, in which merchants only receive 50 percent of each Groupon sold.)

Social Media during the meal

Back in the dark ages B.S.M. (before social media), if a customer had a question about the meal, how long it was taking or the difference in the expectations they would call the server or the manager over. Not any more, in the A.S.M reality the customer will simply tweet the question or request? Restaurants can monitor guests in this fashion and respond accordingly. (can I get a refill on my Diet Coke). Individuals waiting for a table can monitor social media to get a feel for how events are unfolding during the shift. They can get updates as to how long before their table is ready, what the kitchen times are, which server is in a good mood or the quality of the dishwasher that day. No more will you be handed one of those square flashing devices to alert you to when your table is ready. Your status before, during and after the meal will be available for the whole of the universe to see on their smartphones.
 

do you want a sense of what a restaurant looks like before you go in?

enifer Van Grove introduces us to Eats

Using Eats, application users can essentially explore the interior of local restaurants in a virtual walk-a-round fashion, similar in style to Google Streetview for mobile, but infinitely more practical for would-be restaurant diners. Eats also includes visual search options, social sharing features and filters for users to find restaurants by location, price or rating.

The EveryScape custom-built technology powering Eats is capable of transforming photo stills into three dimensional, user-controlled internal store tours. The application is designed to further the connection between patron and business owner, and business owners can use the service to customize their venue information.

Mobile Aps for restaurants

The smartphone is the future. If your restaurant has not joined yet, you will soon.

GrubHub

Urbanspoon

How does geolocation work again?

Kermit Pattison helps explains the geolocation process.

CLAIM YOUR SITE
SET CLEAR GOALS
OFFER SPECIALS
REWARD CUSTOMERS
CHECK YOUR DATA

Use the Foursquare analytic dashboard to glean valuable data about bar customers, like how they break down by gender, when they check in and with whom they check in. By doing so, he can discern patterns of how business ebbs and flows throughout a week.

Recently, the bar’s managers noticed that check-ins declined after 2 a.m. on Saturdays. In response, the Destination Bar started holding a late-night happy hour — spreading the word through social media. A rise in check-ins and sales followed. “I look at the Foursquare check-ins as a representation, like the Nielsen ratings,” Mr. Maccarone said. “You can tell a lot about your audience based on the breakdown of the people who are checking in because they are a good sample set of your regular customer base.”

The allure of hot trends

There is nothing hotter in the world now than location based marketing. I have had to create a tag because so much of what I have been talking about is related to "location based services". The reason that everyone jumps on a bandwagon is because of that elusive incremental growth engine. The reasoning goes that you have "x" amount of business and to grow beyond that "x" you need another revenue driver. The "x" in of itself can only grow so much and eventually reach a saturation point where there will be no more growth. If a hot trend comes along and you don't devote at least some of your resources to, then you will be left behind in the dustbin of history.

No business wants to be collecting dust along with horse buggies and buggy whips. The danger is that in reaching for a new market your business ignores the "x" that is still paying the bills, albeit for a short time. There is no magic formula as to how much of ones resources to devote to the new. Clearly new involves the ongoing standards war "VHS v Betamax", the not knowing which will work and which will not. Pioneers "first movers" can be richly rewarded with fertile fields or they can die by being ill prepared for the cold dark winter. Settlers on the other hand come in when law and civilization have been established. They don't make as large a profit, however they survive at greater levels than the pioneers.

The virtual loyalty card

John Jantsch explains ways to use location based apps to boost traffic

Create virtual rewards programs – Rewards programs such as those offered by most coffee shop via punch cards or large retailers like Eddy Bauer have been around for years, but smart offerings by folks like PlacePop are making the punch card concept an easy virtual or online play. Merchants can offer their own version of a check in and capture rich data on their most loyal customers.