Restaurants

Helping tell an exciting story with @SanJuanWBC Hotel

March 11, 2013 by Raul Colon

We are always looking for ways to help share local business’ stories and learn from the new relationships we establish when we get hired to help tell them.

We are excited to work with local boutique hotel San Juan Water and Beach Club , @SanJuanWBC on Twitter, on a new story that has unfolded thanks to the hard work of Chef Raúl Correa. He was nominated by Food and Wine Magazine for their People’s Best New Chef Gulf Coast category.

As people learn about Chef Raúl and what amazing meals he creates for Zest Restaurant, our community can read more about his experience as you vote for him in the category Gulf Coast. Voting started today and ends on March 18th!

As @rj_c stated today on his blog, we are rooting for him to win and the only way to do that is by voting for him!

You can Tweet to @FandW (Food & Wine) and let them know you voted for Chef Raúl Correa for the Gulf Coast Region and use the hashtag #PeoplesBNC.

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CIMA goes along for the ride with Food Truck Freak in Chicago

July 20, 2011 by Raul Colon

As we write this, we are craving some of the Vegetarian options on some of the food trucks that can be located with the FoodTruckFreak.com . I have to say that we are more than happy to be part of this awesome concept.

We want to thank Alex Levine for choosing CIMA IT as her business partner to help people in Chicago find their favorite food trucks. The website, in its Initial Phase, has the following:

Profiles of Food Trucks with
- Yelp Reviews
- Facebook Like Box
- Foursquare Check Ins
- Latest Tweets
- Next Stop on Schedule
A Food Truck Locator
Truck menu
A comment area so people can leave their opinions on each food truck.
Blog with reviews of food trucks and experiences.

There are many extras to be added to the site. So if you are in Chicago or are planning to visit, stop by the site and take a look at the options these great culinary artists present to the public on wheels.

With just a few days as a live page, FTF has been mentioned in three news articles; one from London and two from Chicago:

Food Trucks are in gear to stay : Writes about how some people in the Food industry think that Food Trucks have come to a lull or will see its demise soon but sites like FTF prove otherwise.

Food Truck Freak helps you find trucks without Twitter Fuss : Writes about how FTF’s site has a feature that allows you to know where the food truck will be located in advance instead of guessing or checking twitter.

Stop the Twitter Stress! Find all your favorite Food Trucks the Easy Way : Writes about how FTF’s site aggregates and facilitates finding your favorite food trucks in one spot.

Our best wishes to @alexklevine and the rest of the FoodTruckFreak.com team.

Restaurant Online Reservations Alternative to Open Table

June 27, 2011 by Raul Colon

Photo Credit by @archipielagopr

As the summer begins and restaurants start to get packed because no one wants to cook in a hot house, you may find yourself wanting to make a reservation on line at that new restaurant you have been seeing an ad for on Facebook.

As you browse through the website, you see the menu, location, hours opened, and an option for reservations. You think you have everyone beat by filling out the on-line form. All you have to do is reserve that romantic spot for two and show up.

All of a sudden you notice that the reservation page has no form and just a number for you to call. What? How is this possible? You still have to call and reserve seating? You are also thinking about the likelihood that the hostess might just forget to write down your reservation because the phone is ringing off the hook and she is attending to other things.

Restaurants who facilitate the reservation process on their website, keep old clients and receive new ones on a daily basis. People who are vacationing will go to a website and expect a reservation form to fill out. They don’t want to bother with long lines or a rejection at the door because there is no seating available on their romantic get-away.

Our customer Archipielago, facilitates the reservation process for locals and tourists by having a reseravation form. If your web designer doesn’t know how to create one, there are open source reservation forms you can use for your customers. Not only can your restaurant be efficient with reservations, your employees will be able to read ahead of time special requests made on behalf of the diners. If there is someone who has a wedding anniversary or surprise engagement, you will know ahead of time by having a special requirements box on the form. What a treat for your customer’s on their anniversary for you to go the extra mile and present them with a complimentary bottle of wine.

Archipielago has a floor plan available for customer’s to pick their seating. This can be chosen on the form along with date, time, number in your party, and e-mail confirmation. You can block dates and times that the restaurant will be closed. When a client is trying to book on a day you are not operating, they will get a message that states so like the one in the image above.

Don’t disappoint your customer’s expectations by making dining reservations a difficult process. Remeber that first impressions are important and a detail as small as a reservation form reflects upon the service you provide in your restaurant.

If you are a restaurant owner and want to try out our online Reservations Systems Demo feel free to contact us directly.

Monitoring Social Media To Sell More Food and/or Drinks (Part 1)

January 18, 2011 by Raul Colon

If we where restaurant owners at @cimapr we would easily find a way to monitor social media to sell more food and drinks.

I run social media efforts very lightly at @archipielagopr one of our clients in Ponce, PR and have collaborated with other restaurants in the metro San Juan area to assist them in using social media to increase restaurant revenues and brand recognition. With the little efforts we run we have been very successful in translating our efforts into revenues.

We became Re-sellers of the JitterJam application which is focused on the mid- to small-business market companies who are looking to generate true Return On Investment from social, mobile and email engagement and marketing.

Here is how we picture and have used Jitterjam for one of our clients:

LifecycleGraphic — image from jitterjam.com website

Discovering New Prospects. We are able to monitor conversations based on keywords, geolocation, and other factors that are relevant to our clients. By identifying people who have not decided what to eat or where, tourists that are looking for places to eat or have a drink. We monitor conversations based on keywords such as “Where can I eat in Ponce?” once we see this type of phrase we take at the user’s profile and identify the most inviting way to communicate with that person usually via twitter although it can be done via facebook also.

Creating Dialogue. by creating dialogue and offering sincere help we are able to grab attention from that prospect. We usually give them various quality options other than our clients restaurant, places of interest if they are tourist, and clear any other questions. If the prospect asks more questions like menu items or how to reserve we quickly send them links to the menu and online reservation system. In most occasions the prospect is so happy that we where so helpful that they end up making a reservation.

Develop Intelligence. No matter what tool you use either @jitterjam or doing it the hard way manually you should be monitoring the following:

What people are talking about near your geographical location?
What people are eating or drinking?
Mentions and sentiment around your competitors
Mentions and sentiment around your products and services.
What people want to eat and when?

Based on these factors you can improve your list of services and see how you can improve What’s On Your Menu?.

Buid Trust. By taking the @zappos attitude to helping out prospects and customers even when you are not able to make a direct sale you are able to establish great long term relationships. By using @jitterjam you can really focus on being helpful to your community which in the long term will result in an increase in business.

Market to Contacts. Once you are able to monitor people mentioning your brand, product and services it easier for you to directly contact them. If contacts are making positive mentions then you can also leverage those mentions and try to motivate that behavior throughout multiple platforms.

Measure learn and Grow. Measuring your efforts is key to see what is working and take a Stop, Start, and Continue attitude. Stop doing what is not working, Start doing new things that might be of interest to your audience, an continue doing what has worked so far. If you track twitter mentions, retweets, blog comments, facebook interactions, and other factors mentioning your brand you are able to see what works and what does not.

How else would you use a monitoring tool to Sell More Food or Drinks at a restaurant ?

We will be discussing in more detail the benefits of using a social media tool as strong as @jitterjam in our next post!

If you wish to get our (part 2) via email and join our newsletter feel free to Subscribe to CIMA IT Solutions Corp. Newsletter by Email.

If you have questions regarding JitterJam feel free to contact us to set up a Demo.