Kulture Konnect Blog

Good news! Your restaurant is everyone's favorite place to stop by and enjoy dinner every Saturday night. The bad news? This has resulted in longer wait times for guests.

Though wait times are a factor that can be out of your control, there are different ways you can try out to reduce wait times for your guests. Let's go through 5 ideas you'll want to consider.

Online Food Ordering is a Trend

Your customers will no longer have to wait for a seat. Instead, customers will be able to stay in the comfort of their own home. For this reason, more restaurants are turning to mobile food delivery services for help, not to mention, it's growing quickly.

A Statista survey showed 20 percent of its participants claim to use a food delivery service at least one time every week. Numbers also show that within one year, the food delivery service went from contributing 30 billion dollars to the overall sales of the restaurant industry to an increased amount of 206 billion dollars (Statista). What a difference a year can make.

Restaurant owners from the Palm Springs and Coachella Valley had plenty to look forward to last Wednesday at the Dine GPS Restaurant Bootcamp presentation at the Westin Mission Hills Golf Resort & Spa. The panel consisted of food produce giant Sysco, who revealed food trends and the latest restaurant concepts. Popular reservation system Open Table shared trends among diners from the Palm Springs area. Last but not least, our very own restaurant marketing expert, Jorge Pacheco, discussed the benefits and the most essential parts of social media. Let's recap some of the most important points of Jorge's presentation.

Promoting your wine club subscription can be tough. It may only interest those who know they are passionate about wine tasting, and the price of becoming a new member can be a leading factor as to why your business may not be growing as much as you hoped it would.

In seeking new members, it is necessary to increase your wine club exposure. The challenge is, it will take some convincing when trying to bring in people who don't know if their love for wine is worth the cost. So how do you force them to get their feet wet?

Many wineries decide to seek marketing assistance from coupon websites like Groupon. Running a special offer that users can access through Groupon will no doubt bring new members to your doorstep, but there is no guarantee they will stay for long.

Your winery should be aware that Groupon offers may not bring automatic success. There are risks that come along.

The holiday season is among us and you know what that means for your restaurant... less and less seats are filled due to the fact that people are focusing their money on gifts and decorations rather than dining out. Blue Sky Local reports that 61 percent of restaurants notice about a 20 percent drop in their business during the holidays.

But what customers don't realize is how many holiday deals restaurants have to offer! They need to know they can still indulge in great food without breaking their bank.

The game-changer? SMS text message marketing. Everyone will know about the delicious turkey dinner you are bringing to the table. 

Today, children are asking for tablets instead of bicycles when they turn five, and a two-year-old knowing how to take a selfie before speaking a complete sentence is considered completely normal. This is the age of millennials, the generation that is all about using digital outlets. And it is no secret to businesses, as they have turned to digital marketing as their primary source of advertisement and that's because of how inexpensive digital marketing is to gain brand awareness.

This is telling of our society and the way we have allowed the internet to play everyday roles in our lives. Statista shows that 77 percent of the US population has an existing profile on a social media platform in 2018. The American Press Institute reported that 88 percent of millennials get their news from Facebook alone. Does this tell us that we are no longer relying on print?

Is print truly dead? Believe it or not, people are still using print for their advertising needs. One example, it was found that billboard ads still reap benefits. MediaLease found that 56 percent of people will share an ad they have looked at by talking about it. Word of mouth, folks.

There was one point several years ago the Kulture Konnect Blog went dark for a few months. This is a classic example of "Do as I say and not as I do!"... Please, don't ever let your blog go dark for three long months as we have done. Of course, there are a bazillion reasons why we put a tragic halt to our content marketing machine like getting too busy to manage the content, prioritizing our client work over our own marketing, scrambling to get everything done before the holidays, etc. As they say though, hindsight is 20/20 and looking back today, those excuses seem to be small potatoes. After looking at our website analytics (comparing/contrasting, before and after), we learned some lessons the hard way and we want to share these lessons with all of you in the hopes of inspiring you to keep chugging along the content marketing train. Here is what we noticed when looking at our metrics over our dark period.

You already own a restaurant and it turned out to be a success. Your next goal is to expand and you're considering different locations. Do you want to expand locally? Or do you want to take it up a notch and open in a different state? And if so, which locations should you consider? New studies show there are 10 U.S. cities you'll want to explore. Let's take a look.

Kulture Konnect's co-founder, Jorge Pacheco, is on a roll. We praised and cheered him on as he presented for the second time at the Western Foodservice & Hospitality Expo in early August. He made us proud after conducting Kulture Konnect's first live social media webinar in late August.  This month, Jorge Pacheco was asked to be a presenter at this year's Dine GPS Restaurant Bootcamp in Coachella Valley. As a team as a whole, we are extremely excited to be a part of Dine GPS. Jorge has done a great job over the years sharing his knowledge and insight regarding restaurant marketing. He has shown his strong skills and ability to help restaurants execute successful marketing and promotional work.

If you are a restaurant in the Palm Springs or Coachella Valley area and would like to gain more knowledge about social media, marketing and promotions please do feel free to attend the Dine GPS Restaurant Bootcamp. Here are the event details.

Your label is the first impression of your wine. Many of your customers will be influenced not only by the type of wine you sell and taste but also by the overall presentation. According to market research, it was revealed that what’s on the outside of a package is often just as important as what’s inside. Consumer research shows that 1/3 of product decision-making is based on packaging alone. A product with strong branding & packaging isn’t just more likely to grab a customer’s attention, it’s also associated with the quality of the ingredients.

If you are looking for inspiration or ideas to come up with your wine label, look no further. Here are 10 awesome examples of wine label designs that are sure to grab your attention. Analyze and take note.

In a world of digital comfort and online networking, social media marketing has become one of the best and most convenient avenues to bring in more business to a growing or already established company. Wineries are no exception, as they are able to dazzle old and new guests by creating charming online content filled with irresistible images of its finest wines and beautiful scenery. To be the best in the business, it is best to utilize the always evolving wine marketing styles.

A new business has the ability to become successful not only through hard work, but also by following trends and reaching out to new and current customers on social media outlets.

Here are some cool and modern strategies that most successful wineries follow on social media.