Dining on the road an eye-opener about service!
Popularity: 4% [?]
Alderman Seeks To Ban Trans Fat From Restaurants
After targeting smoking and foie gras in area restaurants the City Council has now set its sights on another target. Gee ,what’s next?
Popularity: 4% [?]
Dessert only restaurants!
The newest addition to the niche restaurant scene is the dessert bar. Room 4 Dessert (New York), Espai Sucre (Barcelona) and our most recent spotting, ChikaLicious, limit their menus to creative concoctions that satisfy even the most ardent sweet tooth.
A tiny 20-seat eatery in New York, founded by husband and wife team Don and Chika Tillman, ChikaLicious offers a 3-course menu for USD 12, consisting of a sweet amuse, the customer’s choice of main course dessert, and petit fours to top it off. The menu features dishes such as Honey Parfait in Blackberry Soup with Tarragon and Lace Crisp, and the signature Fromage Blanc Island Cheese Cake (described as ‘heaven on a plate’ by a customer on the restaurant’s TurnHere video).
The owners explain: “The idea behind an all dessert restaurant was something that we’d been thinking of for quite a while. Here in New York City, if you want a really fine dessert that’s taken seriously, you have to go to one of those fine restaurants. We wanted to create a place that would allow you to go have noodles across the street and then come here for a very nominal price to have a wonderfully treated dessert.”
A fun idea that lets adults live out their childhood fantasy of skipping dinner and going straight to dessert. The dessert bar is also a welcome addition to regular restaurants that work with tight seating schedules and rush customers from appetizers to cheque. Less need to hurry through dessert if it can be enjoyed at leisure elsewhere. 
Source: http://www.springwise.com/food_beverage/dessertonly_restaurants/
Popularity: 4% [?]
Why Managing by Facts Works!
Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton
Using hard facts, such as qualitative or quantitative data, to make strategic decisions is the clearest path to the best business choices. Yet many executives ignore the facts and make “gut” decisions based on fads or hunches. Although there’s great value in keen intuition and fresh ideas, evidence-based management leads to competitive advantage.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Customer entropy partially to blame for poor customer service
Come to think about it, customer entropy (or customer apathy) is partly to blame for the state of customer service. The reason most companies deliver bad customer service is because they can - not enough customers complain or abandon brands after a bad customer service experience.
If more people were to talk back to companies or report customer service abuse to their local local consumer affairs departments, the overall state of customer service would improve.
What do you think? Is there a way to foster consumer activism so that we can finally get the service that we deserve, the right return on providing our personal information as part of buying transactions, and intelligent humans to interact with when facing post sale issues? Or is it like voting - enough people are generally happy enough so that the only thing we can expect is status-quo?
You would expect that a new entrant who delivers outstanding customer service would change the playing field in that sector - but is that really happening? Could it happen?
Popularity: 4% [?]
