The Restaurant Doctor - Electronic House Call

ELECTRONIC HOUSE CALL - September 4, 1998

EAVESDROPPING
Here is an e-mail exchange between an east coast operator and myself. You may recognize the situation and perhaps the advice may be a reminder of what you already suspected.

He wrote"Like many small restaurants ours is really under capitalized. We have products that we feel are retail marketable but don't have the money to bring them to market. We know that the concept is duplicable but once again we don't have the funds to make it go. What is the little guy to do?"

I responded, "When the timing is right, it will happen. Until then, focus on doing the very best job you can with what you have. The best way to attract capital is to be popular and profitable. Focus on refining your systems since that's what it will take to be duplicable. Get the place to a point where it can run as well or better without you as it does when you are there. But first, be very, very good at what you are already doing or nothing else will really make a difference."

THE NEED FOR SPEED
Tom Martin of Clovis, NM passed this along If you go to http://www.web3000.com , you can download a program called Netsonic which loads previously visited sites on the Internet from memory instead of loading directly from the net. Therefore, they are much faster. It operates on the philosophy that sites usually don't change much. If updating is desired, reload or refresh. Helpful for frequently visited sites like www.restaurantdoctor.com or www.karmelkorn.3lefties.com (Tom's site.)

CAN YOU MAKE MONEY ON THE INTERNET?
This was the topic of a panel I moderated at the Foodservice Marketing War College in Orlando last week. The consensus of the panel (Lydia Cheng, NRN; Joel Cohen, Cohen Marketing Group; Gayle Guynup, Michaels's on East and Pam Monnier, Chez Pierre) was "yes, but . . ." There are many valid reasons to be on the web and if you are there just to build sales, you are probably missing the boat. I have an audio tape of the discussion and if enough people are interested in a copy, I will have some duplicated. Let me know.

Happy Holiday Weekend!

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