Catering Coach Al’s Post

🤷🏾♀️ Struggling to choose your Thanksgiving menu? 🥘 You’re not alone! Research shows that over 70% of Americans feel some level of stress or indecision when planning Thanksgiving meals. Challenges typically include balancing traditional dishes with unique flavors, meeting dietary preferences, and sorting through endless options. To make this easier, SideChef offers an interactive, streamlined tool to build your Thanksgiving menu. With just 32 curated top recipes, this tool helps you mix and match dishes to create the perfect Thanksgiving spread, cutting down on decision fatigue and simplifying holiday prep. All ingredients are instantly shoppable, ánd we build a printable menu for your guests. 👨🍳 Ready to give it a try? Follow the link below. Interested in integration such recipe experiences into your platform, or partnering for seasonal sponsorships? Let’s make it happen together. https://lnkd.in/ePUQ5jQN #recipeinsights #recipetool #thanksgiving #whatsfordinner #productsponsorships

Finding your niche is like picking the right spot at a busy food market. . . Imagine you love cooking. Now, picture setting up a stall selling your favorite dishes. But instead of selling everything, you focus on one specialty, like homemade pasta. Here’s how to define your niche easily and effectively: . Know Your Passion: Think about what you love doing and what you’re good at. In our market example, it’s your passion for making delicious pasta. . Identify Your Audience: Next, consider who would enjoy your pasta the most. Are they busy office workers looking for a quick lunch? Families wanting a wholesome meal? By knowing who you’re cooking for, you tailor your recipes to their tastes. . Solve a Problem: Your pasta stall offers a solution – fresh, tasty, and convenient meals. Similarly, your niche should address a specific need or problem for your audience. Maybe your niche is eco-friendly products, solving the issue of sustainability. . Stand Out: Just like how your unique pasta recipes make your stall popular, your niche should highlight what makes you different from others. Focus on your unique skills and how you can offer something special. . Be Consistent: Consistency in quality and service keeps your customers coming back. In the same way, consistently providing value in your niche helps build a loyal audience. . Finding your niche isn’t about fitting into a box but finding where your passion meets your audience’s needs. Start small, stay focused, and watch your audience grow. . . . . #nichemarketing #findyourniche #targetaudience #marketresearch #brandingtips #BusinessGrowth #marketingstrategy #startuptips #contentmarketing #digitalmarketing #marketing101 #businessdevelopment #audienceengagement #marketingplan #digitalstrategy #MarketTrends #marketingtrends #nichemarketing #EntrepreneurTips #brandstrategy #marketingguru #businessinspiration #MarketingExperts #successtips101 #targetmarket #businessgrowthtips #contentstrategy #marketingsolutions #marketinghacks

Gen Alpha is cooking up a storm and setting new trends in the food industry! These young tastemakers are transforming kitchens everywhere with their quick, creative recipes. 👩🏾🍳 “Short-form content makes learning new cooking skills fast and fun for Gen Alpha. Storytelling will help your content stand out and keep your followers engaged,” notes Petra Khan, Associate Director of Strategy at ICUC. Just like Millennials drove the organic food boom, Gen Alpha's influence is starting to shape future-focused culinary trends. Discover how social listening can help you keep up with these everchanging trends. Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/eq2pmCP5 #genalpha #foodtrends #socialmediaexperts

Part two Here’s what I would do, email your list first letting them know you have a special. You can test what has more click through rates long form or short form, but I believe writing a short email just letting them know, then having a link to click through to talk about the dish will be just as effective. You can even let them know for example usually this protein is used at the restaurant for a different dish, but you’re using portions that aren’t used for the dish for another dish which is your daily special. So once they click through, then in a seperate blog post you can talk about the actual dish. For example, what was your thought process behind making the dish. Let’s say for example, the special which is a tuna tartare traditionally is dressed with oil, an acidic component like lemon, it could have brunoised vegetables for contrasting texture. Consult with a chef to write the post. Talk about all that stuff in the blog post. Then in both the email and the blog post make another call-to-action a link that takes them to make a reservation. At the bottom of the blog post, put the link there. Make a social media post for it and have the reservation link in your bio or the link to the blog post talking about the special. When you build it on your own website versus just a reservation platform, you can track how many conversions are being made through campaigns other than social media traffic. You can leave a resy link on your social media for conversions on there but have your own custom landing page link in your emails or blog posts. You would then repeat this process for other future specials whether they last for the day, week, month or season. This would just be taking further steps along with what restaurants usually do, which is try to sell it to guests right then and there. Chefs will tell FOH before pre-shift we need to push this dish or sell this dish more if they have lesser portions or if they have new menu items. So you can also do that online, while tracking all your metrics to combine with on-site sales. An adjustment like this could potentially increase sales and reservations from you telling them before hand and tracking it. The important thing is that you have a strategy for campaigns already in place besides when you have specials or promotions, so that when you do run them you’re selling to your list as you’re nurturing them with content. Next post I’ll talk about some strategies for using social proof in restaurant marketing. 

Have you heard about the Kraft Mac & Cheese drama? If you're a social media professional, you should take a look. As a person with a gluten-free diet and who works in social media, I'm extremely disappointed in Kraft. Here's the recap of what's going on. 1. Abby (@aceengel) on TikTok recently purchased multiple boxes of gluten-free Kraft Mac & Cheese from different stores only to discover that the cheese packet was missing from her boxes. 2. Abby contacts Kraft and they send her coupons (all is good so it seems!). 3. Using the coupons, Abby goes to yet again more stores to get home and discover.... NO CHEESE PACKET in her boxes again! 4. Abby goes to social media and is super kind in her TikTok video explaining her situation. 5. The Kraft Mac & Cheese social team comments on Abby's video stating, "Hello. We apologize for this issue. We're not having any quality issues with our gluten-free Kraft Mac and Cheese." Now, users are heading to Kraft's account to comment about other brands that they know, love, and rely on and express their dissatisfaction with the comment they saw on Abby's post. One could say this was an engagement tactic, but it doesn't seem fitting with the persona the brand appears to be trying to embody with its content. This appears to be a 101 on what not to do with social media customer service. The brand could've won major points with consumers by acknowledging Abby's problem and finding a fun way to solve it. For example, saying, "We're sorry to hear about this, Abby! DM us, and we're going to send you five boxes of gluten-free Mac & Cheese (with the cheese and extra cheese, just in case). We know it might be extra cheesy, but we hope you forgive us!" What are some creative ways you would've handled this situation if you were managing the Kraft account? #viralsocialmedia #brandsocialmedia #tiktok #socialmedia #socialmediatips #kraftmacandcheese #socialcustomerservice

6 F’s of moving out to another city: •⁠ ⁠Fresh start •⁠ ⁠Friday nights •⁠ ⁠Freedom •⁠ ⁠Friends •⁠ ⁠Fights •⁠ ⁠F’ ups But soon when the adrenaline rush settles,  You realize what you’ve left behind -  Your mom’s cooking. I can tell my mom’s favorite line is: 𝘚𝘰𝘯, 𝘧𝘰𝘰𝘥'𝘴 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦! I’ve recently shot an ad for a brand doing an amazing job helping hustlers not miss mom’s home-cooked meals. We all know how far we can push our limits of procrastination when left alone. That’s what we went after in our ad campaign. 📍 1/ Relatability: → Procrastination in cooking → Comfort and taste of mom’s food → Created a real-life kitchen of a hustler for the ad 📍2/ Positioning → Positioned cooking as a constructive habit for a healthy lifestyle → Showed ease and joy in having home-cooked meals daily → Used bright visuals to make the audience drool 📍3/ Risk Reversals → Mentioned long shelf life → Showed spice bottles designed for hassle-free usage → Modern packaging making it look like a showpiece in the kitchen The founder, @Swarndeep Bajoria created a product with a million optimizations.  Creating an ad that smoothly conveys those million benefits was insane! Ps. Have you ever cooked for your mother? What did she say? ------------------------------------------------ If you have an FMCG product you need to create an ad for, DM me “Action” and let’s discuss it.

It's almost Spring! Looking to do a Spring cleanout in your kitchen? In order to make more good choices, it's important to have those options handy. In other words, make it EASY to choose healthy food! I'd encourage you to consider scheduling a time to learn how to conduct your very own Pantry Makeover. Link included in the comments below to learn more about this program. I can meet with you individually or we can schedule a group session! We will talk about some common ingredients to avoid, a fun way to think about categories of food to help you make good choices, and then strategies to make more healthy choices! Below you'll see a recent Testimonial from someone who joined me just last month for this exact program! She received an interactive presentation as well as several resources that she took with her to make great choices and fill her home with lots of healthy food options. #healthyhabits #positiveoutcomes #healthandwellness #goodchoices #pantrymakeover

While Allrecipes.com is on LinkedIn, it has no posts or methods to contact them here. I was searching for ways to connect, as they are nearby in Seattle, to give them feedback that I have to improve their website experience. However, they really do not seem to want consumer feedback to improve customer experience, because there isn’t a method to connect. Hey, I realize you can be bombarded with emails, and that some people will waste your time because what they have to say isn’t relevant or it is cruel! But to grow your business, and to be the best you can be, you must have communication channels. I found online that I am not alone in wanting to give them the exact same feedback that they removed a feature that was the main reason people went to them first: ability to search for a recipe with specific ingredients and to NOT provide recipes which have other specific ingredients. Here is why both of those features that were removed had made this company the most viewed in the USA: 1. People who have food allergies could quickly skim to find things to make without what could kill them. 2. People who have religious reasons to avoid some foods, like pork for example, would not have to browse through recipes that would offend their values. 3. People who hated some ingredients could purge them from being offered. 4. People who have on hand specific ingredients they want to use (cannot afford to buy some expensive ingredient, just harvested a lot of an ingredient they need to use right away, or obtained a very rare ingredient used in cooking a specific dish and hope to find an authentic recipe that requires it) could easily scroll and find something useful. Now it isn’t easy to find what you want at all! Another change they made clearly was for revenue generation. By including pop up ads that flash and tutorials that automatically play but cover parts of the recipe, which are overwhelmingly distracting while cooking a recipe instead of helpful, many longtime users stated that they: 1. Went to other sites, and no longer use this site. 2. Downloaded the old recipes they had saved and no longer use the site. 3. Went back to use of paper cookbooks or handwritten recipes on paper and …. No longer use their site! Nobody knows exactly why the owners of this Seattle based website decided to make so many changes at once. Unfortunately they didn’t consider the behavior and needs of the platform’s typical user base. In fact, if they had done a survey of their consumers they would have found the very things I typed above that they removed were the main reason for going there, and not for tutorials how to cook or how to make a presentation pretty. Frankly that is why all companies ought to hire people to do target market analysis, and if large enough, also gather data on how staff feel about the management of the organization. It isn’t good to assume that what everyone else is doing will make your company better if you do it too.

🦃 A Thanksgiving Experiment to Find the BEST Turkey 🦃 Looking for the best Thanksgiving Turkey? Well read an experiment by Tim Kachuriak who turned Thanksgiving dinner into a full-blown A/B test. The experiment: Control: Roasted turkey (classic, but boring). Treatment 1: Smoked turkey (fancy BBQ vibes). Treatment 2: Fried turkey with Cajun butter injections (wow). The result? Dry brined, unstuffed, cajun butter injected fried turkey had a 72% higher conversion rate compared to the Control 🎉 What does this teach us? 1️⃣ You are NOT your audience. (Don’t base decisions on what you like—ask your donors/customers!) 2️⃣ Radical ideas win big. (Don’t just tweak the stuffing; go bold.) Big thanks to Tim for this delicious reminder: Experimentation works! Original Article: https://lnkd.in/g_ieUmdN #Thanksgiving #Experimentation #MarketingLessons #ABTesting