Business Plus Baby

November 30, 2015

Promoting your family restaurant

Family businesses are often generational and ingrained in the very fabric of a family. Now, running a business around your family allows you to integrate the family into the company. But, of course, there may well be more friction because you work together. You also need to understand how to juggle the role of parent and entrepreneur.

A common choice for a family business is often a restaurant. This provides plenty of different roles for members of the family, and can prove very lucrative. But, if you want a successful restaurant business, it’s all going to come down to the food. This is what you are judged on, and what will make or break the restaurant. So, make sure you use these ideas to help promote the food in your restaurant.

Specials Boards

The specials board is the secret weapon for any restaurant, and you need to make use of it. You can have several specials boards in different locations to help promote the food you’re serving. Specials boards look smart, professional and attractive. And you can use them to entice and attract customers. Think about having one outside the premises for people walking past. But you also need at least one inside as well, on a larger scale.

Diverse Choice

The best way to make your food more appealing is to offer the right menu. However, you need to make sure you’re careful here. You’ve got to offer plenty of choices to suit all kinds of customers. But, you’ve got to be careful because there is such a thing as too much choice. The last thing you want is a menu with hundreds of different options on it. This indicates that you don’t specialise in anything, and makes you seem confused. Try to select a good variety of dishes that you can put on a menu that won’t overwhelm people. Focus on these dishes, and make sure you perfect them.

Menu Holders

Another key aspect of making your food more attractive is the menu. This is crucial to the whole process of presentation. Of course, we know that the menu needs to be restricted so there aren’t too many choices. But, it’s also essential that the menu looks great as well. In order to do this, you need to make sure you laminate them and display them in menu cases. Having an attractive and colourful menu will be more likely to attract and impress customers. And this is a key part of promoting your restaurant’s food.

Michelin Star Chef

And, of course, you have to understand that the quality of the food is the most important thing. So you’ve got to have a top quality chef in the kitchen. If you can you need to try to get yourself a Michelin Star chef to prepare your food for you. A restaurant is always going to be judged on the quality of the food they provide. If you want your restaurant to survive and succeed you’ll need to get one of the best chefs in the business. So make this a priority as soon as you can.

Running your own business as a family is a great way to build an asset for the future. You will be able to spend time with your family and work at the same time. This is the dream of so many people, but very few can transition successfully. If you run a family restaurant, you will need to promote your cuisine, and you can do that with these hints.

November 28, 2015

Home vs. high street: Which is best for your business?

There’s a lot to consider when thinking about moving out of your home office and into a high street retail store or office. Certain businesses are better suited to specific environments. So, it’s important to make sure your business will excel from the prime location.

Photo credit

Home

Benefits:

Relaxed Schedule

No office, no store, equals no working hours. Well, no official ones anyway. Your zero-hour contract means you can do as much, or as little as you like on any given day. This is the sort of freedom that some parents may crave. A relaxed type of schedule might attract freelance writers in particular. Could this type of working life benefit you?

No Childcare Costs

There is no need to fork out for childcare while you’re working from home. Many parents can care for their children, or family members while working from their living room. Advances in technology have meant that our work and home lives can now run parallel alongside each other, and this is great.

Drawbacks:

Lack of Social Contact

I have children, but if you don’t have kids, then this can be very disheartening! It’s nice to have somebody to chat with and work alongside all day – even if they do grind your gears now and again. Are you the type of person who would miss this sort of daily interaction?

Limited to Online

While the internet is one of the most powerful tools for buying, selling, marketing and growing a business, it is also somewhat limiting. As a small, work-from-home business is unlikely that you will possess a massive online presence. Therefore, you’re not going to be able to maximise your client base as well as you could be as if you were based on the high street.

Photo credit

High street

Benefits:

Retail Store

If your business lends itself to having a retail store to market and sell your products in then make use of it! Your company will benefit from an increased volume of sales thanks to the vast number of shoppers on high streets. You’ll also get passers-by coming into your store, creating extra revenue by being tempted into impulse buys. POS displays are excellent for this. You may want to consider these aspects if your business is still stuck online.

Offices

If you don’t need a shop for your business, and your work is simply desk-based, then consider the high street. Hiring an office is a great way to improve the reputation of your business and also allows you to distribute your work. It opens up the possibility to hire employees and provides that social element you may have been lacking at home.

Drawbacks:

Strict Working Hours

Moving to the high street means self-imposed working hours, which are never nice. You also have no time to look after family members or children – which would be a struggle for most parents.

Running Costs

There is also the maintenance of your office or retail store to consider. Does this concern you? If so, it may be worth looking into a fully serviced office. Sadly, you’re out of luck with a retail store.

This guide has outlined the benefits and drawbacks of both the home and the high street. Hopefully, it has helped you make an informed decision on what is best for your business.

November 27, 2015

How you can reduce printing costs in your office

Any office has its daily costs, which can all mount up. Keeping these expenses down is essential to your bottom line. But it can sometimes be a struggle to reduce some of the everyday items. Printing is one of the things that many business owners find cost them a lot. Ink and toner are expensive to keep in supply, and then there’s paper and electricity to pay for too. It is possible to lower your printing costs, however, even if you’re not sure how to do it at first. Use the tips below to help you spend less on printing in the office.

Image by Sir Adavis

If you want to reduce your office printing costs, your whole staff has to be on board. You can tell everyone that you wish to use the printers less, but you need to give them some guidelines. If you come up with some ground rules, they’ll know when it’s appropriate to use a printer and when they don’t need to print something out. You can create a printing policy to tell your employees when and how they can print things. For example, you might say that they can print a document in black and white to hand out at a meeting. But you could forbid printing when emailing a document would work just as well.

Use Managed Print Services

Sometimes you need to bring in outside help to get your office organized. When it comes to printing, you can enlist the assistance of a managed print service. These services can take a look at your printing and help you to come up with a plan to manage it better. The aim is to help you save money and be more productive by running your printers in the best way. For example, Ricoh London says they can cut your printing and photocopying costs by up to 30%. Suggestions might include changing your printing supplies or even outsourcing.

Use the Cloud

Going digital is one of the best ways of reducing your printing costs. While it’s useful to have hard copies of some things, you shouldn’t need to have hundreds of filing cabinets. People can store, share and even collaborate on documents and other files on their computers and other devices. Using cloud storage and software makes it easy to get rid of a large amount of printing. Office workers can use applications like Google Drive to work on things together without having to print anything out.

Save on Supplies

As well as cutting down on the amount of printing your office does, you can find other ways to save on supplies. Ink and toner are the most expensive costs, and it can be difficult to spend less on them. Some printers will have a setting to help you save on ink and toner. You can also use draft mode, which won’t give you the best print quality but it will still be readable. Buying third-party ink can help too. However, you have to be careful about voiding warranties.

Your office doesn’t have to spend so much on printing. If the costs are mounting up, try using these solutions to reduce them.

November 27, 2015

Always be face to face with your audience

Whether you happen to be a public figure, an expert of your field, or simply doing your best to reach others with your products and services during the daily grind, trying to communicate in any way but face to face can be extremely difficult. Not only are certain words and meanings lost when they are typed out, but when you think about the specifics of how people communicate best, you already know there needs to be a visual element to it. Then when you imagine how beneficial a way to speak with others while also seeing them at the same time could be, you should start getting excited for what communication will be like going forward. Continue reading “Always be face to face with your audience”

November 26, 2015

The best ways to keep your existing clients happy

It seems that most businesses only care about the people that they can get through the door. Finding new clients is obviously a very important part of success as you will need new investment to grow and expand. But, the emphasis on new customers can distort your view of your existing clients. Just because they are investing money now doesn’t mean they will invest for the foreseeable future. Like any client, old or new, they want to see you treat them with respect and give them a reason to keep your partnership intact.

Here are the ways you can achieve that goal.

Be Amazing

The main reason they are with you is because you are the best fit for their company. The services that you provide are perfect, which means you need to continue that standard into the future. As soon as your standards start to slip, your clients will begin to lose faith and look elsewhere. No matter how good the relationship, it is still a business relationship and you still need to hit the mark each and every day.

Stay In Touch

Even though you work together, you might not see one another for weeks or months on end. Business works like that because there are so many different angles to cover. As a result, you can’t spend every minute on one client or investor, especially if you want new investment. However, that doesn’t mean that you cannot talk to your clients from time to time. In fact, it should be on your to-do list. Clients love it when businesses call them just to check in as it shows them that you care. It is only a small detail, but it makes all the difference

Send A Christmas Card

Alternatively, you don’t even need to pick up the phone because you can send a card instead. Cards have the same effect and are a very intelligent gesture if you want to keep your client list on your side. With Christmas on the horizon, there is no better time to send them a festive card. If you want, you can even send an ecard. Christmas ecards for business are becoming more and more popular as they are cheap and easy to send. It is the digital age gone mad!

Value Their Input

You are the professional – that’s why people hire you in the first place. Yet, the clients are the people that know their business the best. They know their brand and what represents it best, even if they don’t know how to create the content. At the end of the day, you should have the lion’s share of the decision. But, you should involve your clients in the major steps along the way. It shows them that you value their opinion and that you are open to debate and discussion.

Be Decisive

Clients want strong and committed people making their decisions. They need to know that when the time comes, you won’t hesitate. You cannot afford to be uncertain when it comes to your clients because it shows weakness and a lack of expertise.