Potential New Bread-Only Bakery in NYC

January 16, 2015 by Leave a Comment

Chad Robertson, the man behind San Francisco’s Tartine, has been spending a lot of time on the east coast recently, particularly in New York City. This has fans getting excited about the speculation that he may be opening up shop in New York. Robertson was spotted in Bushwick with the bakers at Roberta’s as well as spending time with Danny Bowien at Mission Chinese Food pre-opening giving out tips and advice on mastering the perfect pizza dough.

Hopefully the reports that Robertson is looking into a bread-only bakery concept in NYC are true. The shop would be run by a solo baker and would sell only what that baker could produce in a single day. Robertson mentioned last year that his hold up with opening a shop in New York was finding the ‘right person,’ on site; he stated, “I don’t have that New York person yet. It doesn’t work without that person.”

Robertson recently opened a new space in San Francisco as well as an outpost in Japan and one in London in the works. Although it seems unlikely that the NYC bread shop would happen in the near future, we are still hopeful! To read more about Chad Robertson’s rumored bread-only bakery in NYC, click here. 

Filed Under: Local Market Buzz Tagged With:

Engaging Guests With Loyalty Programs

January 16, 2015 by Leave a Comment

Loyalty programs are key to acquiring repeat customers and engaging the guest whether creating the program from scratch or tweaking an existing program. Consumer behavior has changed remarkably in the digital era; most of us are all guilty of picking up our smartphones first thing in the morning and being the last thing we look at before bed. This behavior is important to take into account when building a loyalty program. Caroline Papadatos, senior vice president of international corporate marketing at Loyalty One has stated, “What we’re seeing is that savvy retailers are adapting and they’re getting ahead of the customer.”

By nature consumers like personalizing what they are shopping for, and this is a great thing for enterprises to take advantage of to tap into their guests’ habits  and gain this sort of data to create a unique shopping experience. The personal data is key in creating and running a successful loyalty program but it is as important to know what to do with this collected data. Different aspects of loyalty programs such as promotional pricing, points programs and perks should all be tied into a single platform. According to David Zychinski, Walgreens Senior Manager of Loyalty Strategy and Insights, data can only become a decision-making tool after retailers take the time to prioritize and when they apply the data to other aspects of their businesses. For more information on customer loyalty programs, click here.

Filed Under: Global Market Buzz

Using Instagram To Help Build Your Brand

January 15, 2015 by Leave a Comment

Social media can be both a blessing and a curse for a foodservice enterprise. In this month’s Enterprise Insight, we will discuss the benefits of using Instagram for your business, and how to use it successfully. Instagram is more than just photo sharing; it is a worthwhile tool for your business for three core reasons:

  • It is cost effective
  • It is fast
  • It is dynamic

Instagram helps build brand awareness for you at no cost. Instagram allows you to create a dialogue or a connection or spread a message instantaneously; once you post, the content you uploaded is immediately shared across the dashboards of each of your followers. Instagram can help you get information about your business out in real time, in addition to using it to highlight or promote products or events. The best food-business accounts use the service to give followers an inside look at the business—the inner workings of the kitchen, the company culture, and the staff. Keep the following items in mind as you use Instagram as part of your social media efforts:

  1. Use Good Lighting
    1. The best light for photographing food is natural light, says Nicole Franzen, a food and lifestyle photographer from Brooklyn. Correctly lighting a dish is one of the most important elements of capturing a good photo and conveys the right message. Just ask Martha Stewart; she recently posted some less-than-desirable photos of her lunch that left her followers in dismay. Always remember; guests eat with their eyes first—even on Instagram.
  2. Use A Hash tag
    1. Using a hash tag for your business gives your followers a way to tag you and spread the attention. This way, anyone who searches for #yourbusiness will find photos taken not only by you—the owner/operator—but by your loyal fans as well. This helps extend that reach and build awareness. Also, it helps you maintain our third point: using the service frequently.
  3. Use It Frequently
    1. There are over 160 million active users on Instagram each month. In order to stay relevant and grab the attention of your followers, you need to post frequently—with quality content!
  4. Analyze
    1. This is the most overlooked necessity in ensuring you post quality content; your content needs to be tracked and evaluated for effectiveness. This means monitoring how many likes, regrams, and comments individual posts receive, your hash tag, usage, and offer response rate. Instagram is free to use, but the time you spend using it will become costly if your posts elicit brand engagement.

Instagram is an invaluable tool for helping to build brand awareness and engagement; the platform is cost effective, fast, dynamic, and can connect you with your fans in ways not possible by other methods, given that you are posting quality content, using the platform effectively, and analyzing your efforts!

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Wahlburgers Coming To NYC

January 14, 2015 by Leave a Comment

Wahlburgers is a fast growing burger chain founded by actor Mark Wahlberg’s brother, Paul Wahlberg. It seems like soon the burger chain will have many more franchises and make its first appearance in New York. The family’s expansion plans were announced last month and included franchises in Florida, Vegas, Philadelphia, and Canada. No less than seven outposts were promised in New York City and the family is acting fast on this promise!

The Wahlberg brothers sold their franchise rights to John Cestare, of Big Apple Burgers, who will be overseeing all the new Wahlburger outposts in the city. The first of these outlets is aiming for a May 1st open in Coney Island. A great portion of the success and populariy of the Massachusetts outpost is in no doubt due to the A&E reality show filmed in and around the burger chain that documents all the Wahlberg family antics, but we hope they do just as well or better as the family takes the franchise nationwide!

To read more about the expansion of the Wahlburgers Boston Burger Restaurant, click here

Filed Under: Local Market Buzz, Openings Tagged With:

NYC Plastic Foam Ban In Eateries

January 14, 2015 by Leave a Comment

Mayor De Blasio’s administration recently announced that beginning this July, New York City will be banning food establishments from using plastic foam containers. Mayor Bloomberg had originally suggested the ban, and de Blasio’s administration is seeing to it that NYC prohibit foam containers as they are clogging the countries landfills and are environmentally hazardous. De Blasio recently stated, “These products cause real environmental harm and have no place in New York City, we have better options, better alternatives, and if more cities across the country follow our lead and institute similar bans, those alternatives will soon become more plentiful and will cost less.”

The plastic foam ban in New York City will help progress towards the Mayor’s ambitious goal of decreasing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050 compared to its 2005 levels. The ban will be applicable to all food establishments including food carts, takeout containers and cups. What will Dunkin’ do! Even foam packaging will not be allowed to be sold within the city (i.e. the packing foam peanuts). Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia states,”While much of the waste we produce can be recycled or reused, polystyrene foam is not one of those materials; removing polystyrene from our waste stream is not only good for a greener, more sustainable New York, but also for the communities who are home to landfills receiving the city’s trash.”

The only exemption from the rule could be nonprofits and businesses with less than $500,000 in annual revenue, but only if they can prove that discontinuing the use of these materials would impact their financial health. For the first year, administration officials are also saying there will be no fines on violations of the ban. The Restaurant Action Alliance, a lobbying group, condemned the decision, suggesting that it would increase costs for eateries while saying that the city should instead focus on creating a plan to recycle the material.

To read more about the new ban in New York City on plastic foam in food establishments, click here

 

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Food Startup Incubators in NYC

January 13, 2015 by 1 Comment

The Hot Bread Kitchen Incubator is a large space located in the neighborhood of East Harlem in Manhattan founded by Jessamyn Rodriguez. Hot Bread Kitchen runs a part of it’s operations by renting a more affordable kitchen space to food concepts that could benefit from a kitchen space without paying high commercial space rents. Hot Bread Kitchen helps different food startups tremendously to get their business off the ground. For example, Paula Barbosa prepares her Brazilian sweets, Brigadeiros, out of the HBK and sells most of her products online and in select food markets. Barbosa explains that after the Times gave her business, My Sweet Brigadeiro, a great review she found herself in a position where she was struggling to keep up with demand: “It was crazy – we were a fad and we weren’t ready…We didn’t even have a credit card machine and we were saying ‘yes’ to everybody. So we decided to rent kitchen space and do this the proper way.”

The other part of HBK’s business besides renting kitchen space to food startups is a bakery. The incubator employs roughly 50 people across both the incubator and bakery sections. The breads that are produced at the kitchen are then sold at various retailers and markets in New York including Whole Foods. Ms Rodriguez explains that besides the ability for the different startups to network and meet new people, the atmosphere in the kitchen is always busy and this is encouraging; “It’s inspiring for entrepreneurs, to see this constant production and delivery schedule. They get the message that if all goes well, they could end up like this.”

There is another similar food incubator run in Long Island City by Mr. Michael Schwartz called the Organic Food Incubator (OFI). Mr. Schwartz began his own business, BAO Food and Drink and decided to create the OFI to provide food startups with the resources and advice he wish he had when he launched BAO from recipe development to legal advice. The OFI centre is currently incubating 60 companies. One of the successful ‘graduates’ of the center, Ariel Glazer from Kombrewcha teas, states: “When you start a business you don’t know what you’re getting into, and if you need lots more time to develop the product it can kill your business…By doing it through an incubator, you don’t need to put up initial capital.”

To read more about the OFI incubator in LIC and the HBK incubator and bakery in East Harlem, click here.

 

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Santina Opening Tonight Beneath High Line

January 12, 2015 by Leave a Comment

The Torrisi team are at it again! Their new concept, Santina, evokes a very 1950’s Italian beach vibe as it is decorated with plenty of venetian glass chandeliers, palm trees and a vibrant neon signage. This past weekend the Torrisi team hosted a soft opening of sorts, for friends, family and members of the press. The opening of Santina to the public will be tonight and is already listed on OpenTable!

Santina will open at 820 Washington Street underneath the high line in the Meatpacking District. The restaurant will be serving a menu based on (but not bound to) traditional Italian coastal cuisine with an emphasis on seafood. According to Grubstreet, Rich Torrisi, Mario Carbone and Jeff Zalaznick’s menu will not include a lot of red meat (one dry-aged T-bone steak will be on the menu), and will also include, amongst other dishes, chickpea flour pancakes, turkey meatballs, agrodolce-glazed octopus spiedini, and a Guanciale e Pepe Stir Fried Rice (yum, see photo here). The restaurant will be open for dinner Monday-Saturday from 5PM to Midnight.

For more photos of the space and more info on the opening, click here.

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Bitten: A Food Conversation

January 12, 2015 by Leave a Comment

On February 6, 2015 a one-day conference will be held at the Scholastic Auditorium in SoHo that positions food as a pillar of pop culture because according to Bitten Food, “‘food influencer’ is a thing! And because food is instagrammed and sexy! And because today an executive chef is as hot as the lead singer of a band!); and features the most important disruptors, entrepreneurs and thought-leaders in the space, talking about the future of food as it pertains to sustainability + giving + feeding + design + delivery + trends + art + and much more…”

Below are a few of the featured topics of the conference:

  • What is the maker movement and what role did food play in making Brooklyn a brand?
  • Is the future of agriculture vertical?
  • What exactly is a food influencer?
  • From cultured meat to crickets, how will we consume protein in the future?
  • What are the most important food trends of 2015?
  • How did print become the new disruptor in food media?
  • How has our understanding and relationship to food changed?
  • What are the most important technologies changing the space?
  • Who are the notable startups to watch?

Tickets are for sale for $200 with a 20% discount for groups of 3 or more. For more information on the conference including a list of the speakers, or to register, click here

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Edible Brooklyn Presents: Sell It Like It Is!

January 9, 2015 by Leave a Comment

On Wednesday, February 4th between 8:00 and 10:00 p.m., Edible Brooklyn will be bringing together some of their favorite local entrepreneurs to answer attendees’  questions about how to run a business in the food and beverage world. A large panel of business-owners will attend the event, including Farm to People, From Scratch Pet Food, Astoria Distilling, Iron Smoke Whiskey and Good Eggs. These local entrepreneurs will be answering questions, sharing stories, and giving out useful advice at the event. Daniel C. Marotta, a trademark and business law attorney, will also be taking questions and giving out some great tips at the event at the Brooklyn Brewery.

Tickets are free for Edible Brooklyn subscribers, and otherwise only $5 (guests must be 21+ years with a valid form of identification). The Brooklyn Brewery is located at 79 N 11th Street, Brooklyn, New York. For more information on this great event or to purchase a ticket now, click here.

Filed Under: Events

ICE: How To Open A Specialty Food Shop

January 9, 2015 by Leave a Comment

Tomorrow, January 10th, TaraPaige’s founder and managing partner, Tara Berman,  will be leading a lesson at the Institute of Culinary Education on how to open a specialty food shop. Four years after earning her CPA, Tara attended ICE, and after graduation she started her tenure at the Thomas Keller Group. Tara is an expert on conceptual development, marketing analysis, financial planning, brand positioning, and strategic operations.

If you have an idea for a specialty food store, this course will help you to evaluate and develop your idea into a real business. From concept and niche marketing to controlling costs and making money, this lesson will teach you exactly how to navigate all the pitfalls of opening your own business, including:

– Developing an overall business plan
– Adding a café, catering, or party planning to an existing business
– Finding a location and understanding the lease
– Designing the business
– Figuring out money and budgeting: financial benchmarks
– Controlling revenue and inventory
– Looking for investors
– Hiring the best and training for service
– Advertising and promotion
– Selling psychology
– Knowing the cycle of service for repeat business

Seats are still available for the lesson Tara Berman is teaching tomorrow, so sign up now! For more information on the course or to reserve a seat, click here

For more

Filed Under: Events
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