What to Blog About, Restaurant Style: Pitas and Indique Heights
January 13, 2009 :: Joe LoongHere are a few more ideas about what you, the small business owner, can blog about, as inspired by real-life examples. Here, we look at two restauranteurs. (Incidentally, I’m going to go with “restauranteur” as an accepted variant, not a mistake for “restaurateur”)
* The Tampa Tribune reported that someone stole a chair from a local restaurant. Normally, this would not be anything approaching a notable event, but the restaurant, the Pita Pit in Hyde Park (a neighborhood in Tampa), placed the surveillance camera video in its blog, SoHo Pita Pit.
They’re offering a reward for recovery of the chair. [Story via social linksharing site Fark.com]
Commenter skepticism to the contrary (at least one person suggests the theft was staged), it does offer one atypical example of happenings in your restaurant that you can blog about.
I note that their blog uses WordPress, and it’s relatively new, so there’s not a lot of content. They could do a much better job in listing out the basic information people would want (hours, location, menu, etc), though as part of a larger franchise chain, it looks like they’re relying on their corporate parent’s Web site to do that heavy lifting. Which is not optimal: If you go in through the corporate site’s front door, it’s a pain to get to an individual store’s page (which is iframed), and it’s definitely not easy to bookmark or share. In fact, I couldn’t even get the store’s direct link URL until I busted out of the frame (you can also take the nonintuitive step of clicking the “Print” button).
(They also have a MySpace page, which I guess makes sense if they’re targeting a younger crowd seeking late night munchies — it’s all about knowing your audience, online and off.)
* Tuesday, we had a semi-impromptu Tweetup at Indique Heights in Chevy Chase, Maryland (and not the one a few miles away in Cleveland Park, DC, I found to my dismay). It actually grew out of a scheduled Solutions Are Power blog team monthly meeting, and we may make a regular event out of it (my good idea for the quarter).
The restaurant Web site is pretty good, covering most of the basic information that people look for in a restaurant site. One quibble is that the site uses frames, so some of the URLs are obscured. Also, some of the menu sections are only available as downloadable PDF files, which is an additional barrier to people seeing them, though I note that the sister restaurant’s site has them in HTML, so I assume it’s a temporary thing.
Notably (again, only on the sister site at this time), proprietor Chef Vinod’s blog is linked from the restaurant’s navigation. In it, he incorporates content from some cooking classes and TV appearances, as well as scheduled events, recipes, and slices of restaurant and DC-area life.
Other things on the blog checklist: blog RSS feed easy to get to; robust blogroll links; good use of photos (including links to his Flickr photostream.)
In the interest of full disclosure, Chef Vinod knows Shashi (who is a chef in his own right, which I keep forgetting) — he also provided dessert, which you can see here:
Oh, and the Tweetup itself was great. The conversations ranged far and wide. We Solutions Are Power bloggers were met by fellow Twitterers @koa, @digitalsista, @geoffliving, @chrisbrowntv, @poolcenter, @kasrael, @aliciagriffin, @lkthrock, and @digitaldynamo (apologies if I missed anyone). Not bad for an impromptu meetup.
Anyway, it’s my impression (and I’m just going on my gut) that dining and food review blogs far outnumber restaurant blogs (blogs by and about a restaurant, which is distinct from chef and cooking blogs). Then again, I’m not really a foodie, so tell me if I’m wrong. But it looks like there are plenty of opportunities out there.
Are you a restauranteur (okay, fine: restaurateur) with a blog? What do you want to see in a restaurant blog? Leave a comment below.
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