You have orders to monitor and staff to manage. There are numbers to crunch, report on, and submit to investors. And maybe you’re in charge of monitoring social media and producing all marketing content as well. Are you feeling slightly overwhelmed? Whether you are or you’re not, it’s easy to let “acquiring new knowledge” pass to the wayside.
But as you know, in today’s technological era, advancements in tech, restaurant philosophy, and food trends are happening faster than ever before. The best way to stay on top of what’s new is to keep tabs on the digital experts reporting on the latest restaurant, small business, technology, and food trends.
Here, we break down the blogs with the most comprehensive industry knowledge and the most relevant content for your restaurant.
1. The Restaurant Expert
Topic: Restaurant management
About: The Restaurant Expert is a coaching and training company which offers seminars and workshops that assist restaurant owners in running more effective and successful businesses, while tackling common issues, like HR, inventory, and costs. Because the company focuses on training, their resources are outstanding. The Restaurant Expert’s blogs doesn’t just produce listicles for the sake of producing content, every piece they produce is chock-full of hands on learning that serves to make restaurant owners more effective at their jobs and responsibilities.
Must-read posts:
3 Parts of a Restaurant Owner’s Job
How to Count Restaurant Inventory Correctly
Why Weekly Restaurant Inventory Is Better Than Monthly Inventory
2. Restaurant Business Online
Topic: Restaurant business trends and innovations
About: With the growth-focused restaurateur at the heart of all their posts, Restaurant Business Online focuses on providing restaurateurs with benchmarks, updates on legislative matters, and economic news. With reports on everything from big changes in large chains to studies on consumer habits and even cooking demos, Restaurant Business Online runs the entire gamut of topics relevant to restaurateurs.
Must read posts:
5 New Restaurant Concepts on Our Radar
Interviewing Chefs: Cooking Demos
20 Top Full Service Chains in Sales and Satisfaction
3. GrubHub Blog
Topic: Restaurant management
About: GrubHub is more than just your average online food-ordering guide. They’ve got some serious brains as well. Their blog, The Tip Jar, is a smorgasbord of helpful tips and tricks for the cutting edge restaurateur.
Must read posts:
Key Tips for Negotiating a Restaurant Lease
Need-to-Know Minimum Wage Facts for Restaurants
4 Ways Restaurants Are Personalizing the Dining Experience
4. TouchBistro Blog
Topic: Restaurant management, technology and best practices
About: Not entirely a shameless plug, we’re really proud of what we’ve created in our TouchBistro Blog. From our developing series of Ultimate Guides to discussions around the latest industry news to marketing advice and tech talk, we speak directly with the experts and our clients to get a boots-on-ground version of the ins and outs of the restaurant industry.
Must read posts:
The Future of the Restaurant POS: An Interview with the Experts
How to Make Your Restaurant Insta-Famous
The Ultimate Guide to Restaurant Marketing
5. Eater
Topic: Local restaurant news, reviews, discussion forums and national trends
About: Eater is the quintessential everything-urban food blog. While it doesn’t focus so much on the restaurant business, the site has multiple city specific sub-sites that discuss the latest restaurant openings, local happenings and thriving forums where industry professionals, customers and restaurateurs alike can ask and answer questions and provide recommendations.
Must read posts:
The Eater Guide to the Whole Entire World
This $2 Million Dinner Includes Personalized Diamond Chopsticks
Why Some Restaurants are Removing Tipping [Video]
6. GrubStreet
Topic: Hottest New York food news
About: As far as North America restaurant trends go, New York sets the precedent. That’s why it’s essential restaurant owners keep a close eye on the goings-on of the food metropolis that sets the benchmark. GrubStreet is New York Magazine’s food and restaurant blog. You can use it as your source to keep up with the latest food obsessions trending in New York.
Must read posts:
The Cheap Eat of the Year Is Jianbing
12 New Lunch Dishes To Eat When You Sneak Away From the Office
7. OpenForum
Topic: Small business best practices
About: OpenForum is American Express’s small business blog with big business insights. While not exclusively geared towards restauranteurs, this blog contains information relevant to every business owner. How do you stay busy during slow season? How can you make time for creative insights that will grow your business? The OpenForum tackles every business problem from growth strategies to managing money to getting customers, and provides solutions that are easily applicable to restaurants.
Must read posts:
How To Grow Your Business: Tips From The Cheesecake Factory
Can Self-Service Help Your Business More Than Hiring Additional Workers?
How Does A Small Business Owner Juggle Social Media?
8. Software Advice
Topic: Technology and software
About: Software Advice provides research and reviews of hundreds of products. They look into the latest trends affecting specific industries. In addition to giving you the ability to compare various restaurant software against one another, Software Advice also has a busting resource section. They offer complete reports on the hottest software on the market that will prove to enhance your businesses productivity and effectiveness.
Must read posts:
Why Restaurants Fail – and How Yours Can Succeed
Mobile POS Checklist: What Restaurant Owners Need to Know
5 Tips to Avoid Botching Your POS Implementation
9. Marketing Tech Blog
Topic: Marketing technology
About: While many of the other blogs focus on food and operations, marketing is a core competency that can’t be ignored, and so is the technology that is the basis of all successful marketing activities. MarketingTechBlog.com talks about the best and most effective ways to manage your marketing efforts. Covering the entire spectrum of digital marketing, from social media to content optimization to email, this marketing site is ripe for the picking with actionable and easy to understand marketing strategies.
Must read posts:
Why and How to Verify Your Email Marketing Lists
Hashtag Research and Management Tools
The Future User Interaction and Interfaces
What are you waiting for? Get reading! Actually, wait. First things first. Instead of wasting time visiting these blogs one by one daily, use a content aggregator like Feedly or Digg reader, which organizes your favorite blogs by post, organizing new posts as if they’re all part of one large newspaper for you to peruse at your leisure.
Dana is the former Content Marketing Manager at TouchBistro, sharing tips for and stories of restaurateurs turning their passion into success. She loves homemade hot sauce, deep fried pickles and finding excuses to consume real maple syrup.
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