3 Best Practices for Restaurant Menu Expansion

When it comes to expanding a restaurant’s menu, there are several important considerations to be taken into account. You need to know when to follow trends and when to ignore them, which new items will make the most bang for your buck and which will allow your restaurant to blossom into an ever more successful venture. Poorly thought out choices can have long-term business consequences. Here are a few guidelines to keep in mind when expanding your restaurant’s menu.

Be Discerning About the Menu Trends You Follow

Menu trends come and go on a regular basis, and not all are going to be a good fit for your brand. Choosing which are and which are not is a matter of assessing how well the trend fits with your overall brand image and appeals to your target demographic. If it fits with your overall brand strategy and is feasible to implement, go for it. Just remember that there’s no shame in letting a few of those trends pass on by, or in even trying to set a few trends yourself. Authenticity and individuality wins big in any business, but especially so in the restaurant industry. If you do decide to follow the trend, design what you offer around a quality experience for your guests, not the cost of implementation. There’s no sense in trying to do something specific if it’s not done right.

Allow Your Restaurant Menu to Evolve

While you don’t need to change your menu every time a new trend comes around, it is important to have flexibility and diversity built into what you offer. For example, there needs to be enough diversity in your menu that you’re not relying on just a few items to get you by in case of food shortages and price spikes.

Furthermore, your menu needs to be allowed to evolve. It could be that certain items or practices that worked ten years ago are no longer serving your restaurant business well today. Look for ways to be visionary with your brand image and discard those elements that no longer serve that purpose. If changes are made, strong leadership and communication skills are needed to ensure that team members, guests and franchisees are brought up to date and are on board with the new plan.

Listen to Your People. Look at Your Menu Data

It would be remiss to make menu changes without talking to your people and looking at your numbers. Your employees are your most reliable resource when it comes to decisions about menu expansion. They are on the ground with the guests daily, observing and serving their needs. The numbers will tell you what is most profitable to your business; your employees will tell you how your guests feel about what you offer, what impresses them the most and what they’d like to see more of. Some restaurants even go so far as to involve the guests’ decisions about new menu items directly. However you do it, utilize the people and information you have at hand to make the best determination for menu expansions.

Expanding your restaurant’s menu can be an exciting and profitable venture. If done well, the opportunity is there to attract new customers, increase sales and drive your brand’s overall expansion into the profitable restaurant business it is meant to be.

Important Questions Restaurants Should Answer Before Putting a Mobile Ordering Platform in Place

Having a mobile ordering platform in place is becoming more and more essential to any restaurant’s future longevity. Restaurants around the country are rolling out mobile initiatives left and right, and there’s no question about the success of that endeavor. However, there are a lot of decisions that need to be made before your new mobile ordering platform is ready to go public. Here are a few key questions operators need to answer before joining the mobile ordering movement.

Should Your Restaurant Invest in its Own Mobile Ordering Hardware and/or Software?

The first question to consider is whether or not it makes sense for your restaurant to invest in its own, customized mobile ordering platform. There are a lot of advantages to doing so. You can create your own proprietary software and apps, perfectly customized to your particular restaurant and customer demographic. You can also add nifty bells and whistles. One of these “bells” is a GPS locator that sends an order to the kitchen when it recognizes the person who has placed the order is near.

The downside, of course, is that it takes more time and money to develop your own platform, and doing so may not make sense for every restaurant out there. There are a number of mobile ordering technologies that already exist. It might be smarter to simply use an API (application program interface) to put one of those to use for your business—especially if time or money is an issue.

How Is Your Restaurant Going to Handle the Costs, Data and Security Issues that Arise with Mobile Ordering Platforms?

The next questions to think about in terms of rolling out a mobile ordering platform have to do with properly and efficiently handling money, data and security. For instance, you must decide who is going to host, manage and process payments from your customers. Are you going to use an existing service such as Google Wallet or Square, or are you going to look for a different solution? If you do decide to use a third-party, what transaction fees are involved? Vendor fees vary widely, so be sure to shop around.
Mobile ordering has excellent potential for drawing on demographic data if properly designed and payment processing security is paramount for any business. So, in terms of data, operators need to consider the following questions: What data are you collecting? Who owns it? Where is it going to be stored? How safe and secure is that data? What are the security levels?

What Goals and Strategies Will Your Restaurant Put in Place for its Mobile Platform?

Last but not least, it’s important to set goals and strategies in order to maximize the effectiveness of your new mobile ordering system. What kind of budget are you going to allocate? How can you capture the biggest audience quickly? Do you have a marketing plan in place to get people to use your new system? Are you going to pair your mobile ordering platform with any sort of loyalty program? And, most importantly … have you set success metrics and set up the ability to track the results of your endeavors?

Putting a mobile ordering platform in place for your restaurant doesn’t have to be difficult, but it does require some strategic planning and a bit of shopping around. If your restaurant business if ready to make the move to mobile, making sure you’ve done your homework ahead of time will make a big difference in how effectively you can roll out your new mobile initiative.

3 Key Steps to Operational Excellence in the Restaurant

When you consider how much time you spend correcting or minimizing the repercussions of mistakes made in your restaurant, finding a way to guarantee that processes can be run correctly 100% of the time is appealing indeed. Just think what it would do for your business in terms of profitability, reduced cost and hassle, repeat business and customer delight if your patrons could expect to get the same high quality product or service every single time they visit.

The value of operational excellence, or providing the product or service right every time, cannot be underestimated. Same-store sales increase over businesses whose operational excellence is merely average. Even better, increases in operational excellence can often be achieved with little or no capital or ongoing investment, which makes striving for it a no-brainer. Here are three key steps you can employ in your restaurant to achieve the best standard of operational excellence possible.

Design for Quality in Your Restaurant Processes from the Start

The first and most important factor in improving operational excellence is to ensure that the products and services you create delight your customers. This may seem obvious, but all too often businesses start tweaking their procedures for efficiency without taking the time to ensure that those processes first meet customer requirements. Without ensuring that what you are offering is above and beyond a customer’s expectation, you risk too many “me-too” products which do nothing to set your brand apart from the crowd and appeal to your customer base. Once you’re sure you know how to delight your customers, designing quality into your processes is the next step.

The most significant difference between ordinary restaurants and high performers is that quality is designed into their processes from the get-go. These restaurants strive for implementing processes that create 100% success, every single time. For example, if you design a recipe and its instructions for excellence, the final product should always have the same great taste, regardless of who is in the back of the house.

Strive for the Perfect Process in Your Restaurant’s Procedures

Once you’ve designed your process for excellence, it’s time to run pilot tests and refine the procedures based on the results of that data. Test the procedure against multiple equipment configurations, a full range of employees’ and customers’ demands, to ensure that the process is as close to perfect as possible. Once you’ve got a process that can be replicated perfectly every time, document the steps in detail and develop your training materials.

Replicate and Refine the Restaurant Processes that Near Perfection

If your data shows that the process can be operated properly 100% of the time and is an improvement over an existing process, it’s time to mandate implementation throughout your organization. Standardization in the quality of products and services you offer is a critical factor to the overall success of your business. Effectiveness is always ahead of efficiency. Is it truly possible to make your processes so flawless that they can produce perfect products and services every time? Maybe not. But, if you focus on quality; carefully design your procedures so that they can be replicated as perfectly as possible, and have a goal of achieving outstanding operational excellence, you will get as close to perfect as possible.

Restaurant News: Salmonella Is More Resistant to Disinfectants than Ever

Food safety is top priority to those in the restaurant industry; food-borne illness is no joking matter. Salmonella is one of the more common bacterium lurking in the corners that restaurant business operators must attempt to guard against. It is most commonly found in raw meat and can typically be killed by thoroughly cooking food through. Unfortunately, a recent study published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology has demonstrated that salmonella has now become resistant to disinfectants to the point where, if it is allowed to form a biofilm on surfaces, it can be difficult, if not impossible, to kill.

The Food-Borne Illness Outbreak that Prompted a New Look at Salmonella

The study into salmonella’s new resistance to disinfectants was conducted by researchers from the National University of Ireland, Galway, when 160 people in 10 European countries got sick from the Agona serotype of salmonella. After some investigation, it was discovered that the source of the outbreak was meat from a food processing facility with a wide distribution range. It was further discovered that the biofilm that salmonella can create on hard surfaces, such as those found in just such a food processing facility, is nearly indestructible once it gets established.

Only One Disinfectant Tested Could Kill Salmonella, and Only in its Early Stages

The biofilm of salmonella forms on hard surfaces and gets denser and more securely attached as time passes. The researchers tested three common disinfectants on a variety of hard surfaces: sodium hypochlorite, sodium hydroxide and benzalkonium chloride, in two stages of salmonella biofilm development; early (48 hours) and relatively mature (168 hours). While all three disinfectants did lower the counts of salmonella, sodium hydroxide was the only one to effectively eradicate the biofilm in its early development stage. Worse, not a single one of the agents could kill the mature biofilm, even after being soaked for 90 minutes!

Is This Resistance to Disinfectants Found in All Types of Salmonella?

The researchers of this study were curious to know if there was anything special about this particular strain of salmonella that allowed it to survive so successfully on the hard surfaces of the food processing facility. The answer is, unfortunately, no. In fact, the study found that every single type of salmonella they examined was able to adapt to the specialized biofilm lifestyle, on every single surface they tested. This includes glass, stainless steel, glazed tile and plastic.

Obviously, this is troubling news for food-service businesses. Letting a salmonella biofilm develop that can’t be killed is equivalent to going out of business. While there’s not much that can be done about salmonella’s growing resistance to disinfectants, restaurant operators should continue to take the precautionary measures against food-borne illnesses that they always have taken.  This includes being mindful of cross-contamination, especially on hard surfaces prone to the development of salmonella, and serving foods that are thoroughly cooked. This study only underscores the necessity for continued and improved vigilance on the part of restaurant operators as science works to neutralize these nasty bacteria.

3 of the Most Successful Restaurant Marketing Campaigns in 2013

As a restaurant operator, it never hurts to take a look at what is working really well for the competition. There were a number of highly successful restaurant marketing campaigns in 2013 worthy of review by the restaurateur looking to up their restaurant’s marketing campaign track record. Here is a brief review of three of the most successful. 

Wendy’s Makes a Home Run with Crowd-Sourcing

Crowd-sourcing can be a very powerful promotional strategy, but getting your customers engaged and interacting with your brand can be tricky. Wendy’s hit the crowd-sourcing home run in 2013 with their ‘Pretzel Love Stories’ and ‘Pretzel Love Songs.’ In these campaigns, they encouraged fans to comment on the Wendy’s Facebook and Twitter pages about how much they loved their new pretzel bun products. They then took these comments and cobbled them together into humorous video skits and songs telling the ‘pretzel love stories’ as crafted by the fans. They gave public credit to the people whose comments were selected, and, of course, ended each promotional video by encouraging viewers to send in more comments to help them write the next pretzel love song or story. The campaign went viral and ended up being a brilliantly successful marketing tactic for the restaurant.

Chipotle Mexican Grill Excels at Brand Positioning

Brand positioning can make all the difference in terms of how the public thinks of your restaurant. Over the last several years, Chipotle Mexican Grill has made its name with its ‘Cultivate a Better World’ and ‘Food With Integrity’ marketing campaigns, designed to demonstrate the brand’s commitment to sustainable and ethical food choices. In 2011, they put out a promotional video entitled “Back to the Start” which was wildly popular online. In 2013, they followed this up with a new video and matching smartphone and tablet apps entitled “The Scarecrow.” The object of the game is to guide the scarecrow character through a dystopian future landscape of processed food in search of sustainable sources to feed customers. The chain also offered free food rewards to download and play the mobile game. The campaign was again, wildly successful, and serves as a solid demonstration of how effective it can be to associate your brand with a cause about which people care. 

Domino’s Takes the Pie with Personalized Pizza Profiles

While pizza joints were some of the first restaurants to embrace online ordering technology, it wasn’t until this last year that chains like Domino’s upped the ante in terms of customized online ordering. They decided to give customers the option to save a personalized ‘Pizza Profile’ in which they could save the details of their favorite orders to expedite future ordering. They then paired this feature with an extensive video marketing campaign illustrating the frustrations and waste of time ordering over the phone, and assured customers that they could reduce their order time to 30 seconds or less simply by creating a Pizza Profile on the Domino’s website.  Not only did this campaign bring in thousands of new customers, but it also had the added benefit of giving the company the contact information and permission needed to market to these customers in the future. 

Whether you want to look for ways to take advantage of restaurant technology, focus on positioning your brand, or find inventive new ways to appeal to your customers, it’s smart to scope out tactics being used successfully by competitors and employ them within your own business. Marketing success in 2014 and beyond will rely on taking notes on what’s working for others and integrating those ideas into your own unique restaurant marketing campaign.

How a Federal Ban on PHOs could Effect Restaurants

The potential health dangers of trans fats have been enjoying a healthy discussion for over a decade now, with a number of policies being put in place to inform consumers and in some cases, already ban their use. Partially hydrogenated oils, or PHOs, are the main source of trans fats and early in November, 2013, the Food and Drug Administration proposed a total ban on their use in food products. The FDA tentatively determined that PHOs are no longer ‘recognized as safe’ – which is a required designation for any ingredient to be added to food without explicit FDA approval. For restaurants, the ban could mean reformulating any menu items still made with trans fats.

Weeding Partially Hydrogenated Oils Out of the Menu

The FDA started requiring the amount of trans fat in a product to be put on labels in 2003, but weeding them out of the menu entirely can still be tricky. You’ll find trans fats in bread, crackers, shelf-stable baked goods (such as ice cream cones), and oily things in general. They’re also present in a number of whipped toppings, pre-made pie crusts, and, of course, in frying oil.

Eliminating trans fats from the menu entirely can take some time and typically requires working with your distributors to determine alternatives that are available. Many restaurants have even taken to making their own trans fat-free items, such as those whipped toppings and pie crusts, creating a superior product for a similar price.

Much of the Transition away from Trans Fats has already Occurred

Fortunately, the proposed ban should be a reasonably easy transition for the restaurant industry since much of the hard work of the transition has already been done years ago. When research about the potentially harmful health effects of trans fats first came out, the availability of a number of alternative products quickly followed suit. Today there are trans fat-free versions of nearly every product – you simply need to look for it.

Furthermore, some states have already passed the ban of their own accord so restaurants in those areas already have a leg up on others around the nation still needing to make the transition.

Restaurants should not Fear the PHO Ban

Ultimately, restaurant operators should not fear the FDA’s ban on artificial trans fats. Thanks to required labeling, better information, and a greater variety of alternatives, making the switch now will be much easier than it would have been had it been required seven or eight years ago. The proposal is currently being put to the public before the final determination is made, but odds are good the bill will pass.

If you haven’t already scrutinized your menu for trans fat culprits, it will take some time to do so – and then to come up with alternatives – but it needn’t be overwhelming. Work with your distributors to determine other options that are available to you and rest easy knowing that ultimately, removing trans fats from your menu means that you will be offering a higher quality product to the public.

The Best Response Restaurants can have in the Face of an Employee Strike

As thousands of fast-food employees around the country organize strikes in demand of higher wages and the ability to unionize, it’s smart for restaurant operators to have a strategy in place for how to deal with potential employee strike demonstrations on their grounds and within their ranks. Ideally, restaurant operators should keep the following guidelines in mind.

Anticipate Restaurant Strike Activity and Ensure the Safety of Guests

Whether or not your own employees may take part in the demonstrations, you would be wise to anticipate the potential of strike activity so that you are prepared to respond appropriately. It’s important to remember that if two or more employees want to create an action, they have the legal right to do so as long as they don’t vandalize property. The worst you can do to them is fire them or cut their hours in retaliation — though this response tends to only worsen the situation.

Instead, it’s best to do what you can to ensure your employees’ satisfaction and focus instead on ensuring the safety of your guests should a demonstration arise on your business’s grounds. If the demonstration gets too big or rowdy, be prepared to close the establishment. Guest comfort and safety is paramount.

Avoid Confrontations when Dealing with Strike Activity

How you handle strike activity is critical. Running out to shout at the protestors to get off of your property is only going to land you a spotlight on YouTube. Instead, support your employees’ right to voice their opinions. Instead of combating them, focus on publicizing the investments you have made into employee benefit programs. Demonstrate that you hear and understand their concerns. Recognize that everyone has a right to believe what they will and that the best action you can take as a representative of your business is to maintain a neutral attitude towards the whole issue, especially in public.

Educate Your Restaurant Employees about Advancement Opportunities

It’s important to keep an open doorway of communication going on between management and employees. It’s also important to show your staff the opportunities for advancement that already exist. Let them know that they can take additional training, get certification, and strive for performance bonuses if they’d like to make a higher income.  Educate them about how your restaurant promotes its staff and the steps that an employee will need to take if they are to receive a promotion.

In short, aside from having a plan of action for ensuring the safety of your guests if strike activity occurs on your property, there isn’t much you can do about the action itself. Instead, it’s better to educate your employees about how they can make more money with your business. You need to listen to and really hear their concerns about their wages and you must possess the ability to tolerate any demonstrations that do occur with a benign eye.

Doing these things will ensure that your public image remains untarnished and that your relationship with your staff and employees remains as unobstructed and positive as possible. We can’t control what other people do, but we can control how we are going to respond!

Fall Foods Making Their Way onto Restaurant Menus

Offering seasonal menu items is a great way to add some diversity, spice, and refreshment to your restaurant’s offerings. As fall rolls around and the temperature starts dropping, people tend to gravitate towards warm, nourishing dishes and robust, hearty flavors. Here are a few food items that will compliment your restaurant’s fall menu nicely.

Restaurants Offer More than just Pumpkin

Pumpkin dishes and pumpkin flavored drinks are the first thing people usually think of in terms of autumn foods. While pumpkin does add a great list of flavorful options, it’s important not to overlook all of the other tasty menu items the squash family has to offer. For instance, butter nut squash can be made into a delicious semi-freddo topped with salted orange caramel or turned into a nourishing butternut and apple harvest soup.

Blue Hubbard squash can be mixed with pureed chestnuts, topped with whipped cream, and served over smoked vanilla ice cream to make a tantalizing dessert. Acorn squash can be stuffed with broccoli, cheese, turkey sausage, rice, and apples to make a delicious dinner entree. Spaghetti squash can be mixed with garlic, onions, zucchini, bell pepper, tomato, and feta cheese to make a stomach-rumbling primavera. The squash family offers an incredible diversity of flavors and options and offers a simple way to easily add fantastic autumnal dishes to your menu.

Autumn Meats to Add to Your Restaurant Menu

There are a number of meats that make excellent fall menu selections. Duck is an obvious one – and a smart choice all around since duck sales have risen 7% between January and June of this year alone. Duck tacos, Peking duck, and duck salad were particular sales drivers for this period. When chicken wing prices shot up earlier this year, a number of restaurants turned to duck wings as a cheaper alternative as well.

Aside from duck, all other types of game meat make fall-appropriate choices as well. Consider such tasty treats as venison chili, bacon-wrapped grilled elk backstraps, spicy orange bison balls, or braised wild boar with sauerkraut. Wild game makes an exotic and taste-bud pleasing menu item perfectly appropriate for drawing autumn eaters.

Think Bold, Spicy, Belly-Warming Flavors for Fall Restaurant Foods

Pretty much anything that has a bold, spicy, or belly-warming flavor is going to be a hit for fall menu choices. Some restaurants meet this flavor craving by featuring lesser known ethnic foods like that found from the Lao or Issan regions. Think grilled meat with sour-spicy dipping sauces, marinated grilled chicken, and sticky rice or som tam, a green papaya salad with rising popularity. Other restaurants focus more on offering comfort foods such as hearty and flavorful soups, chili, and meats with diverse flavor combinations. Think honey-glazed pork chops, grilled bacon jalapeno wraps, or cranberry, sausage, and apple stuffing.

Whichever your choice, make sure to add your seasonal menu items to your marketing messages. People love to try something new and have the opportunity to try something that is only available for a limited time, so make sure to tout your autumn menu selections proudly!

Why Your Restaurant Needs a Google Plus Presence

Google’s social media platform, Google Plus, currently boasts around 500 million users worldwide, second only to Facebook in terms of user popularity. While it’s smart for your restaurant to have a presence there for the same reasons it’s good to be on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, there are other reasons for having a G+ presence that are even more important.

Get More Visibility for Your Restaurant Across all Google Products with a G+ Profile

The first reason it’s smart to set up your business’s Google Plus profile is that you will automatically gain more visibility across all of Google’s products (Google Maps, Google Search, Gmail, YouTube, Google’s Android platform, Zagat reviews, etc.). Google is big on integrating all of their products to function as a complete ecosystem and obviously they have a vested interest in seeing their social platform be a successful venture. As a result, G+ information frequently shows up first in search results, making it in your best interest to have a well-built Google Plus profile presentation.

However, simply having a G+ presence will not automatically boost your search engine rankings per se. The magic really starts happening when you post frequently, interact with other G+ pages, include descriptions and hash tags and give Google additional relevant content to index. 

Google’s Reviews are the First thing People see When They Search for Your Restaurant

While the function that Google Plus serves in terms of search engine optimization is important, the function that it serves in terms of reputation management is perhaps even more critical. When someone does a Google search for your restaurant, the very first thing they see is a link to Google Reviews from consumers who have something to say about your establishment. These reviews can often make or break a consumer’s choice about whether or not to give your restaurant their business.

While you can’t control negative reviews (beyond doing everything in your power to prevent a poor customer experience in the first place), you can use your Google+ profile as a way to demonstrate that you’re open to hearing people’s feedback and are willing to address any concerns your customers might have. Furthermore, you can use your profile to build relationships with your customers and encourage them to leave positive reviews for others to read. All of this conversation becomes visible to the public through your G+ profile.

Leverage Google Plus Business and Local Pages for Your Restaurant

The final note on using G+ effectively is the fact that Google has set up specific profile types for businesses to use. Restaurants will most likely be best served by building a G+ Local page, which is specifically designed for businesses with a physical location and includes Google maps, reviews, and ratings from Zagat as part of the viewing experience. These pages also allow you to post content, photos and videos, interact with other pages and customer profiles, and even create ‘hangouts’ where you can interact with consumers or pre-record information you want stored on your profile page. It only takes a few minutes to get your Google+ presence up and running and the automatic boost in online visibility it affords makes it well worth your time.

Improve Your Reputation: Take Pride in Your Restaurant’s Menu Offerings

It might seem obvious that having pride in your establishment is important for good business, but if you’re not providing education to your staff and customers about what makes your restaurant offerings special, you’re missing an important reputation building opportunity.

Educating your employees and customers about what you’re offering, why you’ve chosen it, and what makes it special is often all it takes to turn an average dining experience into something that feels more special, unique, and memorable.

Educate Your Restaurant Staff about the Food

Being knowledgeable about the food that is offered is critical to the reputation building process. When your employees are intimately familiar with the ingredients on the list, how the food is prepared, and why you have chosen it, they are better able to translate this knowledge to the customers.

For example, let’s take a basic salad that may be on your menu. There’s nothing too exciting about that, right? But what happens when your waitress is able to say, “Oh, the house salad? That’s a great choice. It’s made from organic local greens and produce picked fresh from the garden. We have a homemade balsamic vinaigrette dressing that pairs perfectly with that, would you like to try it?” Suddenly the boring old house salad seems a lot more interesting, doesn’t it?

Schooling your employees to take pride in your menu offerings and talk about them knowledgeably and with enthusiasm goes a long way toward setting your restaurant above the crowd.

Integrate Pride in Your Restaurant with Your Marketing Strategies

Along with educating your employees to speak about what you offer in your restaurant with knowledge and enthusiasm, you’ll also want to integrate those same sentiments into your marketing messages. Let your customers know how proud you are of what you offer and why it’s so special. If you pride yourself on offering a truly exceptional dining experience, say so. If you use only family recipes on your menu, tell the crowd. If you donate x percentage of your profits to local charities, let your consumer base know how their contributions are helping the community.

The more that you can make eating at your restaurant something special and unique that your customers can take pride in, the greater your reputation will become.

Show Off Your Restaurateur Skills and Taste-Pairing Expertise

A final way that you can demonstrate your knowledge, pride, and expertise in your niche lies in your ability to suggest additional food and drink pairings that compliment the menu items your customers have ordered. A lot of that comes down to employee training. You want your serving staff to be able to suggest the right side dish, wine, or beer to perfectly compliment the main entree.

Alcoholic drinks are a particularly easy way to demonstrate the pride and enthusiasm you have for what you’re offering. Again, rather than the waiter simply taking an order for the shiraz on the menu and walking away, they can say something like, “Great choice! That shiraz was bottled in 1996 in Australia. It’s got a slightly fruity, blackberry flavor and pairs perfectly with the olive-crusted lamb you chose.” Providing this kind of additional information reinforces the specialness of the customer’s choice and builds your establishment’s reputation as a unique and knowledgeable dining experience.