Marketing Help ¢5

Yes, my title is a homage to Peanuts ;) Today I will write in regards to two simple marketing tips for the restaurant/bar industry. These marketing tips came to mind during a recent Sunday evening happy hour. 1. Give reasons for your patrons to spend additional time at your establishment. 2. Make it easy for potential customers to know what you offer. Here is how these came to mind. We were down on Rainey St in Austin. Nice pseudo residential/converted homes into bars neighborhood. We spent a few hours having a beer at 3 different house converted bars. Granted we only had one drink at each place so what I'm saying here doesn't ring true in this instance. However, if we weren't driving we would have spent the most time and most money at the bar that had the board/card games. This is no new concept but hey this is nickle advice. Give a reason for people to spend time/cash at your place. Playing those games and consuming a beverage was a great time. Many bars and cafe's take advantage of this offering. And its a great idea to do so. Unless you want churn, then this is bad marketing advice.

My next piece of advice. Austin is a food trailer town. It's awesome, many passionate people offer an enhanced selection of food. However, not all of them are marketers. Why I say this is there was one food trailer with an obscure name. No other details were given except one vague phrase. Now how are people passing by or at the bar across the street supposed to know what they offer. How are people supposed to refer to your trailer? My advice to all food trailers is simple. Have a fun, simple name that relates to your food. Post the menu or pictures of what you offer outside so people can easily see. Simple words of advice. Sure we were curious so we went up and asked. But how many others would do that? Especially when other food trucks/places on the block clearly state what they offer. Sure, obscurity/exclusivity has been a trend, but the tables in front were empty, so if that was their strategy, hmm.... Simple advice for simple good marketing. That's all for now.

March On

With no attention to patronize, March has two meanings. Both are quite obvious and well known, the month and movement/advancement. Both definitions are the reasoning for this post. March is here and where January and February went is beyond me. February was a fun month with Family visits. It was also a crazy month that involved snow and cold, which I am used to but in MN not Texas. I can and will cry a river because happily it never got so cold that rivers froze, however a few days were near the 32 mark but never fell to single digits, to my knowledge. Plus, negative and serve windchill's were not experienced and for that I am so happy. Back to present, here we are in March. The month of spring break; and with the weather getting warmer, its nice to look forward to a month of spring instead of just a week vacation. During this spring filled March month I'm going to see how often I can post without just exercising my fingers with worthless words. Here's a post that's been in the back of my mind...Ps- I know me cheering about warm weather can be annoying for those of you with cold toes but if you are reading this post you more than likely hold an open invitation to come visit Austin. 

SUNDAY FUNDAY
Sunday Fun Day is a phrase I have used for many years. Sundays have the cachet of being a relaxing day and they deserve that. I have always aimed for fun Sundays, hence the term Sunday Funday. In the fall and winter, Football is the entertainment. Now in the spring, adventure is the entertainment. Although not all adventure is relaxing per-say, it's all in your state of mind. If you not over thinking the activity and you are enjoying yourself, stress is absent and therefore you mind is in a meditative, relaxed zone. Probably didn't have to defend adventure being relaxing that far, but nonetheless. Sunday here was 86, gorgeous, I must say. So Summer and I went for a hike, stopped for some quick groceries and then got some Olive Garden take out. The hike and Olive Garden were delicious, but the best part was that the small niche grocery store had (has) Meyer Lemons. Which leads us to part two of this post.

WHEN LIFE HANDS YOU LEMONS; REQUEST MEYERS ;)

I could positively rant about these tasty little lemons for paragraphs. If you have never tasted one, do so, your next opportunity. If you're in Austin, head to Sun Harvest off Brody and Lamar. It's true these lemons are hard to find and quite more expensive then their big yellow cousin, but they are worth their weight in yellow gold. (an attempt at lame humor) These varieties are usually smaller and sweeter. Some believe they are a cross between a lemon and an orange. I have yet to meet Mr. Meyer to ask him (an actual man who created the variety) but I am a fan of his work. Regular lemons for me are too acidic, these are just right. I first tasted/discovered this variety at Summer's sisters house in California. When I discovered they grow great in pots, I have one on my shopping list for our balcony. I attached a picture below. The store bought ones are tasty but those ones I picked from the tree were simply amazing. They are perfect in a freshly brewed cup of green tea or in a pitcher of iced green tea for starters. Now I just need to find some recipes that require lemons as a main ingredient (so the flavor can be tasted not blended in)! And that's just what I am going to do.

Learning Facebook

Facebook Test

Hi Y'all, as you may know this blog serves the purpose to connect with family and friends while also documenting what Austin, Tx is all about to encourage tourism and visitation. A third and less advertised purpose is this blog serves as a learning tool for me. It seems this internet thing isn't going away *joke and everyday new things are arising on this www. So this blog serves as a way for me to learn more about the internet, social media and etc. Personally, I enjoy learning now. More so, then when I was in school, perhaps because it's on my terms and under my interests. None the less, I'll end the rambling because all this post serves is for me to try adding a Facebook like button to my page. =)

2011 - New Year, New Ideas - "T-sips"

It's a small world after all. I apologize if I burn that song into your mind, however that sentence rings so true, especially with the internet. I love how connected I can be with friends, family and future friends via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Aside from the connectivity, every day people are coming up with interesting internet-exclusive ideas. Well, I'm not writing to say I will become the next million-dollar web entrepreneur or that I have a terrific idea, but this year I am going to play with some internet ideas. This first one isn't to make money but it's an interesting way to play around with Twitter and Flickr. I am by no means a professional taster, I have no "supertaster" abilities. However, what some "supertaster" says about a beverage may not hold true to how I percieve the taste so it doesn't really matter that I am just an average taster. Therefore what I am going to do in 2011 is tweet about many interesting beverage I come across using simple, concise, everyday language. T-Sips I call it. =) My catergory of interesting will include Brews (alcoholic and kombucha's), Caffeinated drinks, Wines, Tea's, basically anything that is liquid and not a common every day drink/brand. Sorry Bud light, water, milk, most juices. Why am I doing this? Mostly, so I can have a nice little documentation of drinks I like and don't like with a limited 140 character count blurb. However, other reasons are to share interesting beverages with my facebook and twitter followers and help spread the word about local, niche and specialty drinks. Don't worry, I won't over tweet, I'll keep the beverages I tweet about tasteful ;)

How it works: my tweets/posts will include searchable hash tags (#) regarding the beverage itself along with the #Tsips hash tag that will link all off these tweets. The tweets will also include a link to Flickr which will include a photo of the beverage and in some cases more details about the beverage. That's about it, just a simple little 2011 project. I hope I help you discover a new beverage to indulge in :)

As my grandpa would say: Na zdorovie

December

Greetings - It's time to awake from my month long blog hibernation and write about December because December rocks. For many reasons. It's a month full of festivities, which include my birthday, Christmas, and new years eve. December used to come with a downfall; winter. Some Decembers were better than others, but cold always crashed the party. More north, this year seems to be no different. The news outlets are continuing to use and abuse their awful pun of "snowmageddon" over and over. Here in Austin, when we "miss" snow we just turn on the TV and view how exciting it is to be in a blizzard. However, my kind of blizzard comes from Dairy Queen and is enhanced with snicker pieces. Enough about the weather exclusively; to the recap...

December is a family month and I started my December with a trip to winter's homeland, Minnesota. This visit served as a way to celebrate Thanksgiving/Bday/Xmas with my family with a bonus quick visit to see some short smiling faces during my Chi-town layover. It was fun to catch up with family and friends and I thank my sister and bro-in-law for their fun, festive hosting of myself. The weather wasn't too cold but still it was quite the change and with that change came a cold which handicapped me a bit. However my 6-day stay was still a great time filled with reminiscing adventures with friends and family and visits to places of interest and restaurants. Experiencing low teen weather and snow does make 50/60 seem like heaven which was a nice bonus upon my return and luckily the MN snowstorm/blizzards (including the metrodome killer) happen before and after my visit. I look forward to my next visit being in the summertime when I need to escape 110 and hang out in 80/90's.

Next came Summer and my exploration of San Antonio, specifically the Riverwalk area. This is where my blog becomes less personal and more factual because if your in Austin, or anywhere, the riverwalk area in San Antonio is a must visit. But before we talk about that, we had a pit stop on the way to visit Real Ale brewery. Now I know Shiner Bock but Real Ale has some tasty handcrafted beers themselves. The brewery is near Blanco Tx, and is near impossible to find without GPS because they have no signs. Anyways, on Fridays from 2-5pm they offer a tour and free tasting of select beers. It was a great time and I could write a blog about how delicious those beers were but I'll save those non-beer enthusiast the read and just post a link to their site: http://realalebrewing.com/beers/yearround I'll conclude by saying that their Pale Ale and Coffee Porter were my favorites while Summers favorite was the Fireman #4 Blonde Ale. I think the blonde thing just a coincidence ;)


Back to San Antonio. We got a hotel right on the riverwalk, which is a necessity. Ours didn't have a balcony because for some reason the week we were there, most hotels were booked, so we were happy just to have an affordable place to stay. There was either a convention or just the timing since at that time the river is decorated with holiday lights. Nonetheless we were rarely in the room anyways since the Riverwalk was our amusement park. The weather was quite nice 70/80's during the day from what I remember and maybe 50/60's during the night. At first we both didn't know what to expect. From our hotel the riverwalk just appeared to be a canal-like river with sidewalks on both sides. As we kept walking we discovered the shops and restaurants along the river and the touristy ambiance which made the area appear to be European in ways. Here's a map I found that shows a bit of what the riverwalk is all about.

Friday night we walked around the riverwalk taking in the scenery and browsing the sidewalk vendors. Hearing about dollar beers made us stop at a British pub called "mag dogs". We had a table with a view and sat to snack and enjoy some beverages. The next morning we took a boat tour of the river, had waterside lunch at a mexican place, walked a lot and had a nice seafood dinner, also waterside. We were debating to either do some bar-hopping or something else next. Since Summer was kind enough to book this trip for my birthday and I was feeling quite happy from the happy hour/dinner beers, I thought I'd indulge her and be open to the "ghost tour". =) Now, I found the tour amusing for many reasons but the best part is I got some of it on video. While taping, I was under the impression these would be way more hilarious, mainly because the tour guides voice and cadence really fit the bill of ghost touring; however upon watching these videos again, I didn't "lol" but nonetheless I invite you to take a watch. Keep in mind these were undercover from an iphone so don't expect the finest quality. In the first video you will see Summer pointing a laser, its a temp thing. I guess the temp will be different if a spirit, ghost or something more tangible is present. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-fVFVVxJOY. There is a guy yawning near the end of the video, it looks like me but I don't think it is because the angle of my filming doesn't fit. Perhaps its my ghost ;). On the next video Summer served as the lady's assistant for this polarity thing. Now this simple instrument could be actually quite interesting and informative or it could just be sensitively reacting to tiny movements in the holders wrist. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoxiY9SBk1w. I'll let you decide. Here the lady again is showing her dosing rod but begins with a physic story to enlighten the crowd. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYT-XFgSEK0 In closing, the tour was interesting and severed as a fun and different evening activity.

We also visited the Alamo which may interest you history buffs. I'll post some pics of that and the general visit below.

Alamo front

Palm Trees

RiverWalk

Another pic of the walk

You can see all the umbrella water side tables in the distance if you squint. =)

More Palm Tree pics to excite and prepare my mom and sister.

The bar had 2-4-1's, the table did not so we stocked up, little did I know it would lead to a ghost hunt.

supposed to take a pic to see if you see someone hanging from the hanging tree. Nope.

same thing but i guess images appear. hmm...nope.

So that was San Antonio. We ended our trip with a visit to a tasty tea house for some good breakfast. Also on the way back to Austin, there was a giant outlet mall on the way back with multiple stores of the same brand. Kind of like how Mall of America had four Footlockers. 

So that was December in Austin. The weather was nice with quite the range. Averages of 50/60's with some nice days in the 70's but a Christmas cold-spell of 30/40's (maybe to remind us that xmas is a winter holiday). In closing, it was a fun-filled month full of adventures mixed with weekday holiday quietness. I have my goals written down for a prosperous and fun-filled 2011 and I'll work on keeping this blog more active.

Wishing you a Happy, Healthy and possibly warmer New Year,

-Austin/Taragos

Filling Time in ATX: Arts & Edibles

Perhaps a pessimistic person came up with the expression "killing time", however, I'm in an optimistic mood and have decided to title this post "Filling time". One could even call it living time, because that's what I did. I had two hours to kill er spend - ha, see that negative phrasing is catchy. So I decided to take a look at what was around me one Friday afternoon. It happened that I was near Zilker Park, so I was about to wander the trails on foot when I came across a sculpture garden & museum [http://umlaufsculpture.org/]. I decided to pay the meager $3.5 and see what this place was all about while filling ;) some time. Inside (the museum part) are some art pieces. I liked the one to the left and how it would look nice in my entryway if the entry way had a nice stair case. The inside part was interesting, but I was more curious to check out the outside. The park is kinda similar to the sculpture garden at the Walker in Mpls, however, the art pieces are smaller and not as spread out. Plus here they have a little stream/waterfall near the entrance. There was also a staircase with a path to walk to the top and look down the stream.

Looking Up

Looking Down

The artwork was interesting. Here's a little sample of what I saw. If the human body offends you scroll down fast. But remember this is art, folks.

I believe this piece was called Eve. or lady in the woods not sure.

This "lovers" sculpture was in the middle of a pond...i thought the detail on the man was quite un-necessary.

They had a circle of animals, I thought I'd take a picture of my Chinese-restaurant place mat animal.

 Was the entire park full of erotica? No and why those were the only three photos I have of the artwork, I'm not sure. I didn't aim for a dirty theme it's just those were the ones that grabbed my attention. Let's end this part of the venture with a little peaceful innocent waterfall. Shall we.

=)

Now after walking around there for an hour or so including some time sitting on a bench staring at a piece of art (no, not one of the photos above, it was an interesting piece, however I didn't photograph it) I felt like I was in that movie "The Thomas Crowne Affair" where the guy sits on a bench at the museum and ponders his thoughts while eating a pear. Restless as I am and with out a pear to chew, I could only sit and stare for about 10 minutes. So then I decided to drive a bit further towards downtown when a rooftop patio caught my eye. I remembered Whole Foods downtown had one, but I had not yet explored. Now, Whole Foods in Austin, is unlike any other grocery store. It's huge, has samples of food and drink and you can purchase almost every ethnicity of food ala carte and eat it in or above the store. (There are people who share a bottle of wine in the grocery store while eating some food. Quite an interesting way to grab groceries). Since I've been craving chicken off the bone, I went for the wings and then grabbed a beer to wash down that deliciousness. Now let me tell you, its a fun experience to pick up edible items at a grocery store and then go to their roof and enjoy each bite and sip with a nice view of the sky. The roof has plenty of seats and tables and even a playground for the young-ins.

So there you have it. If you have 2+ hours to fill why not visit the sculpture garden and then grab a quick bite/happy hour at Whole Foods. Post complete.