Hospitality
Frank Bennett
The DNA Required to Clone a Successful ...

Successful full service neighborhood restaurants are rarely duplicated in a second location, even by their original founder. I have observed this phenomenon over and over throughout my forty years on the New York restaurant scene. Whenever a successful restaurant in one neighborhood tries to expand to another location, it rarely enjoys the success of the original restaurant and often fails completely after a short stay in business. Why? Why can't successful restaurateurs do it again? The failure rate for duplicating successful restaurants is too high! What goes wrong when industry leaders try to repeat their success?

 To find the answer, I decided to interview 25 independent restaurant owners who had tried to open a successful second restaurant and had met with varying degrees of disappointment.

Creative Meeting Planning - Crowdfunding Your First Big Event

A CASE HISTORY

The following is a short case study on a creative meeting planning.

When a high powered sports celebrity discovered that his child was suffering from the very disorder a certain nonprofit was dedicated to curing, he joined their effort and volunteered to help. The little nonprofit quickly decided to plan their first event around his marketing power.

LET’S GO GOLFING

Since the celebrity and his famous friends were all golf nuts, the nonprofit decided to hold a celebrity golf tournament. They hired a meeting planner to help them arrange a one-day program of golf, autograph signing, and a tapas luncheon spread around the entire golf course for the players to graze on throughout the tournament. The day would end with a celebrity roast of the host by his friends and colleagues during a five-course banquet. This was a pretty ambitious event for a little nonprofit to attempt, but they recognized their opportunity and wanted to take advantage of the moment.

Recruiting Volunteers for Your Next Event

How Important are Volunteers?

One of the most important steps in planning events for nonprofits is attracting, recruiting, and retaining volunteers. Our post-event feedback questionnaires ask the question: What was your event’s most critical element of success?  By far, the number one answer is – the volunteers.

It is surprising how many event planners come to us with no clear plan of how to attract, and hopefully retain, volunteers for future events. It’s not that it doesn’t occur to them that they will need volunteers, it’s just that they don’t seem to realize how important the volunteers are to their event’s success.

Meetings in Cuba?

On March 20, 2016, President Obama made history when he became the first American leader to visit Cuba in the post-Cold War era. Prior to his trip, the last American president to set foot in the country was Calvin Coolidge in 1928 – more than 88 years ago. Since the time of President Dwight D. Eisenhower the U.S. has placed an embargo on the communist nation of Fidel Castro. During his visit, President Obama declared the embargo will end when Congress approves the final legislation. Many restrictions are still in place, however.

American companies seeking to do business in Latin America have begun to contact Premiere Meeting Services about the meeting and event possibilities in Cuba. They see our pending new diplomatic relations with this communist country as an opportunity to educate their employees about the Cuban culture. They want to “immerse” employees in the still unspoiled local culture to help them develop a deeper understanding of Cuban and other Latin American markets. 

Attention Meeting Planner: What is Dynamic Meeting Planning?

A BRIEF CASE HISTORY

A large pharmaceutical company asked their meeting planner to design an event around a new medical technology they were about to introduce to their sales force. They wanted the event to be a training in the new technology – a celebration of the product itself – a party that would motivate the sales force – and anintroduction of the technology to the medical community at large.

PRIORITIZE OBJECTIVES

When the pharmaceutical company first contacted the meeting planner, they said they wanted to hold a national sales training for a new product introduction. The planner, of course, immediately started to scan 

Small Nonprofits in the Digital Big-Leagues

How does a nonprofit with a couple thousand Facebook likes and an Excel spreadsheet of donors utilize the digital leverage of big organizations? In the absence of physical contact, digital communication is the new virtual glue that links stakeholders to organizations. The digital universe, however, has rapidly expanded into a vast, crowded, and mercurial communication space that favors the leverage of large organizations.

SMALLER ORGANIZATIONS FACE BIG CHALLENGES

NO DIGITAL STAFF - A recent poll of small nonprofit's revealed that 68% of them had no digital staff at all. They rely, rather, on their communication staff to take up the slack and test various digital platforms as they evolve, believing that they will intuitively know what works. This approach, of course, has failed.