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.

MY WORST TRADING DAY: WEB ARTICLE

I began my trading career in a rented room in Vacaville, California while I was still attending college. I had bought a book from an ex cab driver that told me I could make a fortune trading options. Anyone could get rich! I, of course, believed the book and proceeded to set up trading screens in my room. A postal worker who brought home a different ugly girl every night and a cool older black dude that loved to drink boxed wine into the wee hours occupied the other two bedrooms of an old dilapidated house we were renting from a strict old lady. In that time zone, I could start trading at 6:30 in the morning and would trade options till about 9:00 A.M. when I had to leave for work at the local Circuit City.

I was an over confident rookie options trader who had borrowed $2,000 off a credit card for investment capital. 

TRY DUBAI

In search for the next destination…

The primary responsibility of professional meeting planners is to choose the perfect destination for a meeting, event, or exhibit.  Typical meeting planning used to center on choosing an appropriate venue in one of the main convention cities across the world. New York, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Dallas, Miami, London, Paris, and Rome were the A-list, and all the rest were secondary.

In the last twenty years, however, cities around the world have developed their own hunger for this lucrative convention and incentive trip business, and hotel rooms and convention centers are popping up in the most unlikely places. This explosion presents meeting planners with a wealth of quality, capacity, and budget options. It also presents them with the challenge of keeping their databases up-to-date.

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No More Mom and Pop

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The meeting and event planning industry was started by “solopreneurs” (entrepreneurs who strike out on their own) who started their careers as “frienders” (a creative friend who ends up your wedding planner). They are the rare creative people who are also well organized. They learn the event planning business working for you and then naturally strike out on their own, just like you did. The industry is populated by small to medium sized planning agencies started by “solopreneurs” that have thrived as the event planning marketplace has boomed out in front of them.

LUCRATIVE MARKETS BREED COMPETITION

The explosion of the meeting and event market these past eight years has attracted competition from the big Madison Avenue advertising firms. Until recently, they were content to handle digital and traditional media 

How to Throw a Great Holiday Party

With the year coming to a close, it can only mean one thing: it is time to start planning for that annual holiday event. Even though holiday gatherings are typically planned to reward associates and employees with a fun experience, being the one behind the curtain planning all the details can be anything but enjoyable. From the tracking down the right venue to the hiring suitable entertainment, it is easy to get overwhelmed with all that has to be done.

Yet, planning a great holiday party doesn’t have to be stressful. Check out these tips from a professional event planning service and breeze through the whole ordeal without so much hassle.

MEET BEFORE YOU MEET

At Microsoft’s 2016 Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto, Angela King, senior event marketing manager at Microsoft, rolled out a new program that all meeting planners should note.

THE INNOVATION

Experienced delegates knew their way around and could attend break-outs and presentations without missing the networking opportunities that abound at the conference. Ms. King realized, however, that first-time attendees (who make up 40% of the delegates) were at a decided disadvantage. The vast conference offered so many learning opportunities that new attendees were often overwhelmed and unable to take advantage of all the conference had to offer. She decided to try to remedy that.

Pity the Poor Pop-Up Meeting

Elaborate high-profile events get all the attention these days. Planners spend little time trying to create unique meeting environments or leading edge high-tech for small trainings or sales meetings. Although the smaller everyday meetings are still our bread and butter, perhaps the limited budgets and short lead times of these meetings have produced a certain ennui among planners. We think our job is done when we simply arrange a conference room, look after coffee service, and make sure the Wi-Fi and AV are working. This is, of course, an oversimplification, but small company meetings are afforded little creative attention and are rarely memorable.

NEW BOUTIQUE VENUES

PTSD, Invisible Wounds and the Alarming Veteran Suicide Rate

Every Day - 20 U.S. Veterans Commit Suicide

In 2014, the latest year statistics are available, 7,400 veterans took their own lives.

SOCIAL WORKERS FEEL HELPLESS

Social workers who work with veterans often feel helpless or unprepared to deal with the burgeoning psychic and spiritual crisis that is overwhelming combat veterans from the Vietnam war to the war in Afghanistan.

How Should Nonprofits Measure Performance?

Financial measurements are sufficient and appropriate in the for-profit corporate world, but strict financial measurements rarely reveal the strategic performance of the typical nonprofit. Financial performance measurement systems in the nonprofit world usually focus only on the measurement of donations, expenditures, and operating expense ratios. Success for nonprofits, however, should be measured by how effectively they meet the needs of their constituencies.

FINANCIAL REPORTS ARE ABOUT THE PAST