A line begins forming at PIZZARUN's front door just before his 11:00 A.M. opening and does not abate till after 3:00 P.M. By 4:30 the crowds start squeezing toward the front of the dinner line. Arun's unique all natural pizza, fair price, and lightning fast service are obviously magic. However, his first franchisee is struggling.

"Everything is the same but he's not getting the business. We can't figure it out. 

The Truth About Incentives

What Every Meeting Planner Ought To Know about Incentive Travel Trips… Insider “Secrets” to Making Them Memorable

In this FREE GUIDE you will discover:

* The Ugly Truth about monetary incentives… and Why They Never Work! (page 7)

Last year, after President Obama relaxed travel restrictions to Cuba, this blog began to research incentive travel opportunities to the mysterious island 90 miles off our coast. Like many American travelers, incentive groups were captivated by Cuba’s promise of something new and different. Americans have been prohibited from traveling to Cuba since 1963, so curiosity alone has intensified the allure of our neighbor to the South.

Last Year

After extensive research, we concluded last year that although Cuba presented a colorful and entertaining culture, wonderful food, rhythmic music and dance, intricate history, soothing climate, natural wonders, and a curiously “stuck-in-time” joyful population, it still had a long way to go 

Event Attendance

Competition for event attendance continues to heat up. Planners are charged with improving attendance year after year in a highly competitive event marketplace where it seems like more events are vying for attention every day. The pressure to include the latest innovation, to locate in a trendy location, to present A-list entertainment, and to offer gluten-free, farm-to-table, organic, low carb, vegetarian, pescatarian, low-cal culinary fare has never been more intense. However, recent research into what factors have the greatest effect on attendance indicates that influencers have a greater impact on attendance than any of the factors listed above.

Influencers

People do business with people they trust. This mantra has been part of the planner’s lexicon for many years. 

DISRUPTION

• Ten years ago, Steve Jobs introduced the IPhone and, as he predicted, changed the world. The original device looks almost “cute” alongside the powerhouse cell phones we all use today, but it was a mighty disrupter that upended the music and publishing businesses forever. It even introduced the word disruption to business discourse.
• Then Travis Kalanick imagined fellow citizens offering each other a lift and Uber disrupted the transportation industry reducing the word “taxi” to an historical reference.
• After dealing a knock-out punch to the publishing and bookstore industries, Jeff Bezos unleashed Amazon on retailing and mighty department store chains like Macy’s and JC Penney’s could feel the ground give way under their brick and mortar retail palaces.
• In 2007 Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia decided to blow up an air mattress and rent it out in their apartment in San Francisco to help pay the rent. When Nathan Belcharczyk showed them how to utilize the new IPhone and internet powerhouse combo to turn their air mattress into a business, Airbnb was born and the travel industry was put on notice.

It is 2025 and life is discovered on Mars. You have been awarded the first Martian hospitality license. It is an enormous untapped market. What should you do first?

Raise capital? Hire a President? Design a menu? Find a location? Choose new decor or try to find a Martian who knows what's happening on Mars?

THE PROBLEM

The organized portion of the Indian food market is currently valued at $13 billion but is expected to grow to $28 billion within the next five years.

Parag Saxena, the founder and CEO of New Silk Route, the well-known Indian private equity firm, identified the trends in the Indian market that are fueling this growth.

He says he is betting on:

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 

In the last 20 years, the Meeting and Convention Industry has gone from being an ancillary service provider to the Fortune 500 to a major industry that contributes more to the GDP than the air transportation, motion picture, sound recording, performing arts, and spectator sport industries.

It is important for all meeting planners, whether you work for a large company or are a third party meeting planner in a small firm, to realize how far your industry has come and the impact you now have on the American economy.

The Indian restaurant market is booming. Foreign restaurant companies like Domino's and McDonald's are taking part in a $48 billion market explosion. This enormous market expansion has been ignited by a variety of factors.

Restaurant company management hears the same cry in every boardroom around the world. "Let's go! We don't want to be left behind. India is another China. We must be part of this boom. What are you waiting for?

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.

Restaurateurs are typically hands-on business activists who largely ignore the classic business-school approach to business. Most know how to draw up a financial plan and utilize an operating budget, but few restaurateurs understand the value of the strategic planning process.

 STRATEGIC PLANNING: The title alone makes us groan. But, perhaps, with a little reflection, we might see the value of strategic planning especially when we are about to open a new restaurant.

Alice Waters opened her legendary restaurant, Chez Panisse, in Berkeley, California in 1971.
Consistently ranked among the World's 50 Best Restaurants, Chez Panisse is famous for its
organic, locally-grown ingredients and for pioneering California cuisine.

While studying in France, Alice lived at the bottom of a market street where she shopped for
local produce and prepared simple fresh foods in order to enhance the experience of the table.
She eventually returned to California and opened Chez Panisse. Realizing the difficulty in
sourcing fresh, high-quality ingredients, Waters began building a network of local farmers,
artisans, and producers.