You have orders to monitor and staff to manage. There are numbers to crunch, report on, and submit to investors. And maybe you’re in charge of monitoring social media and producing all marketing content. Are you feeling slightly overwhelmed? Whether you are or not, it’s easy to let “acquiring new knowledge” pass to the wayside.
But as you know, in today’s technological era, advancements in tech, restaurant philosophy, and food trends are happening faster than ever before. The best way to stay on top of what’s new is to keep tabs on the digital experts reporting on the latest restaurant, small business, technology, and food trends.
Here, we break down the blogs with the most comprehensive industry knowledge and relevant content for your restaurant.
Restaurant management
The Restaurant Expert is a coaching and training company that offers seminars and workshops that assist restaurant owners in running more effective and successful businesses while tackling common issues like HR, inventory, and costs. Because the company focuses on training, its resources are outstanding. The Restaurant Expert’s blogs don’t just produce listicles for the sake of creating content; every piece they create is chock-full of hands-on learning that serves to make restaurant owners more effective at their jobs and responsibilities.
Restaurant business trends and innovations
With the growth-focused restaurateur at the heart of all their posts, Restaurant Business Online provides restaurateurs with benchmarks, updates on legislative matters, and economic news. With reports on everything from significant changes in large chains to studies on consumer habits and even cooking demos, Restaurant Business Online runs the entire gamut of topics relevant to restaurateurs.
Restaurant management
GrubHub is more than just your average online food-ordering guide. They’ve got some severe brains as well. Their blog, The Tip Jar, offers helpful tips and tricks for the cutting-edge restaurateur.
Restaurant management, technology, and best practices
Not entirely a shameless plug, we’re proud of what we’ve created in our TouchBistro Blog. From our developing series of Ultimate Guides to discussions around the latest industry news to marketing advice and tech talk, we speak directly with the experts and our clients to get a boots-on-ground version of the ins and outs of the restaurant industry.
Local restaurant news, reviews, discussion forums, and national trends
Eater is the quintessential everything-urban food blog. While it doesn’t focus so much on the restaurant business, the site has multiple city-specific sub-sites that discuss the latest restaurant openings, local happenings, and thriving forums where industry professionals, customers, and restaurateurs alike can ask and answer questions and provide recommendations.
Hottest New York food news
As far as North American restaurant trends go, New York sets a precedent. That’s why restaurant owners must keep a close eye on the goings-on of the food metropolis that sets the benchmark. GrubStreet is New York Magazine’s food and restaurant blog. You can use it as your source to keep up with the latest food obsessions trending in New York.
Small business best practices
OpenForum is American Express’s small business blog with significant business insights. While not exclusively geared toward restauranteurs, this blog contains information relevant to every business owner. How do you stay busy during the slow season? How can you make time for creative insights that will grow your business? The OpenForum tackles every business problem, from growth strategies to managing money to getting customers, and provides solutions that are easily applicable to restaurants
Technology and software
Software Advice provides research and reviews of hundreds of products. They look into the latest trends affecting specific industries. In addition to allowing you to compare various restaurant software against one another, Software Advice also has a busting resource section. They offer complete reports on the hottest market software that will enhance your business’s productivity and effectiveness.
Marketing technology
While many other blogs focus on food and operations, marketing is a core competency that must be addressed, and so is the technology that is the basis of all successful marketing activities. MarketingTechBlog.com discusses the best and most effective ways to manage your marketing efforts. Covering the entire spectrum of digital marketing, from social media to content optimization to email, this marketing site is ripe for the picking with actionable and easy-to-understand marketing strategies.
Must-read
What are you waiting for? Get reading! Wait. First things first. Instead of wasting time visiting these blogs one by one daily, use a content aggregator like Feedly or Digg Reader, which organizes your favorite blogs by post, containing new posts as if they’re all part of one prominent newspaper for you to peruse your leisure.
