Monday, 22 August 2016

Advantage of Project Management


Good project management discipline is the way to overcome these shortcomings. Having good project management skills does not mean you have no problems. It does not mean that risks go away. It does not mean that there are no surprises. The value of good project management is that you have standard processes in place to deal with all contingencies.

Project management processes and techniques are used to coordinate resources to achieve predictable results. However, it should be understood that project management is not an exact science and there is never a guarantee of success. Since projects involve people, there is always complexity and uncertainty that cannot be absolutely controlled.

Project management is both science and art. It is science in that it relies on proven and repeatable processes and techniques to achieve project success. It is an art because it also involves managing and relating to people and requires the project manager to apply intuitive skills in situations that are totally unique for each project. A good project management methodology provides the framework, processes, guidelines and techniques to manage the people and the work. A good methodology increases the odds of being successful and therefore provides value to the organization, the project and the project manager.



The value proposition for project management starts with the proposition that it takes time and effort to proactively manage a project. This cost is more than made up for over the life of the project by:

Completing projects more quickly and reasonably. One of the biggest benefits of using a common methodology is the value of reuse. Once the processes, procedures and templates are created, they can be used (perhaps with small modifications) on all projects in the future. This results in reduced project start-up time, a shorter learning curve for project team members and time savings from not having to reinvent processes and templates from scratch on each project.

Being more predictable. One of the first benefits that should occur with good project management processes is that you will be more predictable. You will find that if you do a better job of planning you will better understand the work to be accomplished, and you will do a better job of estimating this work. Then as the project progresses you will do a better job of managing the work to hit your estimated schedule and budget. This ability to be predictable is crucial when your company is making business decisions about which projects to execute. You should strive to achieve a level of predictability of 80%. In other words, 80% of your projects will finish on-time and within budget.  


Saving effort and cost with proactive scope management. Many projects have difficulty managing scope, which results in additional effort and cost to the project. Having better project management processes will result in being able to manage scope more effectively.



Generally, it is believed that organizations that follow good processes are more successful than organizations that do not. Organizations that have good processes, and follow them, are sometimes called “Process Driven Organizations”. These organizations get more work done and they tend to do the work that is of most value. They also have organizational systems in place to help make everyone more successful, including project managers.

Tuesday, 19 July 2016

Why Branding is Important?

Company branding is the most proficient way to show possible customers what your business is about. It is reflected visually via the logo and company design elements as well as through wordiness in marketing materials, slogans and informational copy.

Uniqueness
Promote your branding to set yourself apart from your competitors. To do this, study what you do best and consider you target demographic. Use graphics and word choices that clearly reflect your business to your target audience, thus your brand. Use your branding to convey clear messages.

Target Audience
Done correctly, your brand can assist you in getting a stronger foothold in your niche market. Define your unique selling position and consider methods to communicate key messages to your desired audience. Use specific images or phrases to encourage the feel of inclusive. Let them know the reason your company exists and how it can fulfill their needs. This can associate you to your target audience, engage them and motivate them to buy.

Message Delivery
Having strong branding can provoke trust from your niche market. This can interpret to your newsletters, emails and advertisements reaping a greater response, hence increasing sales. As people will already be robed in your brand, they will be certain that they will receive value for time spent reading your messages or researching your product.

Consistency

Focus on your long-term branding efforts to keep your business reliable. This consistency should surpass messages, product lines and audience appeal. It should improve your business, adding depth to your company’s presence. This should allow you to grow and keep a loyal following.

Wednesday, 13 July 2016

Benefits of Enrolling in Cooking Classes


Enrolling in cooking classes is a good idea particularly if you desire to get better with your culinary knowledge and skills. Cooking classes are short courses that intend to give ideas and hands-on practice in detailed areas associated to food preparation, food presentation, and food appreciation. Some of the basic classes offered by cooking schools are basic knife skills, wine tasting, butchery, cake decorating, basic cooking techniques, and outdoor grilling. Aside from these, there are also classes catered to international cuisines and other topics.

Some culinary institutions such as cooking schools, training kitchens, and online cooking classes offer an extensive range of trainings intended to a diverse audience in a more casual manner, compared to taking a formal culinary education.

All of us might have our own reasons to enroll in cooking classes. Some want to learn how to cook for the family, while there are others who want to gain skills for a future business or profitable engagement — there are also people who just want to have fun. Whatever your reasons are, it is a certainty that you will gain something at the end.


Cooking Class Benefits:

1. Get Familiar with Your Kitchen
We know kitchens as a part of the house. This is the place where we reheat food in the microwave, wash the dishes, or even eat our food. To some individuals, a kitchen is a place to prepare home cooked meals with lots of love added. If you are one of these people, you are fortunate.

For the others who see a kitchen the other way around, enrolling in cooking classes will help to make you familiar with your kitchen and all the tools and equipments in it. Imagine yourself to finally chop and cook chicken the way it should be, or perhaps bake delicious cakes and pastries.

2. Get better Cooking Skills
People who know how to cook can still progress their cooking skills. If you cannot cook, try to look at all the good potentials that can come to pass in terms of enhancing your skills. The possibilities are never-ending.


Enrolling in cooking classes will teach you how to cook and will definitely improve your cooking abilities. Doesn’t it feel good to be able to prepare at least 5 to10 dishes more than the usual?

3. Promote Self Esteem
High self esteem is one of the key ingredients of successful people. You can do approximately anything once you start to believe in yourself.

Attending classes in cooking will help you forget all the disorder that you caused in the kitchen during the past. It serves as a chart that will guide you to the right path. When you know where you are going, you can do the essential steps or procedures with full confidence.

4. Encourage Cultural Awareness
Most classes engage dealing with international cuisines. Aside from that, there are times when your fellow student has a different cultural background. By interacting to your peers and digesting every information presented, you will be taught a lot of things about other culture.

5. Start a Culinary Career
Are you one of those who want to become a chef, but as a substitute took the other road for some reason? Is your wish of being a chef or a restaurant owner still very strong deep inside?

The easiest way to have a career in the culinary arts is to attend different culinary classes. This will unlock your mind and will help you set your expectations. In addition, this will help you decide if you still want to attend formal culinary school later on.





Benefits of Enrolling in Cooking Classes


Enrolling in cooking classes is a good idea particularly if you desire to get better with your culinary knowledge and skills. Cooking classes are short courses that intend to give ideas and hands-on practice in detailed areas associated to food preparation, food presentation, and food appreciation. Some of the basic classes offered by cooking schools are basic knife skills, wine tasting, butchery, cake decorating, basic cooking techniques, and outdoor grilling. Aside from these, there are also classes catered to international cuisines and other topics.

Some culinary institutions such as cooking schools, training kitchens, and online cooking classes offer an extensive range of trainings intended to a diverse audience in a more casual manner, compared to taking a formal culinary education.

All of us might have our own reasons to enroll in cooking classes. Some want to learn how to cook for the family, while there are others who want to gain skills for a future business or profitable engagement — there are also people who just want to have fun. Whatever your reasons are, it is a certainty that you will gain something at the end.


Cooking Class Benefits:

1. Get Familiar with Your Kitchen

We know kitchens as a part of the house. This is the place where we reheat food in the microwave, wash the dishes, or even eat our food. To some individuals, a kitchen is a place to prepare home cooked meals with lots of love added. If you are one of these people, you are fortunate.

For the others who see a kitchen the other way around, enrolling in cooking classes will help to make you familiar with your kitchen and all the tools and equipments in it. Imagine yourself to finally chop and cook chicken the way it should be, or perhaps bake delicious cakes and pastries.

2. Get better Cooking Skills

People who know how to cook can still progress their cooking skills. If you cannot cook, try to look at all the good potentials that can come to pass in terms of enhancing your skills. The possibilities are never-ending.


Enrolling in cooking classes will teach you how to cook and will definitely improve your cooking abilities. Doesn’t it feel good to be able to prepare at least 5 to10 dishes more than the usual?

3. Promote Self Esteem

High self esteem is one of the key ingredients of successful people. You can do approximately anything once you start to believe in yourself.

Attending classes in cooking will help you forget all the disorder that you caused in the kitchen during the past. It serves as a chart that will guide you to the right path. When you know where you are going, you can do the essential steps or procedures with full confidence.

4. Encourage Cultural Awareness

Most classes engage dealing with international cuisines. Aside from that, there are times when your fellow student has a different cultural background. By interacting to your peers and digesting every information presented, you will be taught a lot of things about other culture.

5. Start a Culinary Career

Are you one of those who want to become a chef, but as a substitute took the other road for some reason? Is your wish of being a chef or a restaurant owner still very strong deep inside?


The easiest way to have a career in the culinary arts is to attend different culinary classes. This will unlock your mind and will help you set your expectations. In addition, this will help you decide if you still want to attend formal culinary school later on.



Tuesday, 28 June 2016

Employee Hygiene

Employee hygiene is a critical component of food safety. One of the greatest challenges in a food processing plant is controlling the ingress and spread of harmful bacteria into the production area. Thus, proper employee hygiene is a significant critical control point (CCP), which focuses on those areas where cross contamination is most likely to occur. Some of the most critical aspects of employee hygiene are hand washing and footwear.

Hand Washing
Hand washing is a critical aspect of food safety. Proper hand hygiene is the food processing plant’s first line of defense against food contamination. Bacteria, viruses, and parasites can be transmitted from person to person and from persons to food, so health and hygiene of the workforce is extremely important.



According to some experts, the average person does not have proper hand washing habits. Most employees do not follow the best prescribed hand washing protocols. Although proper hand washing takes 20 to 40 seconds of scrubbing, most people wash their hands for only about 10 seconds.
Hand washing may sound like a very simple program to implement, but it can be riddled with many challenges, including correct washing to include fingernails, cuticles, and creases in fingers and hands.

To help ensure proper hand washing, it’s important to provide a product that the staff likes and wants to use. For example, one of the biggest challenges is occupational dermatitis which can be detrimental to hand hygiene and a deterrent to proper compliance.

Additionally, employees should be trained and bilingual signs posted in all hand washing areas. Try to keep training straightforward and simple because of multiple languages. You don’t need to have frequent training, but you do need to periodically refresh worker knowledge—and refresh the training itself, because it can get out of date and fail to keep staff engaged.

Footwear
Providing employees with plant-only footwear and sanitizing the footwear prior to entering the production environment are good CCPs. Common sanitation methods include boot baths, foaming floor sanitizer at entrances, and boot washing stations, which typically use chlorine- or quat-based sanitizers diluted with water. The systems should be constantly monitored to ensure the level of diluted sanitizer or parts per million (PPM) does not fall below certain levels.




Preventive Controls. One of the best ways to increase compliance with employee hygiene standards is to remove the obstacles to compliance. “In food processing plants, some obstacles can keep employees from adopting proper hand washing habits,” expert said. The tools for washing may be unavailable or inconveniently located; no clear signage or reinforcement exist; the schedule includes high turnover rates; or health risks are not understood or recognized by employees due to the lack of education.

Sunday, 12 June 2016

How to Choose Colors for Your Restaurant



A color plays a great role for every restaurant. This is because you will choose colors for your walls, decor, tables, linens, the exterior, signage, logo, basically everything. But it is difficult to make the right choice because you may hesitate what colors are the best. For you not to make wrong choice you have to look through the next.

Red
Red is a color that is courageous, noticeable. Moreover, it gives a sense of urgency. This is the color that can also symbolize anger and love. Ethnic restaurants may choose this color. This is because red is the main color in so many country's flags.

Green
Green color may mean good luck, nature and money. But it can also symbolize envy. Nevertheless, green is usually a good choice for an accent color.

Blue 
This color symbolizes peace, calm and serenity. With this color a person may feel cool, cold or detached. A restaurant that is laid back can choose this one.

Yellow 
Yellow is a color that can signify happiness, joy and summer. It can also symbolize cheapness or miserliness. Besides, yellow is usually good as an accent color or as a background color.

Orange 
This color can mean excitement and enthusiasm. Orange is usually a good accent color.

Purple 
Passion and creativity are symbolized with this color. But in some countries and in some religions purple also means death. It is usually used as an accent color.

White
White symbolizes cleanliness, clarity and purity. This color is always a good choice for table linens and textiles. If you want to make your guests feel like there is more space in your restaurant, then you may choose this color.

Black
Excitement, class, boldness and be futuristic can be signified with black color. Moreover, it can also mean sadness, evil and irritation. Black is perfect for an accent color or as a compliment to a lighter color.

However, these are the basic colors that you will work from to create different shades and mixtures of colors for your restaurant. You may use pastels and lighter and darker versions of these colors. Be sure this will allow you to put together the perfect color scheme for your particular restaurant and in this way attract more customers. Think over all these colors and use them as accents to your chosen color scheme.


Wednesday, 1 June 2016

How to Choose the Best Name for Your Business

When choosing a name for your business, start by deciding what you want it to communicate. To be most effective, your company name should highlight the key elements of your business. So the first and most significant step in choosing a name is deciding what your business is—knowing what your business’ unique selling point will help you choose a name that advertises that.

Keep in mind, the more your name communicates to consumers, the less effort you must put to explain it. According to naming experts, you should give priority to real words or combinations of words over fabricated words because people prefer words they can relate to and understand.

Naming specialists also be careful about choosing a name that's too hardly defined. Common downside are geographic names or generic names.

Precise names make sense if you intend to stay in a narrow place forever. If you have any desire of growing or expanding, though, you should find a name that's wide enough to contain your growth.
Before you start thinking up names for your new business, try to define the qualities you want your business to be identified with.

Namestorming

Begin your brainstorming search for a business name by looking in dictionaries, books and magazines to create ideas. Get your friends and relatives to help if you like; the more minds, the merrier. Think of as many feasible names as you can during this creative stage.

The trials you put your names through will vary depending on your concerns. Some considerations are fairly universal. For example, your name should be easy to pronounce, especially if you plan to rely a lot on print ads or signs. If people can’t pronounce your business name, they'll avoid saying it. And nothing could be more counterproductive to a starting company than to strangle its potential for word-of-mouth advertising.
Other considerations depend on more individual factors. For example, if you’re thinking about marketing your business globally or if you're located in a multilingual area, you should make sure your new name has no negative connotations in other languages. Lastly, make sure that your name is in no way embarrassing.

The major function of a name is to make a distinction of your business from others. You have to consider who’s out there already, what type of branding strategy they have taken, and how you can use a name to disconnect yourself. If any of your potential names is too close to that of your competitors', you should most likely get rid of it.
After you’ve narrowed the field to, say, four or five names that are memorable, expressive, and can be read by the average grade-schooler, you're good.


Final analysis
If you’re fortunate, you’ll end up with three to five names that pass all your tests. How do you make your final choice? First, remember all your first criteria. Which name best fits your objectives? Which name most precisely describes the company you have in mind? Which names do you like the best?

You could ask other people’s opinions. Or you could doodle an idea of what each name will look like on a sign or on business stationery. Read each name aloud, paying attention to the way it sounds if you foresee radio advertising or telemarketing in your future.

Once your verdict is made, start constructing your interests for the new name right away. Your name is your first step on the road to building a strong company identity, one that should last as long as you’re in business.


Wednesday, 25 May 2016

Advantages of Having a Restaurant



Having a restaurant may look like a glamorous business and thriving owners can attain a quantity of recognition and fortune. On the other hand, success in the restaurant business does not come as easy as 1, 2, 3 and failure is not unusual. Before opening your own restaurant, you should increase your basic understanding of the numerous pros and cons.



Payback:
The trend was anticipated to carry on as busy people choose to eat out as opposed to taking the time to prepare their meals at home. This means that having the right restaurant at the right location can be money-spinning venture.


Reviews:
A restaurant is a "crowd" business, so if you take pleasure in talking with the public you may succeed in this type of business. Though, this also means that your employees, especially your servers, must also acquire strong people skills. A challenge you are likely to run into is finding and retaining the right type of person. If you hire a youthful staff, such as high school or college students, your proceeds may be particularly high since workers leave to start more well-paid careers.


Types:
The type of restaurant you choose to operate can also contain pros and cons. For instance, if you buy a franchise, you will have the advantage of choosing an established business but will have little claim in operating procedures. This advantage allows a restaurant owner to study all the key steps that will lead them to a flourishing business, something that an independent restaurant owner will likely never receive. Depending on the amount of past industry experience of the franchisee, training programs can last from a few days to a few months. The purpose of the training program is to provide the new owner with absolutely everything they need to know to be able to own and operate a profitable business. If you open a restaurant from scratch, you will be able to juggle and run things your own way, but you may experience start up problems establishing your brand and building a foundation of regular customers, but it’s just normal, that’s why you need to have proper marketing and branding.


Tuesday, 17 May 2016

Famous Foods and How they Got Their Names

People regularly ask what is in a particular dish they are about to eat, but rarely do they ask how that particular meal got its name. The origins of a dish are generally as interesting as the food itself, as the below meal reveals.

Beef Stroganoff

A mixture of beef, mushrooms, and sour cream, Beef Stroganoff was the prize-winning recipe created for a cooking competition held in the 1890s in St. Petersburg, Russia. The chef who devised the recipe worked for the Russian diplomat Count Pavel Alexandrovich Stroganov, a member of one of Russia's grandest noble families.



Beef Wellington

A national hero for defeating Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815, Arthur Wellesley was made the first Duke of Wellington. He loved a dish of beef, mushrooms, truffles, Madeira wine, and paté cooked in pastry, which has been named in his honor.



Caesar Salad

In the 1920s, Caesar Cardini, owner of an Italian restaurant in Tijuana, Mexico, and his brother, Alex, invented a salad of romaine lettuce, anchovies, coddled egg, lemon juice, grated Parmesan cheese, and garlic-flavored croutons tossed with a garlic vinaigrette flavored with Worcestershire sauce. At first it was called Aviator's Salad, but later Cardini named the dish after himself.


Eggs Benedict

A dish that many consume to alleviate the common hangover, this breakfast mainstay was in fact inspired by a night of excessive drinking over a century ago. According to the New York Times in 1894, a dapper Wall Street aristocrat, Lemuel Benedict ordered a la carte of the Waldorf Hotel’s menu: poached eggs, buttered toast, bacon and a pitcher full of hollandaise sauce on the side. Benedict has complained of a hangover and somehow figured this mélange of breakfast foods would sop up the alcohol in his belly. The hotel’s restaurant still bears his name - tasted Benedict’s concoction and decided it should be a permanent addition to the Waldorf-Astoria’s menu




Cordon Bleu
Literally means 'blue ribbon' and is a name given to distinguished chefs. In cooking, it's a stuffing for meat made of cheese and ham; classically, Gruyere cheese and prosciutto.



Reuben Sandwich

The Reuben may be the first celebrity sandwich though it wasn’t named after the actress who inspired it, but rather after the chef who arranged it. Patricia Taylor, daughter of the late Arnold  Reuben, told the New York Times that it was back in 1914 when a Broadway actress friend of Charlie Chaplin entered her father’s delicatessen and said, “Reuben, make me a sandwich, make it combination, I’m so hungry I could eat a brick”. With that command, Reuben stacked ham, roast turkey, swiss cheese, cole slaw.

Tuesday, 10 May 2016

Ways To Finish Team Projects Successfully


Whatever we do, we are continuously assigned with organizing and executing new action and ventures, so why not spend a little more efficiency into making sure they do well.

1. DO YOUR RESEARCH, BUT DON'T OVER-THINK

The best projects start with "thinking" and only proceed to "doing" when there is a workable plan in place. Bridging that divide—between idea and implementation—is the first point where many projects fall down. 

It takes lot of research and asking the right questions. But there is such a thing as over-brainstorming. Putting several of questions on the wall in Post-It notes, or unloading every possible, half-baked idea into a Google doc, is perhaps not a good plan. Too much idea making at the very beginning of a project will only complicate. The trick is to keep it simple, realistic, and targeted.

2. CONSIDER TEAM CULTURE

You need everyone on your team to learn their own function and work well together.

Team direction is all about culture. When you figure it out, it's simple to predict social problems, guide team members well, or swap them hastily. Because culture comes down to the beliefs, outlook, and sense of purpose a team shares, it can change according to the project. So think about your project team's culture just as tactically as you would its goals.

3. START EARLY AND SMALL

Because of many unknowns at the start of each project, it's often impractical to chart a particular way to success. It is important not to get stuck in too many details too early. Once you've defined your project's primary extent, that's typically enough to start outlining a few of the initial breakthrough. With every little first step, the path forward becomes constantly clearer.

4. CREATE, MODIFY, REUSE

This concept can be applied to any project. Reuse is what gives us speed and efficiency, without reinventing the cycle every time we want to create a new skill.


Not only can this help teams stay well-organized as they build on the work they've done over the course of a project, it also helps everyone stay motivated. When you can watch your labor put up little by little—rather than just see your spot on the starting line—you're more likely to see the full thing through, fruitfully and under deadline.

Tuesday, 26 April 2016

Helpful Tips on Creating a Concept for Restaurant


Putting too much effort to satisfy everyone leaves you unable to be distinct. When you have excessive colors in your decor, too many styles of equipment and furnishings, and menu items that represent too many kind of cuisine, your customers find it harder to characterize you and recommend you.

Here’s a short list of things you can consider to keep your concept simple.

Pick two contrasting but harmonizing colors to design your concept around. You can use a third neutral color for emphasis, but refrain from unnecessary detail and too many extra colors in your scheme. To create a firm brand, you must be more than inviting, you need to be unforgettable, and that means keeping your color scheme uncomplicated. Use these colors to design your logo, signage, marketing, and to embellish the inside and outside of your restaurant.






Keep your menu small. A small menu is not difficult to control costs on, uncomplicated to prepare and order for, and easier to give consistency with. By having a small menu, your service will be faster, your food value will improve, and you’ll make more money. Keep your menu simple.


Keep your dining room simple. Smaller dining area are easier to run. If you’re planning of opening your first restaurant, avoid building a big dining area with 200 seats. A huge dining room takes a large management staff and lots of employees to take over.




Keep your market simple. Stop convincing yourself that you want all people of all statistics to support your business. By going after “everyone”, you’ll realize that you’ll end up with no one. Even if your style of cooking has mass demand, your location will control who is most likely to drop in into your restaurant. If your concept doesn’t suit the people in your area, then you don’t have a viable concept and you aren’t likely to succeed. Keep your demographic simple and focused. 

Wednesday, 20 April 2016

Why Interior Design is Important

Interior Design has a big part in the everyday life. It familiarizes the public to beauty, entertainment and innovation. Interior design is a significant skill that is given a high attention all over the world nowadays. It's good to see that people’s curiosity in having a pleasant and eye-catching design for private and public buildings is rising.  

The significance of designing interiors helps the person to learn a lot about the space and how people feel comfortable while being at a particular place and using its amenities. Designers perceive things from different perspective as a result of their studies and work atmosphere. They provide special attention to details. By designing several places, designers gain very useful information and feel creative in their philosophy.



Designers make the most out of it in order to make people understand and appreciate the meaning of their work. Their designs are always functional, safe and beautiful for every type of buildings, houses, supermarkets, malls, hotels, coffee shops and restaurants. As interior designers they get to choose the colors, materials, textures, furniture, flooring, lighting and other materials.

It might sound odd that hiring someone to decorate your home would save you money since you have the added fee of the designers. Though, surprisingly, hiring a designer can help you to keep away from costly mistakes that will not help you save money but increase the value of your home or business. A professional designer can give you an evaluation of your situation that will guide to a solid plan of action. They can determine what you can get rid of or should be revised, their eyes are taught to see and notice things that you may not.




Designers can keep you on budget and save you time and effort. They know where to go for resources for everything associated to your home. This will save you never-ending amounts of time researching products, brands and prices.  Also, there are things available to designers that are not available to the general public in terms of connections and general merchandise.



Always remember that a designer is a professional with a trained eye that can undoubtedly tell you if there is something wrong or right with the area. Having that direct consult is a major advantage when making aesthetic judgment. It is the product of years of experience.



Sunday, 17 April 2016

Importance of Food Hygiene



Proper hygiene is extremely important when it comes to food preparation. Without washing hands and kitchen tools, virus may easily spread. In some areas though, this crucial matter is not always acknowledged and is unfortunately not taken seriously.

Food poisoning transmits when raw food comes in contact with other types of food. Bacteria can also be transferred in some way, like from hands, utensils, areas, and clothes. One thing you can do to avoid cross contamination is stay separate chopping boards for raw and cooked foods.




Refrigerators must also be checked frequently to guarantee that they are running at the correct temperature and they must also be cleaned, both inside and out.

One more essential apparatus to keep your kitchen clean is to install the right kitchen extractor and ventilation systems. Cooking products contribute to fire danger, increased humidity and temperature, more cleaning and unpleasant smells to prevent odor, grease smoke and steam from happening proper ventilation should be prioritized.




Some local governments will not allow you to operate unless you get a HACCP certification. HACCP is a management system in which food safety is addressed through analysis and control of biological, chemical and physical hazards from raw material production, procurement and handling, to manufacturing distribution and consumption of the finished product. We at LimeGreen Group offer Quality Assurance Program Hygiene Check to evaluate food safety, manifestation and performance of the store. 

Sunday, 10 April 2016

Tips to Effective Marketing for Start-Ups

It's not that easy to give useful tips if you yourself don't have the experience. Specially if we are talking about your hard earned savings.

Starting a new business takes a lot of research and planning. The marketing portion of your business plan is one of the most important parts of your overall business strategy. Successful marketing methods will turn a customer’s needs into a desire for your product or service.



Know your Market
Market research is the first step in developing an effective marketing plan. Find out who your target customers are. The demographics, lifestyle and income levels of your prospective customers will have a direct affect on where you spend your advertising money.



Examine your Competition
Monitoring the competition is vital in all facets of a business, including marketing. Research what type of marketing techniques your competitors are using. Evaluate their strengths and weaknesses, and develop new ideas to surpass them. Focus on discovering what value competitors are portraying in their advertising, and attempt to deliver at a higher level.

Pricing your Products or Services
Decreasing your price is not always the answer to whipping out the competition. It’s normal to compare the pricing just like a customer. It is important that you pay close attention to all costs and price your items profitably. Marketing calendars should be planned a year in advance. Budget your advertising money throughout the year. Holiday promotions and seasonal sales should be scheduled and well thought out for ultimate exposure.

Develop a Brand
Make a brand for your company using a detailed color scheme and a professional logo designed with your business in mind. Keep it uncomplicated and most of all memorable and use it everywhere.

Web Presence
Putting up a website is reasonable and a must for any size business. Many web hosting companies have great support teams that can help even the most non techy business owner set up an effective site. Getting social is useful, too. Facebook and Instagram are great examples of free advertising on the web. There are also many free business listing sites that can be customized with your information and linked back to your website.





Source Business dictionary

Monday, 28 March 2016

Why Provide Exceptional Service?



Excellent customer service can create loyal customers for life who are willing to refer your business to friends, family, and colleagues.

Providing customer service starts with a genuine desire to delight your customers, but you also have to think beyond selling your product or service. You need to consider the increasing experience your customers have when they visit your store or website, what they think and feel, and what you can do to make it better.



·         An unsatisfied customer typically tells 8 others about the negative experience. These people then tell to more people. Just one unsatisfied customer can negatively influence up to 82 others.

·         Only 4% of all customers ever complain. For every complaint received there are an average of 26 other complaints that were never voiced. Six of these complaints are serious enough to cause defection.

·         Nearly 95% of customers who complain will continue to do business with you if the complaint is handled quickly and to their satisfaction.

·         Depending on your industry, the lifetime value of each customer is 100 to 1000 times the value of a single transaction.

·         Research shows it costs five times as much to attract a new customer as it does to retain an existing customer. Exceptional services are the best way to retain customers.

·         Existing customers spend more per transaction and purchase higher profit items than new customers, resulting in more profits for salary increases and career advancement opportunities.

·         Providing exceptional customer service makes for happier customers who are easier to deal with, making your job more enjoyable.

Creating a work environment where customer service is important can lead to improved employee morale. Employees who are eager to help can put irate customers ease and improve their shopping experience. This can lead to a more pleasant environment and make employees feel good about what they do. Quality customer service can benefit your business in countless ways and by observing the importance of customer service you can take measures to provide your consumers with a positive experience.

We at Lime Green Group not only harbor expertise in hospitality management, but our wide range of services goes from business development to brand development and from culinary management to employee training programs. We also assist in managing policies, rules and regulations, guidelines for operations. 



Tuesday, 22 March 2016

Lavender Lemonade Recipe


We’ve found this cute lemonade recipe ideal for house parties, gathering and even for kids. 

INGREDIENTS
·         For the Lavender Mixture
·         2 cups water
·         ½ cup sugar
·         ¼ cup agave nectar (or honey)
·         3 Tbsp dried lavender
·         For the Lemonade
·         2 cups freshly squeezed lemon juice
·         4 cups water
·         1 lemon, sliced (for garnish)
INSTRUCTIONS
1.     To make the simple syrup, combine two cups of water and sugar in a small saucepan over medium high heat, bringing to a boil and whisking until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat and stir in agave nectar and dried lavender.
2.     Cover for about 15 minutes, allowing mixture to steep. Strain lavender, making sure to release all juices and syrup.
3.     In a large pitcher, combine freshly squeezed lemon juice, lavender mixture and water. Feel free to add a drop of blue coloring and a drop of red to mixture to give it a lovely purple color. Chill for at least 2 hours and serve over ice. Enjoy!
NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION
Serving Size: 1 cup • Calories: 87 • Fat: 0 g • Carbs: 24 g • Fiber: 0 g • Protein: 0 g • WW Points+: 3 pts



It's pretty right?! You can also add some berries or mint if you want.







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