Merchandise your other properties

Here's another best practice: Leverage your investment in other brand equities by making them a sweepstakes prizes. See details here.

"Speed Dating" at next Sponsor Meeting

One of the unsung benefits of our twice-yearly Sponsor Meetings is the opportunity to network with industry peers. At this winter's meeting, we're introducing Sponsor Speed Dating: A round-robin of 10 minute meetings with each member of the coalition to share best practices, plan joint promotions or simply exchange business cards. More details available here.

150 cooks, 3,000 meals per seating

"What a great program!" says Alfred Hauser, Executive Chef of Royal Caribbean's Radiance of the Seas. "I have 150 cooks serving 2,000 to 3,000 passengers per seating." An examination of the ship's stores revealed qualifying products from Bunge Oils, Barilla Pasta, Nestle Bases and Cocoa, and General Mills baking mixes. Oh, and I gained 5 lbs. on the Alaskan cruise.

Hiring and retention has replaced food prices as the top worry for restauranteurs

Tired of customers grinding down your food prices? Don't reduce your margins; instead help operators reduce their labor costs.



According to the 2005 Datassential Operator Survey, when "decoding the profit and loss puzzle for your restaurant customers, it's important to keep in mind that labor is nearly as large an expense as the food itself." In fact, hiring and retention has replaced food prices as the top worry for restauranteurs, says Hudson Riehle, Senior Researcher at the National Restaurant Association.

Operators want help managing the cost of their human assets, but few suppliers offer it. Introduce your customers to Foodservice Rewards - it earns them free gifts to recognize and reward staff and reduce the cost of running their operations.

Best Practice: Win-Backs

With the average company losing 20-40 percent of its customers every year, it is imperative that we create hard working strategies, not only for acquisition and retention, but also for win-back.

"we sent this message to approximately 800 operators in the Foodservice Rewards program" reports Evan Carlson, eBusiness Marketing Manager at Schwan's Foodservice. " These were operators who previously purchased Minh Appetizers but had not redeemed a reward code within five months. In other words, they appeared to be lost business. Through Foodservice Rewards, we are able to identify them, offer an incentive of value, easily manage participation and directly measure results. We have plans to execute additional campaigns in the upcoming months."

Similar efforts such as this one have produced win-back rates of over 14% (33,538 cases for the campaign) for a small investment in email design, delivery and points to respondents. If you have questions about how to use your lapsed buyer reports or need help designing and executing win-back strategy, please contact John Neupauer at 952-844-4566.

Minnesota Cheese

Here's proof that a commodity doesn't have to be a commodity: Land O' Lakes foodservice. If they join, will we be accused of being the "Minnesota" coalition?

Usability study results

As you may know, we are upgrading the Foodservice Rewards website. Despite having successfully processed more than 12,000,000 reward codes from over 50,000 operators - that's over 1,000 codes per hour on many days of the week - we can still improve its ease of use and relevance.

Here are the tabulated results from the Phase One usability study (15 face-to-face interviews, 10 observed usability sessions, extensive online surveys.) Note this is a big file - 70+ slides, so only download if you are really interested :-)