Q: What’s the most competitive area for food on the web? A: recipes. In a week when NineMSN launched its new food portal, the recipe battle online just got fiercer. The competition is for which website has the most rcipes best optimised to be found in Google searches whether it be Taste, Gourmet Traveller, SBS Food or whichever. There’s a reason for this. Recipes mean traffic. People want recipes. The big traffic blogs mostly rely on recipes. Therefore if you […]
Month: October 2011
What about monitoring social media?
People always ask about monitoring tools for social media. There are plenty of very expensive solutions out there designed for big brands. But I suspect for many food and drink businesses costs are always going to be an issue simply because many aren’t that big. Luckily some of the best tools are free, although if you do feel inclined to pay for any probably Hootsuite is the best. Some of these tools have the ability to pre assign activity, but […]
The cult of the wineglass
Consult a financial adviser before drinking from a Riedel. Dishwasher tablets erode your glasses and crockery. Use liquid instead. Decant heavier reds at least 8 hours before drinking. If you want to drink champagne (usually a blend of chardonnay pinot pinot meunier and pinot noir) rather than sip it, use a pinot noir glass. I’ve spent my whole life avoiding scrapes with cults. There was the incident in London on the Tottenham Court Road where, bunking off school aged 14, […]
Diary of a food festival: day 3
Saturday 0830 Attend Barbeque Madness at Sydney Morning Herald Grower’s Market at Pyrmont Park. Join David Tanis of the legendary Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, California, and a stellar line up of 10 Sydney chefs including Kylie Kwong. Sessions are held every half an hour. We all stumble down to breakfast about 10ish before stumbling on to the BBQ. It’s all pretty chaotic but we get our seared meat just as they start packing-up around us. I take a look […]
Specifications for a restaurant website
If you want to see what it should look like then visit El Loco in Sydney and check it on your pc and mobile phone. 1. Front page blog like functionality with RSS feed 2. Allow multiple categories in blog with individual RSS feeds. 3. Mailchimp email sign-up form front page in sidebar. Mailchimp takes RSS feed to make email. Email send to Facebook/Twitter. 4. Twitter stream in right hand sidebar 5. Facebook open graph tags on front page so […]
A rough guide to social media for restaurants
Ed charles social media for restaurants View more presentations from Tomato Media This is a slideshow outlining a verbal presentation I gave to members of Restaurant and Catering in Melbourne last week.
Diary of a food festival: day two
View from the Steyne Hotel. Not bad eh? Enjoy breakfast in Cafe Opera, Level 1. Breakfast is available from 6:30am -10:30am daily. As a hotel breakfast it ain’t bad. Passable (just) scrambled eggs but best of all streaky bacon and decent sausages. A highlight is the honeycomb, yoghurt and fruit. Nice filter coffee. 0845 Meet with your Destination NSW host Lauren Zoneff and make your way on to the Harbour Master Steps for your Manly Fast Ferry. Myself, Kerry […]
Diary of a food festival: Day one
1540: Flight DJ849 arrives into Sydney Meet your Astra Limousines driver for your transfer to the InterContinental Sydney. Delays! The storms in Melbourne means that I don’t arrive until after 5pm for a drinks party at 6pm. 1800: Meet Destination NSW in the lobby of the hotel for transfer to the Hilton Hotel for the Crave Sydney International Food Festival Official Launch Party I meet David Lebovitz in reception together with Helen from Grab your fork and Chocolate Suze and […]