Month: February 2012

12,840

Last night I arrived home from a trip to Breckenridge, CO with seven of my buddies. Here I am at 12,840 feet. My five year old son saw this pic and said, “Cool! Daddy, you look like a black Power Ranger!!!” Not my intent of course, but I like the description. It was around two […]

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Where our customers live…

I stumbled across this really cool word cloud creator called Wordle. It lets you enter in a bunch of text or link to a blog feed and it will create a “word cloud” of the text – which like a tag cloud – make the words that appear more frequently in the text bigger. I […]

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An indie owner discusses the hyper-local food movement…

Jeff Gigante and I spent 15 minutes talking about how is restaurant group, Ciccio & Tony’s, is exploring ways to use hyper-local ingredients. Jeff discusses the pros, cons, myths, struggles, and successes of his efforts to source fresh, organic local food for his six restaurants. All consumers who expect their restaurants to use local food […]

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Why there is such a thing as a free lunch…

I recently posted about why Joe’s Real BBQ gives away over 6,000 meals in a single day. One day per year. With no strings attached. Here’s the audio of a conversation I had last week with Tad Peelen, co-owner of Joe’s Real BBQ and Joe’s Farm Grill in Gilbert, AZ. We discussed the free meals […]

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Why work doesn’t happen at work

Today was a good day at work. I got a bunch of really great stuff done. I worked today on the bed in the guest room in our house. I had actually planned to work in the dining room but realized that the 15mo old boy tugging on my pant leg and the 4yr old […]

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How to hire the right people in your restaurant…

I always enjoy learning the various philosophies and strategies restaurant owners/managers use to hire the right people for their teams. On that topic, here’s an exchange I with Jeremiah Higgins during his interview for Restaurant Owners Uncorked. He is co-owner of Arch Rock Fish in Santa Barbara, CA and partner with HJL Restaurant Advisors. Wil: […]

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Busted!

I’m turning myself in. Busting myself. You see, I’ve mentioned many times on our blog that we don’t have any sales people, and we prefer that people find out about Schedulefly from word-of-mouth, or through our book, or perhaps from one of the articles we’ve written, etc. But last night I hung out with a […]

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The first coffee shop book interview…

Yesterday I conducted the first interview for our upcoming book of interviews with successful coffee shop owners. I spoke with JD Merget of Oslo Coffee in Brooklyn. JD has a palpable passion for coffee, and since he opened the door of his first location eight years ago, he’s opened two more locations and started roasting […]

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Handmade Schedulefly Bar Coasters!

My sister, Holly Aiken, made us some really cool Schedulefly coasters. She is a handbag designer and makes great looking, indestructible products! Like the rest of the stuff she makes – these coasters are simple, unique and crazy functional. They are made out of vinyl so they can literally be hosed down if needed. We […]

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The Noise

The Noise is everywhere these days. Emails. Texts. Facebook. Twitter. 500 TV channels. 1,000s of magazines. It hits you everywhere you turn, doesn’t it? Like a weary boxer, you tire from all of the blows. You can barely defend yourself any longer. It overwhelms you. It’s just too much. The Noise is especially strong in […]

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