Month: April 2013

Train people to replace yourself (new video)

Chris Sommers (Pi Pizzeria in St. Louis and Washington, D.C. and Gringo in St. Louis) talks about why he hires great people and gives them opportunities to grow within his restaurants, by letting them take on more and more of the important aspects of running his business. (If you’re reading this in email and don’t […]

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ROU Raw – Restaurant social media

Chris Sommers (Pi Pizzeria in St. Louis and Washington, D.C. and Gringo in St. Louis) talks about why he likes social media, the gap he saw in responding to social media mentions of his restaurants, and why he developed Sqwid to help make it easier to reward his happy customers and satisfy the occasional few […]

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Money can’t buy that

Wil forwarded this to me today, and since I doubt I would have found it otherwise, I figured many of you wouldn’t either. It’s a great video with a wonderful message at the end… If you can’t see this video in an email – here it is on Vimeo. Wes

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ROU Raw – Thoughts on food trucks

Here’s some raw footage from my discussion with Chris Sommers of Pi Pizzeria and Gringo in St. Louis and Washington, D.C. He’s talking about the pros and cons of food trucks, and since we weren’t able to get film of any of his trucks, we aren’t producing this segment as a finished video. But it’s […]

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How to negotiate the right lease for your restaurant (new video)

Chris Sommers of Pi Pizzeria and Gringo in St. Louis and Washington, D.C. talks about the importance of effective lease negotiation in the restaurant business: If you liked this video, check out the entire Restaurant Owners Uncorked video series here, and you might also enjoy our book, “Restaurant Owners Uncorked: Twenty Owners Share Their Recipes for […]

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Pics from our recent video shoot in St. Louis….

Last week Luke Pearson (Lift Films) and I were in St. Louis, filming with Chris Sommers of Pi Pizzeria for the Restaurant Owners Uncorked video series. We had an incredible time, at some ridiculously good pizza, and got all sorts of advice and wisdom from Chris on film. Here’s a few pics from the trip… […]

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The fundamentals can take you very far

I read a great blog post recently about designing software for people and how the term “User Experience” (or “UX”) is thrown around so much these days – and it can mean a lot of different things to different kinds of people. This term spun off of the term “User Interface” (or “UI”) – which […]

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A big thank you to all restaurant owners and staff…

Last night I thanked my wife for making dinner and for some reason blurted out, “I am always thankful to anybody who nourishes me.” That got me to thinking about how much I appreciate restaurants. How thankful I am not only to be a part of a business that serves them, but simply that they […]

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Advice for aspiring restaurant owners

Tad Peelen (Joe’s Real BBQ, Joe’s Farm Grill) rattles off some excellent advice for anybody who thinks they’d like to be a restaurant owner. This is really, really good stuff and will set you on the right track and help you minimize the many risks involved…. This wraps up our series of vids with Tad […]

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