I recently attended a complementary seminar on Strategies
for Increasing Restaurant Sales in the South Lake Union neighborhood. In partnership with the Office of Economic
Development and the Community Capital Development a panel of industry experts
gathered to discuss analyzing operations, opportunities to improve sales,
customer loyalty, promotions and branding.
Collectively the speakers had decades of experience and shared their
perspective on how to gain an edge in this competitive market.
Overall I thought it was a quite an informative session with
a variety of attendees ranging from small coffee shop owners, a baker wanting
to expand her wholesale kitchen, an international hotel chain looking for ideas
in their restaurant operations as it pertained to the Seattle market, and so
on. One thing is clear; there is no
cookie cutter solution to any problem. If
we are open to looking at things from a different perspective, there are plenty
of tools at our fingertips.