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paymonscafelv · 5 years

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Ethnic eats have always been popular in the U.S. As a country of immigrants, we’ve brought our foods with us, offering comfort and a way to stay connected to our pasts.

Small, ethnic restaurants span much of the country, often located in neighborhoods that have drawn immigrants from a common country.

But while it’s relatively easy to open a local enterprise to serve ethnic food to a homesick population of recent arrivals, making the leap to a mainstream market requires an extra dash of savvy.

It’s easy to stay small and niche

The recipe for niche success is fairly straightforward: Make something authentic that’s not widely available. For example, if you give a local population a whiff of their homeland and a comfortable place to hang out, you have a good chance of winning loyalty from folks familiar with the cuisine and customs.

However, businesses that cater solely to the populations their cuisines represent leave easy money (and food) on the table. “I see all these small restaurants out there serving their niches that could do so much better,” says Houston-based Michael Cordúa, proprietor of seven award-winning South American restaurants in Houston.

“If they just moved out of the niche and into the mainstream, they’d see so much more volume,” advises Cordúa.

The allure of ethnic food

It’s an amazing tribute to globalization that consumers in most major cities can reach out and connect with the rest of the world through food.

What’s behind all this popular growth in ethnic eateries?

Cultural geographer Wilbur Zelinsky in 1985 authored probably the most exhaustive study of the history of ethnic restaurants in America. “In its ultimate, essential sense, culture is an image of the world, of oneself and one’s community,” he wrote.

Zelinsky studied the evolution of ethnic eating and theorized why some restaurants were successful crossing over while others were not: Ethnic restaurants succeed best in locations where the larger local populations are receptive to them.

According to Zelinksy, mainstream acceptance of a novel ethnic cuisine requires restaurateurs to meet customers halfway with food and experiences that are easy for them to assimilate.

The blueprint for ethnic-food crossover

Ethnic restaurants have achieved mainstream success by following many common practices.

Creating a transcultural menu

Houston’s Cordúa came from Nicaragua to Texas and recognized early the potential for getting big by going mainstream. Instead of focusing solely on a Nicaraguan menu, he went for more generalized South American food. “We want to make it safe for our customers to be adventurous,” Cordúa explains. ”When ingredients push the envelope of being exotic or just too extreme, I choose what my customers feel most comfortable with. I pay tribute to the ingredients the Americas have given to the world.”

Jeff Ecker, general manager of Paymon’s Mediterranean Cafe in Las Vegas, agrees with Americanizing the menu. Founded in 1988, Paymon’s underwent a format change in 2000 by adding more accessible American options while maintaining its original Middle Eastern cuisine.

Ecker cautions restaurants with an ethnic flavor to pay more attention to items like the beverage service when moving mainstream. “Walk into a Japanese restaurant, and you’ll see a lot of sake and not a lot of what mainstream customers are familiar with,” he said.

“To cross over, we changed the culture, from playing American music on the radio to adding Italian and vegetarian offerings on the menu.”

Iterating incessantly

Testing plays a big role in finding foods and ingredients that resonate with a larger audience. Don’t assume anything—test what works and eliminate what doesn’t.

For example, Cordúa tested native ingredients with his new clientele and found that grass-fed beef (typically used in South American kitchens) tasted inferior to the American palette. “We quickly swapped it out, opting for a more familiar experience for our new customers, unaccustomed to the South American diet,” he says.

Making exploration comfortable

Early on, Paymon’s found that its ethnic format proved too dissonant to lure in small groups of customers. “We got feedback that said in a party of four or five, there was always one or two holdouts who didn’t want ethnic,” says Ecker.

Restaurants need to balance the desire to be authentic with the practicality of providing something already familiar to a general audience. This includes translating menu items into English and choosing locations in central areas to attract the masses. Cordúa advises, “Have enough in your restaurant design and format to be mysterious but make the rest of the experience comfortable.”

Educating the customer

Not everyone is familiar with an ethnic meal. It’s a language and experience that requires some education. Post-launch, Cordúa spent a lot of time coaxing friends and family into his facility to introduce them gently to the new menu. (Ask him about hustling plantains at church events.) “From there, word of mouth brought in the next leg of customers,” he says, reflecting on the early marketing efforts of his first restaurant.

Paymon’s did something similar when it opened the Hookah Lounge, its pioneering store-within-a-store-concept. Paymon Raouf, founder of the restaurant, is seen as almost a cult hero, bringing the Hookah experience to America (he even owns the trademark). But to get a Las Vegas mainstream frequenting the Hookah Lounge, Ecker made sure to guide the experience for his customers foreign to the Moroccan format. “We don’t do any bellydancing or anything like that,” he says.

“It’s almost like a concierge service: We have an employee explain the experience, how to choose from over 20 different flavors of Egyptian tobacco, and then we just set the hookah up for them.”

Bringing in the media early and big

In a wired world, it’s easy to see if Internet advertising works or not. Everything is measurable. Not so with traditional PR: It’s expensive and hard to judge its value. But early on, Cordúa hired a publicist to approach local media organizations with his message.

From there, larger, national publications (like the New York Times and Esquire) got word of what was going on in Eastern Texas. “To be successful in the culinary world, you really need to be good at food and business,” said Cordúa, who holds an M.B.A. “Running a restaurant really is the commerce of art. As the owner, I’m not an artist with a supporting patron. I need to be liked and demanded.”

“And I’m willing to invest in that.”

(Read more on running a restaurant.)

Zack Miller is the author of the book Tradestream Your Way to Profits: Building a Killer Portfolio in the Age of Social Media and runs Tradestreaming.com.

The post Taking An Ethnic Restaurant Mainstream appeared first on PAYMON'S.

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workreveal-blog · 8 years

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Journey of becoming a Travel Blogger

New Post has been published on https://workreveal.biz/journey-of-becoming-a-travel-blogger/

Journey of becoming a Travel Blogger

Journey of becoming a Travel Blogger isn’t easy, the noughties have been the decade when human beings stopped simply dreaming approximately being travel writers and were given concerned. Through harnessing the traits of social networking and multimedia content, impartial guests have gone directly to become a number of the maximum innovative bloggers at the net. What’s more, the ultra-savvy ones are turning their enthusiasm into an earnings.

In contemporary Mum or Dad tour, we profile some of the UK’s maximum interesting virtual nomads, who’re the use of the net to tour the world and, in a single case, creating wealth from online paintings. May want to running a blog be the important thing to such opportunities?

journey

“If you are simply dedicated, then yes, you can make it, however it takes a number of work,” says Matt Kepnes, who has been journeying the sector since 2005, runs NomadicMatt.Com, and has written an ebook: How to Make Money together with your Tour Blog. “There are methods for the small websites to make a few Cash and pay for a number of their travels. And i assume that is what most people want: they don’t need to make it a lifestyle, but they would like some of their attempt to be rewarded and be able to cowl a number of the expenses of visiting.”

There also are plenty extra blessings to be had from running a blog apart from making money, inclusive of constructing a dating with a worldwide target market. And, as Craig Martin of indietravelpodcast.Com points out, developing a popular tour website online Could offer “an excellent threat to land a ebook deal, launch numerous merchandise or a vicinity-independent enterprise, or use it to your CV while looking for a activity post-trip”.

Right here’s our Novice’s guide to tour blogging.

• Positioned content first and enjoy yourself: If you want to gain an online following, the primary intention must be exact content material. Darren Cronian, the man at the back of extremely a hit travel Rants Blog and organiser of journey BlogCamp (subsequent one in Leeds this summer season), says: “My tip would be to write approximately a topic that you are enthusiastic about. Otherwise, you may simply feel pressurised and now not revel in it.”

• Find a niche: Round-the-world travelogues are actually as not unusual because the old ‘Round Robin’ email. See if you can select upon a new fashion or emerge as an authoritative guide on something human beings actually need to understand about.

• Be dedicated:

In case you’re severe about constructing a following, you want to update your website online often. maximum bloggers purpose to post least 3 times every week. In case you understand you are going to be in far off parts without internet access, a commonplace trick is to write down posts earlier and agenda them to be uploaded robotically.

• select the right platform: Free blogging platforms include Blogger.Com, WordPress.Com and TypePad.Com. maximum seasoned bloggers opt for WordPress.Org (as opposed wordpress.Com), which necessitates paid-for website hosting however allows tons extra options for customisation. Don’t forget to select a domain name this is catchy and search-engine pleasant.

• Have more than one website online: Alongside their flagship Weblog, serious bloggers generally have a number of ‘static’ websites, which won’t few updates and are designed to rank noticeably in search engines like google and yahoo and bring in greater advertising opportunities.

• Do your research and make contacts:

If you need to get critical, then get on-line and get studying. Get to realize your fellow bloggers on online forums or networking sites which includes Twitter. Percentage hyperlinks, cross-promote, comment on different websites and you will soon see your visitors upward push. a great location to get in contact with others is tour Weblog Trade, which additionally has a sub-discussion board for those looking to make a business out of blogging.

• Appearance past Adsense:

The advertising and marketing revenue from Google Adsense alone can be miserable: a lot work and simply multiple quid to show for it. Many bloggers instead goal for a mixture of adverts and affiliates (setting advertisements to your web site at no cost and getting a percentage of any sales that come through it). Many also promote their own products, such as self-posted eBooks in their expert subject. NB: make sure now not to over-p.C. your web page with commercials or it will Placed your readers off and jeopardise your independence. In addition, you ought to be transparent approximately sponsorship and offers.

The first-class humans to get below the pores and skin of region are people who stay there, which is why we commissioned local newshounds, bloggers and different experts to write down our complete online town courses recently. Best a nearby is aware of The way to play the tables (and drink for a dollar) in Vegas, or in which find the first-rate pizza in Brooklyn.

The metropolis guides series has been this sort of achievement – turning into one of the most famous capabilities on the tour website – that we decided to ask some of the writers and bloggers who helped us Put the 11 man or woman guides together to make bigger our coverage, with the launch nowadays of the Mum or Dad journey Community.

This reciprocal partnership includes Guardian travel publishing amusing and quirky portions from our Community of bloggers, with hyperlinks again to the unique Blog, so that you can get an on-the-spot view of, say, how the celebrations in Berlin to mark the 35th anniversary of the recording of David Bowie’s seminal Low album are shaping up, or wherein to brunch while in Rome. In go back, the bloggers will put up some of our content on their very own websites.

And it way we get to pick the very fine and most informative pieces to enhance our site. extra than some other newspaper the Parent promotes diversity of content and open journalism, and what higher way to embrace that ethos than to sign up for forces with visitor writers from a extensive type of towns and backgrounds.

We kick off with four extremely good blogs that show you a aspect to their cities you will by no means discover in a guidebook or on a mainstream tour website:

The contributions from Istanbul Eats to our city guides had been so precise they had the tour desk salivating. He is uncovered a proper hidden gem inside the shape of Osman’s Truck – one of the few closing “shanty cafes” in Istanbul, positioned in the again of a truck and with views of the Golden Horn.

Amsterdam Magazine tests out the lively De Oude Pijp neighbourhood, the metropolis’s “Latin Area”, that’s off the visitor radar but a hip hangout for locals, with the town’s largest “awareness of eating places, cafes and bars, catering to pretty much every class and taste”.

The call Invisible Paris tells you what this blogger is all about, and Here he finds a abandoned “city theme park” at the outskirts of the town mixed with a stroll along the canal.

Blogger

The quirky Spitalfields Existence Weblog showcases some notable artwork and photography from in and around the fashionable London neighbourhood (take a look at out Patricia Niven’s Surma Centre Graphics of Bangladeshi guys who got here to Britain in the Nineteen Fifties and 60s). James Pearson-Howes’s Top Deck series of photos captures London’s East End from a bus. Riding at the Top of a bus is something tens of millions of Londoners do every day, however regarded as snapshots of time they take on a fascinating new Life of their personal. A teenage blogger claims he stored £7.72 on his teach adventure from Sheffield to Essex – Via taking a aircraft through Berlin.

Jordon Cox, 18, who blogs as the Coupon Child for MoneySavingExpert.Com, wrote on the website that he travelled an extra 1,017 miles ultimate week and saved £7.seventy two By using getting lower back to Essex from Sheffield via Berlin. He wrote: “I realize that flying isn’t always very environmentally pleasant And that i won’t do this whenever I journey, however this changed into the most inexpensive manner for me to get home And i got to enjoy a ‘Unfastened’ mini vacation to a town I’ve usually desired to visit.”

Cox stated he booked a cheap teach fare to Sheffield however discovered ago back price ticket was £47.

He discovered that flying from East Midlands airport to Berlin, spending seven hours exploring the city after which flying to London Stansted and getting a bus domestic became inexpensive than a unmarried educate journey in England.

He additionally discovered the May want to buy a go back educate ticket to Berlin town centre, enjoy a Loose tour of a central authority building and eat lunch there and nonetheless store Cash.

He wrote: “Travelling is Good, this isn’t for every person as it could take a whole day to get on your final destination, but If you’re no longer in a hurry, your recognition is saving Money and also you fancy a touch walk around an EU metropolis, it’s worth a glance.”

Travel

He reminded each person thinking about his techniques to factor in tour to and from airports to ensure an overall saving – and don’t forget their passport.

Howdy. I’m Max Gogarty. I am 19 and stay on Pinnacle of a hill in north London.

At the minute, I’m running in a eating place with a gaggle of cute, funny people; writing a play; writing bits for Skins; spending any type of Cash I earn on food and thin denims, and consuming my way to a financially blighted two-month journey to India and Thailand. Clichéd I realize, but clichés are there for a reason.

I’m kinda shitting myself about journeying. Properly not a lot the visiting element. It’s India that scares me. The heat, the roads, the snakes, Australian guests. do not get me wrong, I am excited. however shitting myself. And that i simply realize that after I step off that aircraft and into the maelstrom of Mumbai – Nicely, sincerely, I do not know how I will react.

I’m doing India by myself. I’ve alternatives to satisfy up with human beings there, but for the maximum component, it will likely be me and my backpack. I fly into Mumbai today, however will circulate right down to Goa pretty sharpish and relax there for some days – a pleasing, sluggish introduction with a bit of luck laced with lots of swimming, sunbathing and partying. after which South India’s pretty a good deal my oyster – Kerala, Madurai, Bangalore, Cochin, Mysore … Anyplace. I’m Free to roam. It is the splendor of doing it on my own.

Nearly all of my pals are dotted around the globe scouring each nook and cranny for a piece of lifestyle and enlightenment (but secretly hoping to run into as many complete-moon parties as possible). but it appears all gappers I recognise – Wherever they’re – can be going to Thailand in March or April, and everyone I’ve spoken to is making no mystery of the truth that Thailand need to be quite damn decadent.

I am no longer totally certain what appeals to me about touring. Maybe the dearth of labor or look at? The mayhem? The imagined agency of stunning ladies … All superb motives to travel. And whether or not I am proper or now not, I am quite sure it is going to be a global far away from cowering underneath an umbrella On the 134 bus forestall.

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