It's not always easy constructing a brand message, but John wants to help get you there with ease by understanding the basic elements and how to position yourself effectively to your customers.

PR goals are met when a chef and publicist like, trust, and respect each other.

Mari suggests six simple merchandising secrets to increase your retail sales this season - and beyond!

John argues that savvy newspapers that use the Internet well (which are in the minority) offer a great opportunity for restaurants to integrate their web marketing efforts and tie into a solid local online audience.

Restaurants can still stand out from the crowd as the line between casual and fine dining blurs.

John gets into the business model of "customer paying what they think the experience is worth." What do you think about your place is worth?

We talk with Nathan Gilder from Restaurant Revolution about using online restaurant coupons as part of the marketing and promotion strategy.  The conversation also ends up covering a number of other valuable marketing topics.

Inside and out, some of the world’s most recognizable restaurants, lounges and hotels have become showcases for fashionable, functional and versatile design innovations. Wire-mesh fabric, among other textures, has brought restaurant design to a new level.

Adopt restaurant trends that fit your mission and excite your target audience.

Kaboom--we realize that the market in which we seek to do business is really a cluttered landscape - noisy, competitive, inattentive, unresponsive, disloyal, hard to please, harder to reach. But, we are steadfast and understand the need for an advertising campaign, which will guide us through that unforgiving terrain, filled with landmines, natural and man made barriers, ooze, dead ends and paths to oblivion.  What means do we consider for our entry into that marketplace?

The use of descriptive labels such as Jack Daniel's Chicken, Psychedelic Sorbey, or the Blooming Onion is an emerging trend in the hospitality industry. But does simply changing the menu labels from generic, straightforward names to descriptive names impact sales or make a customer actually believe the food tastes better?

For operations that have been doing business for some time, establishing long-term relationships with regular customers is success defined. Well-honed marketing programs and employee participation produce the best results.