The Grub Club® - Restaurant Menus

After years of importing, chefs are staying local

2008-05-23T11:02:00.000-08:00

After years of importing ingredients from all over the world, chefs are going back to basics and staying local. The goal is to limit the human impact on the environment; less flying, driving, and fuel consumption (all of which leaves a smaller "eco-footprint"). Farm-fresh fare is also packed with nutrients, doesn't have to be sprayed with chemicals to protect it for the long haul to the restaurant, and just plain tastes good. Everybody wins, from farmer to chef to diner.

Thinking globally and sourcing locally is not just politically correct, it's also personally rewarding for the farmer. Cynthia Sandberg, the owner of Love Apple Farm, near Santa Cruz, California, supplies the fruit and vegetables for Los Gatos's Manresa restaurant. "It's a very special feeling to see something on a plate prepared by a world-famous chef and be able to recognize the exact vegetable that I picked for him earlier that day," she says.

COMPLETE ARTICLE

Paul Myers of Restaurant 515 is nominated the coveted James Beard Award

2008-03-18T13:11:00.002-08:00

The biggest food news in Missoula this week is the inclusion of Paul Myers of Restaurant 515 on the long list of nominees being considered for the coveted James Beard Award given annually by the James Beard Foundation.

Myers was nominated in the "Best Chef-Northwest" category - arguably one of the most difficult groups in which to stand out since there are so many talented chefs in the Northwest region.

For the last five years, Seattle and Portland have dominated the category, and lesser-known places like Missoula have yet to make it to the party.
This year, Myers hopes to grab the brass ring.

Both of Myers' mentors in food and fine dining have also made the long list this year: Molecular gastronomy pioneer Wylie Dufresne of "WD-50 Restaurant" - famous for serving better food through chemistry - was nominated in the category for "Best Chef-New York City," and Tom Douglas of Seattle's Tom Douglas Restaurants (which includes eateries like Dahlia Lounge and Palace Kitchen) was nominated for "Outstanding Restaurateur."

COMPLETE ARTICLE

Open Doors To New Sales With The Grub Club™

2007-12-11T23:16:00.000-09:00

The Grub Club™ is a free service offering an easy way for restaurants to get their menus online. There are so many restaurants that either do not have a web site or have outdated menus online. The Grub Club™ system makes it easy to keep menus up to date with quick accessibility to the website by the restaurant owner or manager. They can login from any computer with Internet access and update their menus on an as - needed basis. Changes can be made anytime and are updated in real-time. No waiting for someone else to complete the process.

The Grub Club™ can increase a restaurant’s business at no cost to them. All they have to do is input their menu on the website for marketing on the Internet by The Grub Club™.. Restaurants are encouraged to use the information provided by The Grub Club™ to improve their position with the search engines for even more traffic and customers.

How can you benefit from this service? If you are marketing a product or service to restaurants, you know that it is good to warm up a prospect before the sale. Telling them about a free service that can help their business grow is about the best way there is to get an owner or manager interested in talking to you.

Recommendation. Go to TheGrubClub.com and look over the website. Notice the list of ways it helps restaurants improve their business through this free online menu service. Also read over the “About Us” page because it tells why the The Grub Club™ was started. Now that you are familiar with the program, call or go into a restaurant you are interested in selling to and ask for the owner or manager. When they arrive tell them about The Grub Club™ and how it can help them improve their business. Be sure to explain the reason for starting it. If they already have a web site, tell them that The Grub Club™ is working to be a centralized location for menus on the Internet. They can go to The Grub Club™ and list their restaurant and the menus and still get more customers because of the access to additional web marketing.

Now that you have spent a few minutes talking to the owner/manager, you should have provided some assistance to them in growing their business and found out a little about their business, including the manager's name. At this point, you have also started to develop some rapport with them. If you feel like the time is right, ask them if they are interested in your product or service. Otherwise, give them a flyer on The Grub Club™ and, of course, your business card. Either way you can now call them in a few days and they will know who you are and be willing to talk to you.

Additional Information

Must menus in California count calories, carbs, fats?

2007-09-18T21:05:00.002-08:00

A bill is on the governor's desk, and 4 of 5 state residents back it. But restaurant chains say mandatory measures are lawsuits waiting to happen.

By Daniel B. Wood | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
and Alison Tully | Contributor of The Christian Science Monitor

Sherman Oaks, Calif. - As he finishes a plate of chips and salsa at El Torito, a Mexican restaurant here, Norman Oberstein says a menu that listed the calorie counts of his favorite choices would be a great idea.

"When I go to the grocery, I know what I'm getting and how fat it might make me, but here there isn't any information at all so I just order what I want and forget worrying about it," he says.

Twenty feet away, Michelle Ward disagrees. "I might be heartbroken if I knew how many calories were in some of my favorite foods," she says.

Whether to require detailed nutritional information on restaurant menus or brochures is under scrutiny as never before. Some see it as a way to help curb high obesity rates by encouraging healthier eating, while restaurant representatives claim that mandatory measures would be burdensome and wouldn't stem obesity. To other lawmakers, labeling is the latest example of excessive government interference. [Complete Article}

Food & Beverage - Phenomenal Sides - By Joe Dunbar

2007-09-12T22:08:00.000-08:00

A quick way to attack food cost issues in almost any operation is through a simple menu upgrade. Rather than attacking entrees, take a hard look at your sides. A few mouth watering sides prepared with less costly ingredients will boost profits every time. Buffet guests will consume fewer meat and seafood items if they can't resist a great side dish or salad. A la carte operations should charge for the extra special side dish whenever possible. If you offer guests a full meal with their entree choice, offer the top side dish as an upgrade option.

Whenever the guests ask for help ordering from the wait staff, the side should be mentioned along with the entree choices. Perhaps, the dish requires a last minute preparation. Bringing this to the guest's attention can increase orders. Special optional toppings can be used to make an impression.

I believe Durgin Park does a phenomenal job of highlighting mouth watering sides, soups and desserts. Whenever I dine at this historic Boston landmark, everyone in the party raves over the traditional accompaniments. The Corn Bread, Baked Beans, Indian Pudding and Clam Chowder are frequently ordered. Newcomers don't have to guess "what's good?" at Durgin Park. The management offers their recipes for all of these favorites on their website. Whether you enjoy the line upstairs, communal tables, waitresses with an attitude or not, the Yankee favorites are top notch. [ Complete Article ]

Your Own Free Restaurant Web Site

2007-08-24T20:04:00.000-08:00

8/20/06
You can now use TheGrubClub.com like your own FREE restaurant web site. Once you post your menu and it is verified you can add a directory name and that is your URL. You get a simple web address like www.thegrubclub.com/a/your-restaurant-name. It is easy to give out on the phone and easy to put in an advertisement.

Your menu has to be complete and verified before this option is available. This is done because we don't want anybody to reserving a URL without adding a menu. The point of this site is to add menus.

The most recent restaurants to use this feature are:
Kingsmill Food Mart
Paul's Pancake Parlor
Bernice's Bakery

Receipt System Offers More Nutritional Info

2007-08-24T18:15:00.000-08:00

BY JULIE VALLONE - FOR INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 8/23/2007

Imagine ordering lunch and getting a receipt that not only shows your meal's impact on your wallet, but also on your waistline.

For diners at several Southern California fast-food restaurants, it's a reality. After buying their meals, they get receipts that also include a custom nutritional breakdown of what they ordered. The receipts display the calories, fat, carbohydrates, protein and nutritional daily value for everything they ordered.

Moreover, the receipt shows the impact of customized orders. If you say "Hold the mayo," your receipt will indicate how many calories and fat grams you saved by that decision and how it affected other nutritional categories. If you ask for extra cheese, you'll see how many calories and fat grams were added to your meal, as well as changes in protein and other nutrients.
Complete Article

Nutrition information could be added to TheGrubClub.com menu system. Then restaurants could give interested patrons that menu rather than on every receipt. Nutrition is a major issue but how many people want to see it every time they have a nice meal out. Please let us know if you are interested in this feature. Contact Info.

Menu Development - Bowled Over

2007-08-24T17:41:00.000-08:00

By Marc Halperin - QSR Magazine

Quick-serves could make big menu news by offering comforting soups and stews.
Soup offers potential for fast food menus.

In a fast-food world of often-complex sandwich builds, labor-intensive fresh salads, and other high-maintenance menu items, wouldn’t it be great to find a transaction-generator that’s relatively cheap to prepare, simple to store, already familiar to consumers, and capable of being rendered in near-limitless combinations of flavors and styles?

Welcome to the wide, but still largely unexplored, world of quick-serve soups and stews. For years, Wendy’s signature chili was about the only high-profile entry in this category, which seems a bit strange, given the widespread popularity of broths, bisques, chowders, consommés, and other hot liquid or semi-liquid delicacies.
Complete Article

TheGrubClub.com makes it easy to add new soups to your menu. It only take a few minutes to type in the name, description and price. Then the world can see you new soups is available. No waiting it is live then you post it. Make your life easier, Starting creating a new menu today.

Advertising your Grub Club Menu Works!

2007-08-22T22:03:00.000-08:00

I got a call from a restaurant owner last July 30th about his menu. Mike was his name and he wanted his menu activated ASAP. His restaurunt was new and they had a ad coming out in the local paper in a few days. I was out of town so I had not checked for new menus and so had not yet activated it. A soon as I returned the following week I activated the menu and Mike was able to advertise it. It is my understaning that he had limited space so was only going to say that it could be found at theGrubClub.com rather than include the entire URL. I checked the site reporting last night and their menu had been viewed 49 times. Since the menu and restauraunt are so new most of that traffic had to have come from the advertizing in the newspaper. That took only about two weeks.

This is great news for both of us. That means that it is working for the restaurant and that they are probably getting new customers. It is great news for theGrubClub.com because this shows that it pays to advertise your Grub Club menu. It also shows that restaurant patrons want to see menus online. Since they didn't give their URL all these people took the time to go to theGrubClub.com and search for the menu. If they were not completely interested they never would have wasted there time.

This again proves a point I have been trying to make to restaurants. Restaurant patrons want to see the menu online. If you post your menu potential customers will take the time to look at it. We provide the online menu service for Free so if you need more customers do it today.

The Grub Club in the News!

2007-08-22T07:30:00.000-08:00

6/1/07
June 2007 Three Rivers Lifestyle Magazine published a really nice article on TheGrubClub and our efforts to use it to support our daughter's medical needs. It can be found at over a 100 locations in the Missoula, Montana area. Pick one up if you see it. It is a very nice magazine. The article should be on their web site soon.

Three River Lifestyle Magazine

89% Of Consumers Research Online Before Selecting A Restaurant

2007-08-20T21:38:00.001-08:00

Published in Building Better Restaurants, One Owner at a Time

AIS Media, Inc., a leading e-business solutions company and the developer of Excerpo® Mail and Excerpo® Storefront announced the results of online polling of America’s consumers concerning the restaurant industry and its approach to the internet and online

“The poll showed that 89% of consumers have researched a restaurant online prior to visiting a restaurant. This result shows the impact that online services and marketing are having on the restaurant industry. Among those who research online prior to selecting a restaurant, 57% of respondents said that they check out the restaurant’s website. This was greatest among respondents in the 25-45 age groups and in the Northeast and Pacific coast.
Complete Article

This is what I have been trying to get across to restaurant owners but never could. Get your Free online menu today at theGrubClub.com

New Forum

2007-07-09T05:25:00.000-08:00

To provide better support for our users we have added a new Forums:

Sell Your Products Online with The Grub Club e-Store

2007-01-31T20:33:00.000-09:00

Designed especislly for restaurants that have products to market. Sell your sauces, dressing, shirts, etc online with our e-Store.
Features:

Complete system allows customers to browser your catalog of products and purchase them online
Customers can view their order history and order statuses
Add / Remove / Update products from web based administrative area
Unlimited products and categories
Accept payments via Credit Card, PayPal, Check, Money Order, etc.
Banners to advertise specials
Newsletters manager for keeping in touch with existing and potential customers
Some Optimization for Search Engines

Coming Soon at no extra charge:

Gift Certificates
Discount Coupons
Wholesale pricing support
Continuing SEO
Ongoing Upgrades

Marketing Your Restaurant Online Without a Website

2006-11-30T18:49:00.000-09:00

Marketing your restaurant online is a GREAT idea! Just to give you an idea how much potential there is - at Overture/Yahoo they get 26,045 searches a day for “american restaurant”. Yes, that is per day. “Chinese restaurant” is 19,975 searches per day. At theGrubClub.com one restaurant menu was viewed over 400 times in one month. The interest in finding restaurants online is growing at a staggering rate!.

So how do you get your piece of this pie? The first step is to have an online presence. If you don't have a web site for your restaurant go to www.TheGrubClub.com and post your menu there. Make sure to add a complete description of your establishment which may include type of food, location (downtown, suburbia), dress code and hours of operation. This site is free and once you have been approved for online publication you get your own web address. Something like: www.thegrubclub.com/a/your-restaurant-name. You can use this for all your online marketing and print advertising. Don't forget to give it out when someone calls and wants you to fax your menu to them. Sometimes it is actually easier for individuals to look up your menu online rather than receiving it by fax. You can also post it on you r door so that your customers may refer to in the future and also tell their friends.

Now start getting the word out online. The most important aspect of web advertisement is getting the attention of search engines. You want your potential and repeat customers to be able to find you easily if they cannot remember your web address. For example, if they type in “your restaurant your city” into a search engine like Google or Yahoo , you want to make sure your web marketing is up to par so your restaurant will come up in - at least - the top ten. The other thing your want is to have your restaurant mentioned on as many websites as possible with a link to your menu.

Blogs are a good place to start. Blogs are web sites that are actively being updated and commented on and Google loves them. Find blogs about restaurants, restaurant reviews or your local area and then ma ke comments relevant to the subject . Make sure to mention your restaurant and give out your web address. Do not under any circumstances post something not pertaining to the subject. Such action may result in upset ting the administrator of the site not getting your comment posted . Blogs are a great way to get information out to the public but the subject matter of each blog must remain complimentary. It is probably easier to comment about regional subjects and add your info at the bottom. ie, give directions to an art fair and sign it Bill James - Bill's Restaurant - www.thegrubclub.com/a/bills-restaurant. Be helpful and people will wonder about your restaurant and possibly check it out. It also helps with the search engines to have a link to your restaurant. A good place to search for blogs is www.technorati.com..

Forums are similar to Blogs except they are specifically for online discussions about a general area of interest. Unlike blogs there is no hunting for a forum. Sometime, it can take some work to find a forum about your subject. Since you are a restaurant you can start with http://www.foodservicei.com/forums/. People coming to this forum will be those in the industry but not patrons ; however, the participants don't really matter because you are actually working at getting links to your web site. I f you can find a forum about your city, area or region, you will be able to comment about events or issues and you might also get direct interest in your restaurant. Either way you win. You will need to register with most forums to make comments but they usually want minimal information about you. The biggest challenge to forums is finding them. Most restaurant forums are really just a place to post reviews. Technically, they are not really forums - they are travel guides.

For more information on marketing your restaurant online go to: Top Search Engine Listings There you can find the secret to getting top listings with Google, Yahoo and other important travel web sites. We look forward to your interest in theGrubClub.com. For more information on thegrubclub.com, please see the About Us page.

We Trade Network Teams Up with TheGrubClub.com to help Food Service Businesses

2006-09-19T16:04:00.000-08:00

We Trade Network liked the Missoula Chamber of Commerce alliance so well that they decided to join also. Now We Trade Network members will also get high lighted listing stating that they are We Trade members and a link on the We Trade Network web site pointing to their menus.

Catch the wave - Have your Chamber of Commerce, trade organization or restaurant related group join also. [ Contact Info ]

Missoula Chamber of Commerce Teams Up with TheGrubClub.com to help Food Service Businesses

2006-08-29T14:29:00.000-08:00

The Missoula Chamber and The Grub Club.com are happy to announce an alliance to help restaurants and caterers promote their businesses online. When a member business posts their menu at TheGrubClub.com a link will be added to the Chamber's website pointing to that menu. TheGrubClub.com will also add a highlight to the restaurant's listing noting that they are a chamber member. This new program should help the food service industry and ultimately benefit most businesses in the Missoula area.

Restaurant benefits:
- Their Menu posted at TheGrubClub.com for free
- A link from the chamber site to their menu on TheGrubClub.com
- An enhanced listing on TheGrubClub.com showing that they are a chamber member
- More customers
- Better service for existing customers

The Chamber benefits:
- Improved value for their web site
- Overall improvement for business in the Missoula area
- Another way to entice restaurants to join the chamber

TheGrubClub benefits:
- The credibility of the chamber promoting their web site
- More menus

This is a total win, win for the Missoula Chamber, Chamber Members and TheGrubClub.com

To get you menu on TheGrubClub.com:
Post it yourself
Email to: menus at thegrubclub dot com (Formated to prevent spamming)
Fax to: Area Code (Seven Zero Three) 783 - Five Five Five 2 (Formated to stop unsolicited faxes)
Mail menus to: TheGrubClub.com, PO Box 3285, Missoula, MT 59806

If you are a member of your local chamber of commerce please let them know that this arrangement is available to them also.

Missoula Area Chamber of Commerce

The Most Recent Menus Added

2006-08-22T20:16:00.000-08:00

Support for Most Countries

2006-02-27T18:20:00.000-09:00

Most countries can now post their menus. Currently there are menus from USA, Canada, Austrailia and the UK. Restaurants from other countries go ahead and add your menus. We would really appreciate it.

Please remember that the advertising income from this site goes to MJ to cover her expenses due to her medical conditions.

For more info about MJ: [ MJ Info ]

TheGrubClub.com

The Grub Club

2006-01-30T07:09:00.000-09:00

Improved Menus so that search engines like them.

The Grub Club adds printable menus

2005-09-23T16:19:00.000-08:00

Create an online menu and then create a pdf file that can be printed out.

The Grub Club is Launched

2003-05-27T21:33:00.000-08:00

The first version was very crude but it worked.