Clever Restaurant Marketing Tactic with Food

Does food taste better when it’s cute?

I dined at a Michelin-recommended restaurant where my party was tempted by the desserts shaped like fruits and animals. For example, pastry shaped like a purse, custard buns that looked like apricots, and tarot buns that looked like Minions.

We chose the duck-shaped, mango-flavored milk gelatin. It had the texture of thick ice cream and pudding. Or maybe I shouldn’t say “it,” like how we refer to food, but more like “it” the way we refer to cute puppies or kittens. The words “mango-flavored milk gelatin” doesn’t sound appealing, but when you look at the photo, and when you see your table neighbors ordering cute ducks sitting innocently on a plate, you need to order one.

My Pokemon expert friend said the duck was Psyduck, so he said we had to try it. He’s spent many years capturing Pokemon on his phone. Here, he had just found another Pokemon.

From a business perspective, I admire this clever restaurant marketing tactic. Make your food cute, and the orders will come. Make your food into the likeness of creatures your customers love, and the orders will come.

Was the dessert delicious? Yes. Would you order food that looks like cute animals?

6 Tips for Travel Team Get-Togethers If You Work Remotely, Part 2

If you’re an extrovert and love to travel, a week-long, expenses-paid business trip to a resort town is paradise. If you’re an introvert, “team bonding” and “hanging out all day with your coworkers” sounds intimidating. 

There’s a reason you love remote work. You’re in the safety of your own world and most communication takes place via DMs through your fingertips. Going from rarely seeing your coworkers to seeing them all day?😲Let’s not think about it.

But here we are, at our annual remote team, in-person get together. As you prepare for your first company meeting, consider these tips if you’re with your coworkers in person for the first time. If you’ve read part 1, continue with part 2.

Tip 4 Start a routine if your days are not routine

The daily routine of remote workers, especially those who work from home, is a little different from those who work on-site at an office. If you work in person, you’re accustomed to following a routine before you leave home, when you’re at the office, and before you leave the office.

If you work from home, it’s not a big deal if you don’t have time to pack your lunch. You can scrounge around to see what you can find in your kitchen. If you feel too hot or cold, you can take a few steps to get to your bedroom and do a quick outfit change. 

When you’re working for a week in person, you need a whole new routine. You may need to bring your laptop because you can’t leave it at your home office. You have to remember to bring any critical medications because they won’t be just a few steps away.

Before you go on your trip, take notes about what you’ll need to bring. Once you’re at the hotel, write notes or set reminders on your phone to remember what you need to do or what you need to bring to your first meeting. These tiny points will help your day to run more smoothly during your work week away from home.

Tip 5 Prepare to challenge yourself

Challenge yourself. Always. This is a powerful goal, whether you work in person or remotely. You’ll have many opportunities to challenge yourself, whether it is to have long conversations, try treetop excursions, sample new food, go on a scavenger hunt, or make a presentation in front of a group. 

Extroverts love to meet new people, so hanging out with your teammates from breakfast to bedtime is fun. You have an abundance of opportunities to get to know your coworkers.

For introverts, being with your teammates for several days can be exhausting. You’re socializing with almost complete strangers, making small talk, or diving deep into topics such as family. You’ll need to be your extroverted self. 

No matter how social you are, there is something new to try. It’s a chance to work and have fun at an all-expenses paid vacation. 

Tip 6 Nurture those connections

Now that you’ve had the chance to connect with your teammates in person, keep the connections going. Follow up on conversations you had during your get-together. Ask your coworker if they checked out that TV show you recommended.

Depending on how much you enjoyed socializing with your coworkers, you might find it lonely to return to working on your own. Or you might enjoy returning to working on your own again. It’s a bit of an adjustment for remote workers to go from working alone, to being surrounded by your coworkers all day, and returning to solitary work again.

On the bright side, you’ll have made new connections or deepened relationships with coworkers you work with regularly. Your family and friends will also be excited to hear about your working vacation!

Key Takeaways

Spending several days with your coworkers can be a fun experience. It’s a chance to meet them in person and leave the house to go to work. If you’re an introvert, seeing your coworkers all day could be overwhelming, but following some tips can turn this trip into a memorable working vacation. 

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6 Tips for Travel Team Get-Togethers If You Work Remotely, Part 1

If you’re an extrovert and love to travel, a week-long, expenses-paid business trip to a resort town is paradise. If you’re an introvert, “team bonding” and “hanging out all day with your coworkers” sounds like an intimidating situation. 

There’s a reason you love remote work. You’re in the safety of your own world and most communication takes place via DMs through your fingertips. Going from rarely seeing your coworkers to seeing them all day?😲Let’s not think about it.

As you prepare for your first company get-together, consider these tips if you’re meeting your remote coworkers in person for the first time.

Tip 1: Preparing for a new routine

Onsite workers are accustomed to preparing to leave the house daily to get to their job. Monday to Friday, you prepare your outfit, pack your lunch, and prepare what you need for work. If you work from home, you won’t be accustomed to this. You don’t need to decide on an outfit or pack your lunch. You can conveniently roll out of bed and start work wearing your house clothes!

So before you venture off to a week-long work trip, think about all the things you use as part of a daily routine and make a list of what to pack. It’s your chance to dress up for work, so you may want to dust off some of your fancier clothes. Of course, check they still fit you and they don’t look out of style.

Also, pack the usual things you’ll need for your trip, such as sunscreen if you’re going somewhere warm, pack your toothbrush, and research some customs for where you’re going, such as tipping at your hotel.

Tip 2 Getting to know who you’ll meet

Introverts enjoy remote work for a reason. It can be overwhelming to go from virtually meets on a screen to seeing people in person. You’ll discover that people seem different in person. They may be taller or shorter than you expected. They won’t disappear after you press the exit button on your screen. You may be seeing them all day, for many days.

You want to avoid awkward situations, such as facing a teammate and not knowing who that person is. If possible, search through your company’s website, LinkedIn profiles, and Slack profile pictures to learn names and memorize faces. Learn what you can about their role at your company. These lifesaving bits of information are important for Tip 3, when you need icebreakers to start a conversation.

Tip 3 Prepare for unexpected social opportunities

A company get-together is less awkward if you’ve been working at an office. You now have a chance to have a longer conversation with the coworker you usually pass in the hall. You’ll less likely to have an awkward moment, such as meeting a coworker for the first time while you’re dressed in your pajamas. Yes, this situation can happen.

If your coworker’s flight arrives late and you’re already getting ready to retire for the night and you’re sharing a two-bedroom suite. Half asleep, your hair a mess, you introduce yourself to that teammate from another department you never had a reason to DM or speak to until now. 

Extroverts can converse anywhere with anyone. Introverts who work remotely will have a harder time starting a conversation with coworkers they haven’t meet, or haven’t spoken to too often. Standing in front of you is a live person and you need to reply immediately. You can’t Slack your reply in the chat later when you’ve figured out what you want to say.

Here’s the secret: let the extroverts talk first and carry the conversation. Have a few conversation starters on hand in case you need them, such as “Have you visited (the place you’re at) before?” or “How was your flight in?” or “What are you thinking of ordering for dinner?”

Key Takeaways for Part 1

Spending several days with your coworkers can be a fun experience if you’re prepared. It’s a chance to meet them in person and leave the house for work. If you’re an introvert, seeing your coworkers all day could be overwhelming, but following some tips can turn this trip into a fun working vacation. For more tips, return for Part 2.

Common Myths About Learning the English Language

How many languages do you speak? At a recent company get-together, we discovered that our team speaks 35 languages and not all of us are native English speakers. 

This informal dinner table poll about languages made me wonder how difficult it is to learn a language. I then searched the internet for common myths about learning the English language and made a list. Although this list is about English, the list seems to apply to learning any language.

Some key myths:

  • Native speakers can teach you better than non-native speakers
  • To be fluent, you can’t make mistakes
  • Learning English is boring
  • You don’t have enough time to learn the language
  • You need to visit or live in an English-speaking country to become fluent
  • You can’t afford lessons
  • You’ll never get the accent right
  • You are too old to learn English
  • You cannot speak English well without a large vocabulary
  • Technology makes it pointless to start learning a second language (you can use an app)

What do you think about these myths? Do you learn a new language better from a native speaker? Do you need to visit the country where the language is spoken to learn to speak it well?

In my experience, if you want to learn a new language, just start, no matter your age. Attend free classes, watch YouTube videos, or subscribe to language-learning apps. And regardless of technology, such as Google Translate, nothing is better than learning the language yourself to ensure the point you want to make is being said.

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How Perception Changes Opinions About You

It’s hard to predict what’s going on when you see people behaving the way they are. It’s easier to jump to conclusions but open-mindedness reduces what could be incorrect conclusions. I learned this valuable lesson one day when I was at work.

People Assume You Are Who You Appear To Be

I was the event coordinator, so I saw how an event is organized behind the scenes. There were a lot of moving parts, so the day before, I was running around and meeting with people responsible for all the pieces, from food catering, to presentation rooms, to signage, and so on. 

A day passed in an hour, so I forgot about a meeting with coworkers to help assemble some prizes. As they stuffed envelopes, I stared into space, thinking about how many more tasks I had to do and desperately wanting to keel over and sleep. 

The next day I received a complaint that I had taken advantage of my status as coordinator to make coworkers do my job while I sat around and watched them. My supervisor told me an important lesson about perception. My coworkers didn’t know about my hectic day and how I was in zombie mode when they showed up to help. I should have said I had another errand and left the room. The point is, I should have looked busy.

Similarly, I read about a social media manager who used her phone to post and monitor comments on the company’s social media feed. She was accused of being lazy and using her phone on company time. As a solution for transparency, someone suggested getting two phones, each with distinct phone covers so it was easy to see at a glance whether she was on her personal phone or company phone doing company work.

Key Takeaways

It’s easy to jump to conclusions about people when you don’t know the whole story. We’re all busy and we don’t have time to stop and think about what we’re observing. 

As observers, it helps to have an open mind and ask ourselves if we really are seeing the whole picture. As the person being observed, especially at work, we should be aware of how our actions can be misinterpreted or misunderstood. It’s all about how we perceive others and how we want others to perceive us.

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