My menu ranged from an 8" sub for $4.99 to a 14 oz Strip Sirloin for $18.99. I had something to satisfy every one's taste and wallet.

These 10 steps may not work for everyone; however, if you own a small mom and pop pizzeria, café, deli, etc, these are great ideas to bring in the bodies and boost sales.

1. Make your menu affordable to everyone. Don't leave anybody out

   Lunch time is usually a time for customers to get in and out. You'll always want specials on the board that are quick and easy; and cheap. You need to produce efficiently to get the customers in and out as quickly as possible.
   Dinner time is a more relaxed experience for customers. They will take their time when choosing menu options and they will look at a wider range of choices. It is always a great idea to offer options that range anywhere from $7.99 for a Spaghetti &Meatballs to a Heavy NY Strip for $18.99. You are, therefore, opening the menu to different customers and wallet sizes.

2. Advertisement on a Local Radio Station

   If you can find a local radio station, usually it ends up being an AM station to advertise for you, it will significantly boost your sales. I did this with an AM station every Monday morning. The disc jockey would ask me questions about specials, my background, location, menu items, do we serve alcohol, etc. I was allotted a time slot for every week. I would often mention specials for the listeners and as soon as I hung up the phone, my phone lines would blow up before I was even open for business. The cost to me was around $170.00 a month. That's a fraction of funds compared to advertisements in local newspapers or magazines. I had drones of people coming in to meet me that heard me on the radio.

3. Lucky Rock Bags

   This was about the most powerful forms of advertisement for me. Take a box of sandwich bags, put a river rock in the bag to weigh it down, and include your menu, a coupon, upcoming specials, and locations. You throw these out on people driveways. The typical reaction when people call is that they received a bag in their driveway and this was the first time they were trying the restaurant or heard of you. Unfortunately, you will have a choice few that will be upset that the bag that actually landed in their driveway was purposively thrown in a bush or on their perfectly manicured lawn. I usually shrug these people off since they have never worked a day in their life in a restaurant. After all, we have free speech and this is a way for you to get your name out. That's all I tell them.

4. Participate in Food Competitions to increase customer base

   I have participated in these for a couple of years now and the feedback you get is incredible. There are hundreds of people that are walking around trying local fare. You can meet and greet the locals, tell them about yourself, and hand out menus. It's also a great way for potential customers to sample your items before they visit your location.

5. Write a blog to gain customers

   There are so many resources available on the web for you to write about your restaurant. Most of the time these websites are free and they will get the word out about specials you're running, location, menu items, and other pertinent information about your particular restaurant. Some of the best websites for blogging on restaurants is chowhound, cooks, and pizza.com.

6. Have a Newspaper write an Article

   I had one of the most popular newspapers from the area do an article about the restaurant in January 2007. They interviewed some of my best customers from my base and asked them to put their two cents in. They took a picture of me cooking in my chef jacket. The article was a lovely rendition of my life as a chef, my background, and my favorite items to cook. Trust me, it worked. I was still busy 6 months after the article came out. This was due to the fact that I retained a new customer base and customers were traveling for 2 hours to get to my restaurant.

7. Make a club and Email List

   I formed a pizza of the month club. I would provide the customers with an XLarge specialty pizza, 6 garlic rolls, 2 desserts, 2 salads, and one appetizer for $39.95 twice a month. It's your club, so you can do what you want to. Be creative. You can create an email list within this club to let your customer base know the monthly specialty pizza or upcoming events.

8. Wine Tastings

   Depending on your clientele, this is an extremely lucrative way to have other streams of income coming in. This is, of course, is dependent on if you have a Beer and Wine License. You can combine your food with the type of wine the wine guy has brought for tasting. This does take some more extensive planning but, on many occasions, I have taken in $75.00 a head for a night of food and spirits.

9. Cooking Classes

   Provide classes to your customers each week about a particular aspect of cooking, a technique, a type of cuisine, etc. This can be worked around your restaurant hours. This is a great way to develop relationships with your customers.

10. Catering

    This is a lot work and often times you need a lot of employees to help. You need a form of transportation that will safely transport the food without diminishing the quality. This requires planning and knowledge. Knowing the portions sizes for a certain amount of people; remembering every item to take with you for service. I have worked with one of the top Catering Executive in the Country. I have extensive experience in this field of expertise.

 

 

The thing you need to realize if you are thinking about going into the radio industry is that the industry as a whole is slowly dying. As more and more people replace their radios with MP3 players, radio stations will continue to reach fewer and fewer listeners. Some stations will, of course, remain to service people who prefer listening to the radio, but radio stations across the country will, for the most part, have fewer and fewer listeners every year.

Fewer listeners mean fewer advertising dollars for the radio station. When the station's bottom line becomes effected, it may have to cut jobs. Therefore, you may find yourself without a job if you start out in radio. At the same time, salespeople will find it increasingly harder to sell advertising. As ratings drop, fewer businesses will be willing to invest their money in buying radio advertising. Since many sales people receive no salary other than a commission on what they sell, they may find their income drop over time.

Some radio stations are finding new ways of earning additional revenue to help make up for the negative trends in the industry by embracing new technology. The internet, for example, has proved invaluable to many radio stations. Many stations have websites, for which they can sell advertising and/or use ad programs like Google Adsense

Because traffic to their website means additional revenue, they can use their station to promote their website. By making the website a useful supplement to the terrestrial radio station by offering services like online streaming, their website can become a profitable source of revenue.

Automation is also making some jobs at radio stations obsolete. For example, radio stations no longer need to pay a weekend DJ because they can simply prerecord some vocal tracks to throw in a playlist and put on a computer. Thus, if your job is something that a computer could conceivably do, you may find yourself replaced on day.

Of course, radio stations will continue broadcasting for a long time and they will continue employing people. While some small, local stations will be hit hard by the industry's trends, the really good ones may find themselves doing better without all of the extra competition. Talk radio stations in particular are among those who will continue to do well for many years to come. Since they often offer local programming that you cannot get anywhere else, more people are staying loyal to talk radio stations than are the music stations. This trend is likely to continue for some time.

Phone Numbers

Generally speaking, it is best not to include phone numbers in your commercials. That seems counterintuitive, but it is true. Phone numbers take up lots of time that you could use to talk about your products or services and few people will be able to remember them or write them down before the commercial is over. Much of your radio audience at any given time will be in the cars and they will not be able to write down a phone number. If you insist on having a phone number, make sure it is repeated at least twice. Otherwise, you are just wasting time.

Business Name

Obviously, you want to mention the name of your business, but you do not just want to mention it once, you should mention it at least three times. That sounds like a lot, but it is quite easy to do. Say it in the first sentence and in the second sentence and at the end of the commercial. Your audience needs to have no doubt about who the commercial was for by the time it finishes.

Location

Do you want people to come to your office or business? Then you have to tell them where you are! Furthermore, you have to tell them at least twice, preferably three times. People generally remember locations better than they do phone numbers because they can associate a location with their knowledge of the city. Do not just give the audience your street address, however. That is OK, but it is better to relate it to something else. For example, if your business is located at the intersection of two major streets, saw that in your commercial. Your listeners will be far more likely to remember an important intersection than they would the numbers of a street address. Do not be afraid to relate your location to another business. If their is a popular store that is not a direct competitor across the street from you, mention it. There is no harm in it.

Memorable

You have to make your commercials memorable if you want the audience to remember them. That does not mean, however, that they necessarily have to be funny. Humor often works very well, but there are other ways of making a commercial memorable. The easiest way is to use the same song for all of your commercials. When you begin an advertising campaign pick a song you would like as an intro to all of your commercials and then stick to it. Even when you change your commercial, keep the song or jingle from the original. Loyal listeners will remember the song and will instantly associate it with your business, even before you say anything.

If you can manage to remember these few simply guidelines, you should see a dramatic increase in the effectiveness of your advertising. Perhaps your lackluster success with radio in the past is the result of failure in one of these areas. If you suspect that it the case, try a new radio campaign. You literally have nothing to lose since advertising costs are tax deductible.

First of there's the corporate side of this merger deal, this could possibly make Sirius and XM stock very valuable as large shareholders could sell stock to the open market for a large profit, but it could tern around and blow up in your face leaving u with a severe lose of capitol. There is a chance that the FCC could find this merger deal to be a violation of anti-trust laws and nullify there merger killing it dead in its tracks, there forth making the stock go on a death drop strait downward until it eventually brakes even.

Benefits for the average consumer, benefits for the average consumer-subscriber include the following. Both companies have the exclusive rights to certain sports coverage and big name celebrity talk show hosts the proposed merger would bring all of there exclusive content onto one receiver for the subscribers. Product development would increase resulting in the development of cheaper, more durable receivers, with better built in abilities and better reception quality.

Consumer awareness groups have pointed out one major technical flaw if the merger was allowed to happen. Both companies' receivers are incompatible with each other meaning that if they merge u are going to have to buy a whole new receiver pack.

Radio Broadcasters announce station program information, like program schedules and station breaks for commercials, and they even present/close programs. Radio Broadcasters also read prepared scripts or ad lib commentary on the air, as they present news, sports, the weather, time, and commercials. That's not all, Radio Broadcasters do, another duty they have to carry out is to interview people and moderate discussions. Some provide play-by-plays to the audience during sports, and other occasions.

Radio Broadcasters have many different responsibilities. The most important in my mind is to be on time and show up. If you suddenly get sick, they have no one else that knows the script. Also if you're late, the show could have already started, and you can't postpone a show, people depend on you to report what you need to on time, just because you're late doesn't mean the whole world can be late.

The working conditions for Radio Broadcasters are really unusual. Most radio stations air 24 hours a day, so sometimes you could be working in the mornings while people are getting for work, or commuting, while others do night programs. Radio Broadcasters usually work in well lighted, air conditioned, soundproof studios. The working times might not be as varied as before mostly because of new technology, it's letting stations prerecord programs and show them over later, mostly for the night hours.

It's extremely hard to get a job in radio broadcasting, it's very competitive. You need formal training in broadcasting from college, a technical school, or a private broadcasting school is valuable. Most Announcers have bachelors degrees in a major such as communications, broadcasting, or journalism. Radio Broadcasters usually start out taping interviews and operating equipment. Radio Broadcasters also normally begin at a station in a small community and, if they are qualified, they may go to a better paying job in a larger city.

High school courses that Radio Broadcasters can take that they either need or will help them include: English, public speaking, drama, foreign languages, and computer science.

Salaries for Radio Broadcaster are widely varied, but they are generally low, except for announcers who work for large stations for networks. The salaries are also higher in commercial broadcasting, weather than public broadcasting. The average hourly wages of Radio Broadcasters in May 2004 were Ten Dollars and sixty-four cents. But the highest 10 percent of Radio Broadcasters were paid more than twenty-seven dollars and sixty-one cents.

The competition for the job will be intense given that there are more job seekers than actual jobs. The employment of Radio Broadcasters are projected to decline through 2014 because there isn't much growth in radio stations, and the consolidation of existing stations. But some job replacements will be needed to replace the existing broadcasters.

Some companies I would like to work for in the future would include ESPN Sports Radio 1620 The Zone. I would like to work their because I think it's a very care free environment and it's all about sports. Another company I would like to work for

would be Hot 107.7 because I'm really into hipitty hop and I really like to rap with the rappers. The last place that I am considering working at would be 103.7 aka Cat 103, this because I love country music, especially Brittney Spears.

I think Radio Broadcast would be a perfect career for me to pursue, mostly because I love talking to people, and I have a great voice.

Recommended links

U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Outlook Handbook [Online] Available. 1,2,3