5 Businesses that are Making the Best Out of Instagram

13 Jun, 2015 | Tags: , , , , , ,

You’ve seen Chick-fil-A’s mouth-watering pictures of perfectly lined up peaches announcing the return of their peach milkshake. Or Taco Bell’s delicious iced slushes that are sprinkled all around their Instagram feed that contains close to a thousand posts. And Burger King’s Instagram is sure to make you drop whatever you’re doing and head out for a burger right now.

Think your small business could never get thousands of followers?

Here are a few small businesses that are winning at Instagram.

1. @BeautifulBooze
The beautiful thing about Beautiful Booze, is that owner Natalie Migliarini, started her home cocktails as a hobby. Her hobby grew into a full out cocktail recipe and styling career because of her ability to show her passion through her work. One look at the @BeautifulBooze Instagram and you know Natalie is passionate about all things alcohol! Beautiful Booze shows off her craft cocktails by adding perfect backdrops and small props. Take one look at the @BeautifulBooze Instagram feed and we’re pretty sure you’ll be sampling some of her delicious cocktail recipes.

2. @Franktuary
In addition to the great wordplay in their business name, Franktuary is a hot dog restaurant and food truck located in downtown Pittsburg. They skillfully use their Instagram account to showcase their on the road food truck photos, as well as many perfectly plated meals from their restaurant. Franktuary makes sure show their followers all aspects of their small business; they leave nothing out. From the hand crafted cocktails, to the franks and fries, and the behind the scenes food truck photos, you’re sure to get a taste of their business from their Instagram.

3. @Bonpuf
Bon Puf is located in Los Angeles, and (as you may have guessed from their name) is an artisan cotton candy business. The @Bonpuf Instagram feed is as perfect as you might imagine. All their photos are filtered just right so everything feels pastel and light. While many of the photos are of cotton candy, they don’t leave out every opportunity to show off their work behind the scenes: cone wrapping, sugar flavoring, and cart locations. @Bonpuf Instagram has perfected keeping with their brand on Instagram.

4. @Plated
Don’t be tricked by their over 62k followers; Plated is a small business that was started in 2012 (just three years old!). The business took off because of the desire of many people wanting to cook great meals at home, but their social media suaveness definitely helped in their success. The @Plated Instagram feed is hundreds of beautiful photos of well-plated food. Their pictures show exactly what the customer would be able to eat by the work of their own hands with Plated. They are the perfect combination of artwork and enticing advertising.

5. @CounterCultureCoffee
It’s coffee, and how many pictures can you take of coffee, right? Wrong. Counter Culture defies everything you think you know about your coffee by way of their Instagram feed. Coffee throwdowns, climbing mountains with coffee farmers, iced coffee, pour over coffee, and the list goes on. Counter Culture does more than just take great pictures of coffee, they take an opportunity to enrich and educate their followers about their coffee business. @CounterCulture shows that their coffee is more than just a business; it’s an adventure!

It’s no secret that Instagram has taken over every smart phone in the world. When starting your small business Instagram, be sure to first think of your brand and how you want the world to see your business. Show off what you do best by sharing photos of your products (before and finished!). Share your newest achievements, biggest events, and location upgrades. Whatever you do, be sure to share what’s fun about your small business!

The 5 Best Ways to Optimize Your Company’s Finances

08 Jun, 2015 | Tags: , , , ,

Optimizing your company’s finances is an important part of staying in business for the long term. This process is something business owners learn to do more efficiently over time. As they become better at handling large sums of money, a business owner will recognize the value of staying on top of their company’s finances and carefully scrutinizing the general flow of cash in and out of their business. Here are the five best methods for optimizing a company’s finances.

Knowing the Essential Operating Costs

To ensure that your company’s finances are operating at peak efficiency, it first requires that you have a solid grasp on your company’s essential operating costs. This means that, if push comes to shove, you want to determine the minimal amount of money required each quarter, month, week and day to keep your company up and running. After calculating items like rent, lights, payroll, and other factors your company will not be able to avoid paying out, this establishes a target amount that you will use to make sure your company is going to be able to handle its essential budgeting requirements. If your company is failing to bring in enough money to handle its weekly requirements, despite meeting its quarterly requirements, then adjustments to your operating costs may need to be introduced to ensure a more consistent financial outcome.

The Future Projections

It is not enough to ensure that your company will be alive and kicking at the end of the first quarter of operations. Your funding sources should be scrutinized in order to develop a financial plan to ensure that your company will be prepared to hold out for the next five years. Having a financial projection that meets this duration requirement, where you know how you are paying off all your operating costs well into the future, is important to getting your company over a critical financial hump. The reason this is critical is because most start-up companies never develop a proven financial strategy to meet such long term financial projections.

Cutting Wasteful Spending

If you notice that your company is spending money in areas that do not prove to generate considerable profit, then such spending will typically turn into nothing more than long term waste. It is your job, as controller of your company’s finances to spot and eliminate these wasteful spending habits. Every dollar wasted in unprofitable spending efforts literally translates to a financial loss.

Stop Mixing Personal and Business Finances Together

One of the temptations that business owners tend to have is that they use their company finances to carry out personal transactions. This generally tends to make for a growing financial mess and should be avoided at all costs. For example, if you are ordering checks, do not put your custom designer personal checks in as an item you pay for with company money. Once you figure out where to buy checks online, be sure to purchase them with your own money instead.

Use a Financial Consultant

Sometimes the trick to ensuring the best path to optimizing your company’s finances involves utilizing the services of a competent financial adviser. It may be the case that your particular niche industry produces special or even abnormal financial challenges. Using a consultant that has experience navigating through such niche specific challenges will be key to ensuring the best possible outcome for your company’s continued financial success.

Conclusion

The key to optimizing your company’s finances is more about getting down to basics than attempting to over-complicate matters. The more complicated your company’s financial situation gets, the more room there is for inefficiency to creep into the works. The straighter forward your company finances happen to be, the easier it is to spot any perceived financial problems and wasteful spending. This will make managing your company’s financial course far easier and profitable over the long term.

3 Books Every Restaurant (and Small Business) Owner Should Read

08 Jun, 2015 | Tags: , , , , , ,

Many of us are looking for successful individuals who have triumphed over failure and risen to success, and then written guidebooks to their success. Learning is a valuable skill business owners and entrepreneurs require to continue moving forward and up. The following are 3 books that have proven to be great reads for business owners.

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t 

By Jim Collins:

Jim Collins wrote “Good To Great” in 2001, and in the year 2015 it is still a very well known book among business and restaurant owners, as well as many other individuals in leadership positions. Collins wrote his book by way of many years of research. His book was written in hopes of helping leaders understand why their business grows and then stops, or for businesses that can’t seem to get off the ground. Many leaders talk about how this book changed the way they did business completely. Collins really pushes the reader to change the way they think business should work, and guides you into a new realm of business thinking.

The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5 

By Timothy Ferriss:

Ferriss’s book, “The 4-Hour Workweek”, teaches the reader step-by-step how he went from making $40k per year working 80 hours a week to making $40k per month working 4 hours a week. The 4-Hour Workweek was on the number one seller list for 7 consecutive years. Many business owners love the book because of its many tangible daily goals that can be implemented immediately. You can also check out the blog (www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/) that Ferriss began two months before the release of this book, and to this day continues to frequently update.

Setting The Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business

By Danny Meyer:

Danny Meyer is CEO of the famous restaurant group, Union Square Hospitality, in New York. Meyer has been highly successful in opening several well-known restaurants in New York City, but his success has not come without some failures. In his book, “Setting The Table”, Meyer explains those failures as well as how he bounced back and what he learned during those times of failure. The approach Danny takes in writing his book is very personal and relatable for the reader. His focus in the book is his recognition of the power of hospitality as it relates to customer satisfaction. “Setting the Table” is a powerful book for any leader, but specifically business owners whose business relies on hospitality. 

Which other books have you found helpful in your time as a business owner? Share how those books changed the way you did every day business or changed your daily goals as an owner.