TAKEAWAY: Customers like it, and so does the paper company sponsoring it: reading headlines and news summaries as you get your restaurant check in the nation’s capital.
Who says news in print is a dying species?
Not in Washington, anyway. And, definitely not at the Old Ebbitt Grill and Hamilton restaurants, where a test running Associated Press’ headlines on the customers’ printed receipts has proved to be the best after dinner reward.
This is the type of idea that, if proposed to anyone at the end of 2013, would be immediately rejected.
Who would want to read headlines on a restaurant bill when you have your own iPhone in your pocket to update you constantly?
But a paper company, Domtar Paper Co., wanted to prove a point, and, heck, the test has been so successful they are extending to all the Clyde’s Restaurant Group locations.
“The news updates have made it onto our menus,” said David Moran, the Managing Director of the Ebbitt and the Hamilton. “They’ve become part of our DNA.”
The Old Ebbitt’s general manager Christian Guidi explains that the restaurant is located just a block away from the White House in a city where “you get a lot of people that are news-hungry” and want or need to know the latest news updates. While phones are permitted in the restaurant, he said, not everyone necessarily wants to hit up their Blackberries for news at the table.
For the always-connected audience, no moment should ever be lost without getting news and information, even when you are not necessarily and digitally connected.
These diners seem to be saying “Forget the after dinner mint, give us the after dinner news”.
And for those who want to go digital during (or after) dinner….
You have your choice to read the entire menu and wine list, or go online, in this tablet at SideBerns Restaurant in Tampa
Just this week, while enjoying dinner at Tampa’s SideBerns Restaurant, the friendly waiter offered me the menu, the wine list and a Kindle tablet, with the comment:
In case you want to keep up with the news.
Are we a society where being disconnected or away from the constant flow of news is, well, just not the thing to do?
That is me testing the concept, accessing CNN.com there on the screen. Of course, the entire restaurant menu and wine list are there too, along with invitations to access newspapers/magazines and even music/videos.
I still like to keep dinner at a nice restaurant as disconnect time, however.
More about tablets at SideBerns Restaurant
http://www.bizjournals.com/tampabay/topic/tablets/
Of interest today:
Personal brands: The journalist’s role in selling newspapers (and ads)
http://www.themediabriefing.com/article/personal-brands-the-journalist-s-role-in-selling-newspapers
Here is a piece that relates to one of our recent blog posts about the use of journalists’ brands to promote publications.
This was our blog post:
When reporters become brand
http://www.garciamedia.com/blog/articles/pwhen_reporters_become_brand_p