Category Archives: Blogging news

Restaurant Marketing: how to improve business!

restaraunt-marketing-ideasAn American article guides restaurants with ‘25 Restaurant Marketing Ideas, Tips and Strategy to win in the food business’, most of which are applicable to South Africa too.  Local restaurants are not known to be good at marketing their food and service!  The list of ideas suggested is as follows:

1.  Photographs are THE way to market restaurants, via Instagram in particular, ‘high-quality, drool-inducing photos’ being the best way to promote a restaurant.  It is worth investing in an excellent food photographer.

2.   Loyalty Programs on online food apps attract attention and reward loyal custom.

3.  In the USA Yelp is vital, positive reviews being a massive marketing plus.  It has not been heard Continue reading →

Top UK wine journalist criticises wine writers for ‘ripping off wineries’ in charging for wine writing!

wine glassesJamie Goode is a well-known award-winning ‘wine journalist‘ and wine judge from the UK, writing his Wine Anorak blog for the past 14 years.  Uncharacteristically he has lashed out at ‘wine writers ripping off wineries’, describing this as a ‘disturbing trend‘!

Goode wrote on his Blog last week: ‘A rant. I don’t rant often, but I’m driven to do it today. As a wine writer, I’m alarmed by the recent trend for other wine writers to behave parasitically by charging wineries to reproduce reviews.  I’m Continue reading →

Bosman’s at Grande Roche: business is ‘booming’, don’t need patrons’ payment!

Bosman's Grand Roche View from terrace Whale CottageI don’t visit Paarl very often, usually disappointed with the restaurant offering of the town.  Last week I spent a day there, to visit Jan Willem & Seuns, and Melissa’s newish branch. I had given up on Bosman’s at Grande Roche, after repeated poor experiences in the restaurant. However, a chance meeting of Bosman’s new Restaurant Manager and its Sous Chef at Maison in Franschhoek a few days prior led me to return.

During the busy festive season days I took a break at The Kitchen at Maison in Franschhoek, and sat next to a table with a couple, which turned out to be Austrian Chef Christoph Terschan and Restaurant Manager Onwaba Maholwana of Bosman’s.  We chatted for ages, talking through the whole Eat Out Top 20 restaurant list, and our respective experiences with the restaurants.  Onwaba was well-informed about my previous Bosman’s disasters, and Continue reading →

WhaleTales Blog: a whale of an apology!

Host Gator logoDear Blog reader

This has been a very bad tech week for our website and Whale Tales Blog.  Following the crash of the website earlier this week, we were able to recover the data with the assistance of our webmaster Jan Laubscher at 406Media, and our American server Host Gator.

Just after I had reposted the 10 days worth of blogposts, which I had received via RSS feed emails, and luckily not deleted (fearing such a day to come, even though it has not previously happened in our 6 years of blogging!), all this work disappeared late yesterday afternoon.  I have not been able to receive feedback from 406Media as to how to secure our blogposts going forward, to prevent this from happening again.  Frustrating is that Host Gator does back ups automatically, but with a 48 hour lag, which means that all the reposting I did on Thursday and yesterday has been lost.

I will slowly repost again, and have added ‘reposted’ in the headlines of the blogposts I am posting again.   I apologise to our RSS Feed subscribers especially for seeing some of these posts for the third time, and beg your indulgence and understanding.

We sincerely hope that this will be the end of our technical hiccups.  Thank you for your loyal support of our Blog.

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com  Tel (021) 433-2100, Twitter:@WhaleCottage Facebook:  click here