As a restaurant owner, you want your business to branch out as fast as possible! Thanks to these services, thousands of restaurants and businesses have gained repeat customers and rapid success. If you’re not involved with one of these websites for your business, you haven’t even seen the possibilities of what is yet to come. Investing in one of these affordable or completely free online tools is a great start to becoming a successful and well known restaurant!

1. Seamless

Customers can uniquely search for a specific food craving. You can also make exclusive offers on their website to draw more attention to your restaurant. Having published over 40,000 menus completely free of charge, Seamless is a trusted website only asking for 12-18% of each transaction made through their website. When someone orders from your restaurant, their recent order will be saved in their history. If they enjoyed your food, chances are you’ll have a repeat customer.

2. Delivery.com

Charging a low 7-12% per transaction, this might be the tool for your business to grow. They even donate 25% of their commissions to charity! Customers get reward points each time they order, giving them good incentive to use this tool again and order from your restaurant repeatedly. With your own delivery driver,  this will definitely draw attention to your business and it’s absolutely free to be listed on their website.

3. Yelp!

Yelp puts together customer’s food photos and reviews, so people looking to order something can see how your food looks and how everyone else like it. Half of all 18-34 year olds look at restaurant reviews to decide on where they will order from. Start building reviews on yelp and grow your business with new and repeat customers. Making a business account is free of charge, and they will publish a link to your restaurant’s website as well.

4. Locu – Get Found Online

Design your menu, easily update daily specials, price changes and anything you need to add whenever you want! This website is a one stop shop, anything you edit using this platform will also be updated in your social media account, restaurant website and mobile app. The website publishes your restaurant’s information on websites like Google, Yelp and FourSquare. Always a low monthly fee, prices varying on your needs.

5. Must Have Menus

Does your menu change often? This website offers over 3,000 menu templates. Build your menu, update it when you want! Pricing plans start at only $15/month.

What tools & strategies are you using to grow your business online?

Where have you found the most success?

Leave your questions & comments in the box below.

Imperial Advance is sponsoring it’s first ever Warrior Dash for St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital on Saturday May 21^st 2016.

Imperial Advance is providing the opportunity to sponsor our employees in our first ever Warrior Dash for charity. The Imperial Advance team is open to anyone that wishes to help raise money for St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital through competing in the Warrior Dash to be held in New York City.

Use the buttons below to donate directly to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital on behalf of the Imperial Advance Warrior team or to get the details for the 2016 NYC Warrior Dash.

 

Donate/Join the Imperial TeamWarrior Dash NYC 2016 Details

 

When you are a small business owner, time is the last thing you have to spare. To set yourself up for success, focus on staying organized and maximizing your productivity. Lots of apps promise to turn you into a commerce powered superhero, but navigating your app store can be a bit like trekking through the jungle. Here are our 5 favorite apps that every business owner can take advantage of.

(Click on the app names to get more info, signup, or download the apps listed here)

1. SLACK

We are putting our best foot forward with this app, as it’s the best one of this list. Slack is ‘team communication for the 21^st century’. Integrate all the tools you use online to get all your notifications, have access to all your files, emails, and share access with your employees & teammates across all your devices in one place. Did we mention you can search all your content (even within documents) and your chat logs? This app will elevate your management to a new level of organization, and empower your team to collaborate more fluidly. Their free subscription will suffice for smaller teams, but they do offer paid memberships to support large teams.

2. GOOGLE APPS/DRIVE

Google apps offers one of the best alternatives to the Microsoft Office product suite. A free membership gives you 15GB of storage which you can upgrade for a small fee. If you haven’t already checked this suite of apps out, all you need to get started is a free google account.

3. TIMETUNE (Android) / SCHEDULE PLANNER (iOS)

With a bit of planning, these apps will help leverage the most productivity out of every hour of your work day. They go beyond a traditional calendar app by helping you plan your week, then making sure you are on track to hit all of your appointments and complete all of your tasks. You don’t have to be missing meetings to want to manage your time more efficiently.

4. TRELLO

Trello’s website describes this app as ‘the free, flexible, and visual way to organize anything with anyone’. Trello has the unique ability to adapt to any team or project’s workflow by visually representing todo items in lists. If you’re a fan of organization by post-it you should check out a free account.

5. EVERNOTE

Evernote is a virtual workspace that allows you to write, collect, collaborate and share with others. Access your account from any device to pull up your notes and content, make edits and share your ideas. Evernote is one of the most widely recommended productivity app that you can get access to today for free.

What apps are you using to boost productivity and stay organized?

Leave your answers, questions & comments in the box below.