An authoritative work that should be immensely useful to new and experienced restaurateurs.
A comprehensive guide to marketing by a 25-year restaurant-business veteran.
Iskenderian, the co-owner and marketing director for the California-based Mediterranean restaurant chain Zankou Chicken, debuts with a manual specifically designed for fellow restaurant owners. The author points out that there are more than a million restaurants in the United States and asserts that 40 to 60 percent will fail within three years of opening. This handy guidebook, though, might help improve these odds, as it’s a nicely honed combination of case study, general marketing advice, and interviews with industry professionals. Iskenderian begins with an engaging overview of Zankou Chicken, a family business that got its start more than 50 years ago in Lebanon. The story of the transition of the business to southern California after 20 years and its growth to eight locations in the state is an engaging tale in and of itself, but it’s the family’s awareness of its brand attributes and how to apply them to an American audience that stands out: “The most important ingredient to get right in order to have a successful restaurant,” writes Iskenderian, “is exceptional food quality.” The book’s second part offers a menu of business and marketing strategies, techniques, and tips geared toward the small restaurant owner. It encompasses such key topics as business plans, branding, websites, restaurant reviews, customer relationships, and advertising. The third section delves further into restaurant management and marketing, with chapters covering everything from employee morale to menu creation to negotiating leases. Throughout the book, Iskenderian includes relevant lists, such as “The 8 Traits of a Strong Brand,” “52 Ways to Increase Restaurant Sales,” and “10 Ways to Throw a Great Grand Opening.” The last section is comprised of interviews, conducted by the author, with other professionals, such as John Healy, general manager of the restaurant Morgan’s in the Desert in Palm Springs, California; it’s an informative potpourri that ranges across various topics. Iskenderian’s writing is always cogent and informative, and he shares insights that only an experienced restaurant owner could have.
An authoritative work that should be immensely useful to new and experienced restaurateurs.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 481
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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