by Heather T. | Feb 4, 2019 | Blog
At a recent innkeeping conference I did a session for innkeepers on protecting themselves and their businesses in terms of computer related things, both online and offline.
Several people asked me if I could share the checklist I had made up and I thought it might make a helpful blog post.
Online Security Checklist Immediate Action: (estimated time to review all-under 2 hours)
- Switch Browser to Google Chrome, Safari or Firefox if using Internet Explorer. (1 minute to find, 10 minutes or less to install).
- Login to all social media accounts and enable two factor authentications. (10 minutes or less).
- Review Important Passwords, change if simple or using things commonly known or easily guessed. (10 minutes or less).
- Who is your domain name through? Do you have access? When does it expire? Is the credit card up to date? (10 minutes or less).
- Who hosts your website? Is there emergency contact information for it? Is there a website backup, where is it stored and how can it be restored? (10 minutes or less).
- Do you have an antivirus program? Is it up to date? (10 minutes or less).
- Do you have a malware program? Is it up to date? (10 minutes or less).
- Enable program(s) or check to see last time updated, file backups (10 minutes or less).
- Check router to see if it needs to be updated/patched, call your cable company if in doubt (10 minutes or less).
- Purchase a safe (ETL Verified fire at least 2 hour rated) and other external digital backups (external hard drive and thumb/zip drives) keep offsite with a copy in the safe.
- Review and initiate all weekly and monthly To-Dos .
Weekly Security To-Dos: (Under 10 minutes)
- Check to make sure antivirus and malware programs are running and up to date.
- Make sure computer/tablet/mobile phone operating systems are up to date and patched.
- Check to make sure files are being backed-up.
Monthly Security To-Dos: (Under 20 minutes)
- Check/Review Installed Browser Plugins (Called Extensions in Safari), disable and delete any you are not 100% sure of. You can always reinstall them later if needed.
- Make Sure Internet Browser Is Up to Date.
- Check/Review Social Media Channels to see which applications have access to the accounts, disable and delete any you are not 100% sure of. You can always reenable them later if needed.
- Review passwords to primary accounts, change and/or rotate.
- Make sure computer/tablet/mobile phone operating systems are up to date and patched.
by Heather T. | May 15, 2018 | Bed and Breakfasts, Equipment, Marketing
Some quick tips for innkeepers doing DIY photos for websites and social media channels.
- Experiment with height and creating different levels. Use a cutting board or other type of portable surface (cake stands, glasses, trays), etc. Adding some texture, like kitchen towels, napkins and kitchen utensils helps break things up and create visual differences between the focus of the photo (the food) and it’s surroundings.
- Use Negative Space, have spots in the photo where there is “nothing” makes for better photos. When taking closeup shots, add a little space for background or if it’s on china, for the plate to be a part of the picture, ie half a plate, a corner of the plate.
- Use a Tripod For the best photos. If using a smart phone, most full-size tripods or mini tripods now come with, or can be ordered with, smart phone mounts, you just clip your phone right into the mount and shoot away!
- Take a ton of photos, don’t take one or two, don’t take a dozen, take several dozen from various angles including straight down. What looks good on a smart phone may not good on a computer when you see it in large resolution. The more photos you take, the more of a chance you will get a couple of “keepers”.
- The food is the center point of the photo. Props are nice, but they should complement, not overwhelm the food. Taking photos on white plates is best. A colorful prop can be beautiful, but it can easily be the highlight of the picture and grab attention away from the food it’s supposed to be highlighting,
- Garnish is key. Any ingredient can be a garnish and a prop as well, a simple omelet can get “spruced up” by a little chopped parsley or some crumbled cheese and cracked pepper. Simple low prep garnishes are great for food photos. Chopped chives hold up well, as does chopped parsley without browning, crumbled/shredded cheese, chopped or whole nuts, sunflower seeds, ground pepper, chia or poppy seeds, coarse or colored sea salt, chocolate shavings or cocoa powder, coconut flakes, chili flakes, pink peppercorns, dried and fresh berries and fruit. Raid your spice cabinet!
- Do your photo editing on a computer, as mentioned prior, a photo may look great on a smartphone, it will look completely different on a big computer and you will be likely to see imperfections and things you won’t notice on a small screen.
- Build or buy a lightbox, there are a lot of inexpensive ones on the market and they are quite easy to make as well.
Tips for When Just Doing Food Photos (not photos to serve to guests, best when testing out a new recipe, what better way to utilize it when trying it out, use it to play with some photography shots!)
- Use the freshest ingredients, imperfections, even small ones, show up on camera. When specifically doing food “just” for food photos, a leaf of mint “must” be perfect, even small blemishes on fruit show up when in closeups, so heavily eyeball everything.
- Don’t cook it all the way, meat, vegetables and fruit all keep cooking (called carryover cooking) when removed from heat. To keep everything look plump and moist, take it out prior to it just being done to shoot it.
- Aerosol olive oil sprays, as well as spray bottles with room temperate water can liven up dishes and make them glisten in photos, a spray of fine misted water over fresh herbs and fruit gives it that “just picked” look.
Pro-Photographers Food Styling Tip: Capturing steam on camera is always difficult, placing cotton balls (tampons actually work the best) soaked in hot water behind a coffee or tea cup while snapping photos can give you some nice effects.
Free photo editors – lets you edit all your photos online, from one easy place.
Best Apps for Smartphones:
How to build an easy lightbox:
by Heather T. | Jan 30, 2018 | Bed and Breakfasts, Lodging, Marketing, Social Media
Last January, my how time flies! I wrote a blog about how video is hot (and it’s still getting hotter) and live streaming: Ideas for Bed and Breakfasts using Video and Live Streaming, which I would encourage B&Bs to review, because video is here to stay and will continue to advance and perhaps dominate marketing in the years to come.
I wanted to follow this up with the checklist I had made up that might help B&Bs prepare a little bit if they were going to do video to promote their B&B, or they wanted to play around with Live Streaming Video.
Checklist for doing a Live Streaming Event:
- Check Lighting. Try to avoid windows with bright sun streaming in. Turn on room lights and check for glare on camera.
- Tripods in place if needed.
- Preview movement for “in camera” objects, pre-video walkthrough or still photos.
- Sound Checks with pre-recording.
- Mute phones and cell phones if possible.
- Turn off radio and/or TV.
- Cue cards if needed for talking points.
- If doing a recipe demonstration, have your mise en place done in advance.
- If having people participate, get photo/video permissions, in writing if possible.
- Check your appearance and anyone else’s in the video in advance.
- Test your internet connection and speed.
- Video in Facebook is muted by default, so make the opening reflect your topic or reflect a brand.
- Share on as many channels as you can..
- Be cognizant that many people may be watching on smartphones, so filming with your smartphone in the vertical position is suggested.
- Time Yourself, Videos should be one to two minutes long at the most. If you are posting the videos to Youtube, keep in mind that Youtube Creator will let you edit videos as well as stitch them together.
Have you done some recent videos or live streaming events at your Bed and Breakfast that you would like to share? Please do in the comments, as I am always looking for example to show to other B&Bs!
by Heather T. | Dec 13, 2017 | Bed and Breakfasts, Blog, Equipment, Lodging, Operations
Knives have come a long way since I graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in 1992, plus there are a lot more brands out there that were not available than. Ask any professional chef or anyone else that loves cooking, whether for pleasure or for a profession, you will get a completely different answer as to the best knives, the best brands and their favorite type of knives. So this article aims to be more informational than opinion, so that the reader can choose their own with more direction.
I personally have always had (and still have) primarily Wüsthof and Henckels (J.A. Henckels) knives, and Dexter (Dexter Russell) for the ones I can badly abuse. My original knives that I used while cooking professionally, I still have almost all of them (several many inches shorter due to years of sharpening-photo above of many of them) with the exception of a boning knife that met a sad end when my husband snapped the tip off (he has since replaced it for me, such a sweet guy). A good knife lasts for a very very long time with TLC, and it’s something to keep in mind when shopping for knives, because you might go into some sticker shock looking at good quality ones, “Just HOW much is that paring knife????”. A good knife will last you decades, and can be kept in the family for many generations. I still have a Wüsthof utility (paring) knife that my Grandfather bought back in the 1920’s before he immigrated from Norway to America, and it’s still a great knife, and it still holds an edge.
Knives are a matter of preference. A lot like a car, there are certain things you want to look for when knife shopping. I would suggest adding to your knife collection slowly. Sets are great, but either you outlay a huge amount of money for a good set, of which you will realistically only use half of the knives a lot, and the others rarely, if at all, or you buy an inexpensive set and you get what you pay for, OR you can think about what you actually need, and invest in them slowly, which is what I would recommend.
Knife Storage:
Storing your knives properly is very important, if you must keep knives in a drawer, I would suggest either getting a custom rack insert for the drawer, or buying plastic knife guards for your knives.
Wood block storage is also very popular for knives; the two things I would caution users about is: don’t, under any circumstances, put your knives away wet, while wood doesn’t hold bacteria as well as plastic, if you do get any type of food contaminant or other particles in the holes you can have problems. When placing knives into the block and removing them, make sure you sheathe and unsheathe the knives with the blunt edge of the top of the knife coming into contact with the knife slot, and not the sharp side. This will help maintain sharpness.
My personal favorite for knife storage is a wall mounted magnetic strip, you can see all your knives at a glance and the risk of them dulling while coming into contact with something else is minimized. The magnets are strong, so be careful when placing your knifes on the rack, as improper placement can also cause some damage.
Some basic rules for knives:
- Always dry your knives after use.
- Never put them in the sink if dirty, or in a sink filled with water. (while this is common sense, I’ve lost count of the number of B&Bs (and sadly restaurant kitchens as well) I’ve visited that have been guilty of doing this.) While it’s not only extremely unsafe, you risk causing damage to your knives.
- After sharpening a knife, rinse well before use. I prefer washing it and than drying it, but don’t go directly from sharpening to cutting, at least wipe it down if nothing else.
- Keep your knives sharp! A dull knife will cause more damage and rip the skin if you cut yourself, vs a clean cut from a sharp knife which will heal faster and cleanly.
- Never put your good knives in the dishwasher! The wash cycle in a dishwasher vibrates silverware against your knives and contributes to dulling. It can cause delamination of some types of handles, and cause rivets to come off or loosen contributing to unsafe knives, plus most dishwashing liquids, detergents or pods contain caustics ingredients which can damage and pit your knives.
(Look at the above stock photo, look at the knife on the far right side, a rivet is missing and the handle is cracked, leading to an unsafe knife, as the partial detachment from the tang could result in the knife coming apart during use. The crack can also harbor food particles and bacteria.) You should never do this to your knives, even good quality ones can break a knife tip doing this.
Things to look for when knife buying:
The Tang: I really recommend buying full tang knives. Over many years, using other’s knives or “house” knives (what many professional kitchens have for cooks in addition to their own), I’ve found that knives with partial tangs have a short shelf life, they break and they are dangerous when the adhesive that connects the knife tang with the handle comes apart, especially if it’s being used at the time. I’ve seen many stitches as a result of injury’s caused by partial tang knives literally disintegrating while being used. I recommend meandering over to Lansky Sharpeners, who has a very good overview of knife tangs.
The Grip: the grip is a preference, what is it made of? Plastic, rubber, steel, in some cases cork and other materials. Make sure when you buy a knife, especially a Chef’s knife that you will use for chopping, the handle fits well in your hand and is comfortable, I was never a big fan of Victorinox knives (and they are great knives) because I have smaller sized hands, and the handles never felt very comfortable to me, again it’s a personal preference. Wood grips on knives tend to not hold up well under long term use. When knife shopping you may find a better price online for the knife you want and buy it there, but I’d suggest handling them first so you can see what it feels like in your hand and the balance.
Ever sharp knives: to own or not to own. I admit we have several in my house, I rarely use them but my husband does. If you want low maintenance knives, then yes these are the knives for you, but they are not “really” forever sharp. They do dull with repeated use, and you can’t re-sharpen them easily, sometimes not at all.
Riveting and Joins: When buying knives look for the joins and rivets, and see if the handle moves at all when you push the blade sideways. Good quality knives will have zero give, but many generic knives out there, while they look nice, are quite flimsy and not made for heavy duty use.
What are they made of?
Carbon Steel: this the traditional material used the most for the past few hundred years. It can hold an extremely sharp edge, but it does discolor easily. It will discolor some foods, like onions and citrus, as well as you can actually smell what seems like a chemical odor coming from it, and may leave a metallic taste. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use Carbon Steel with these, but it does mean that the acidity in onions and citrus can cause pitting of the blade, if you do use them, wipe the blade down every few minutes in between uses. I find if you are cutting a lot of meat or filleting fish, a carbon steel knife, I personally find, will do a better job as it’s holds an edge the best. Rubbing the blade down with a paste made from water and baking soda when you first get it (and repeat for the first few weeks) helps protect the knife and build up a good patina. Carbon steel knives will change color with use.
High Carbon Stain Free Steel: This is a relatively new alloy that combines the best features of Carbon Steel and new modern alloy metals (Chromium-Molybdenum Steel). Most modern higher end knives are made of this and it’s suggested for professional use.
Stainless Steel: this will not rust or corrode, but is a very poor choice for knives, it’s brittle and it is difficult to keep a very sharp edge on a stainless steel knife.
Ceramic Cutlery: This is a newer process made with modern age ceramics, often zirconium dioxide. Ceramic knives are substantially harder than steel knives, they will not corrode and work well for slicing vegetables, meat (boneless), fruits and bread. The downsides to ceramic, is it’s just like a plate, if it gets dropped, it can shatter or chip. Ceramic knives are not recommended for use with hard to cut items, like bones or frozen foods. While ceramic holds an edge a lot longer than carbon steel, once the edge degrades it needs a professional to re-sharpen it.
Damascus Steel: This is not “true” Damascus, that art has been lost for a long long time, these knives are basically laminated pieces of steel together, and quality can vary a huge amount depending on the maker. If you have a magnetic knife strip that can display your knives where your guests can see them, you will have the oh and ah factor, as they can be quite beautiful, but most of these knives will not outperform a regular good quality knife.
Some Quality Knife Brands:
Aritsugu http://aframestokyo.com/aritsugu.html (there are other sites out there that carry Aritsugu, the Aritsugu site itself is in Japanese).
Global http://globalknives.uk/
J.A. Henckels http://www.zwillingonline.com/
Masamoto http://www.masamotochefknives.com
Messermeister https://www.messermeister.com/
Shun https://shun.kaiusaltd.com/
Victorinox (formerly R.H. Forschner by Victorinox) https://www.victorinox.com/global/en_US/
Wüsthof http://www.wusthof.com
Honorable Mentions (great for knifes that can take some abuse, inexpensive and good for general purpose knives)
Dexter Russell http://www.dexterrussellcutlery.com/
Additional Knives:
MAC https://www.macknife.com/ (While reputedly a great knife brand, Thomas Keller and Charlie Trotter apparently love the line, the quality does seem to be there and it shows well in use.) I can’t say with certainty that this knife line will hold up well under long term use. I’ve test driven several of these, but unlike any of the above knife brands that I have used over the course of many many years, this one is a newer addition to the traditional brands. If you do decide to buy one of these, I would suggest the MTH-80 Professional over the TH-80 Chef Knives. The MTH-80 while the more expensive, is the better knife.
If anyone has any interest, I can do a follow up post on this with a suggested list of what to buy (or at least start out with) if you are just buying a bed and breakfast and need to stock the kitchen with equipment.
And an additional article with some useful tips 25 Tips And Tricks About Chef’s Knives- Every Chef Should Know.
by Heather T. | Nov 8, 2017 | Opinion
My apologies to my usual readers in the hospitality industry as it’s a bit off topic, but in many ways may still be relevant if you volunteer for something, or you perhaps have volunteers that help run your lodging organization.
Volunteers are the backbone of most non-profit organizations. Many go unrecognized and underappreciated sadly.
Back in 2008 I wrote a rather ranty blog post about Why people don’t volunteer much anymore and why the ones that do deserve medals! And while a rant, it still holds true, volunteers don’t get thanked enough amongst other things. I find it interesting that that post still garners a lot of traffic, which sadly means it’s still an issue.
Aside from the actual time that volunteers spend, I don’t think organizations really understand the monetary and marketing value of a volunteer.
One of the organizations that my husband and I have volunteered with for the last three plus years, this morning gave me a wake up call, and not in a good way. And it made me take a step back and really evaluate, what is the value of a volunteer? Why have I, and my husband, spent so many donated hours as well as money volunteering for this organization? And do they really realize the value of a volunteer? It made me wonder. I don’t think that many organizations do.
While I realize not all volunteers may have equal “net” worth, they all have equal value. But I’m going to over analyze the actual “net” worth value of someone who “spreads the word” about an organization.
If you have people like that in your organization and most do. A word of advice, it’s not wise to piss them off, it can have some very public repercussions. I am not going to go there, but you can feel free to use your imagination.(insert snarky comment of your choice here.)
I’ll talk about the value instead:
What marketing and branding value does a volunteer give an organization? Especially one that’s a “broadcaster.”?
Has your organization every actually thought about it?
Put a dollar value to it?
I am going to use myself as an example for this one, because I think it’s somewhat applicable. My husband and myself tell everyone about the organization we have been volunteering for, we both talk to, and try to educate several dozen people per week, each, in the course of a normal week, we have exposure to a lot of people. So on average we spread the word to about a thousand people+ each year.
In addition I do webinars and seminars across the country, I end up speaking about, or having discussions about a topic that ties into the lodging industry, and what we volunteer for ties into that, and in the course of the seminars and discussions more brand awareness is passed along. Add another several thousand people who were just made aware of the organization.
I am in Toastmasters and I’ve lost count of the number of speeches I’ve done, both at my two home clubs and at other clubs promoting, educating and talking about the organization. Add another say 500+ people per year added to the mix.
Add in the fact we talk about it frequently on our private social media pages to friends and connections from around the world, we mention it publicly on social media channels, Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, Linkedin, Pinterest, etc. While I am a small fry as influencers go, I am an influencer within my industry and within my communities. I have a lot of connections that are big influencers, and they have passed posts along about the organization. I can’t even put a number to the reach of that, but I’ll just say it’s a lot, an awful lot.
How much are your volunteers worth when they promote you for free?
How much would it cost you in monetary value to promote, if you had to spend actual money on it?
Add in that most volunteers donate to an organization they volunteer with, for fundraisers, for events and more, and so do their families. So it’s actual money as well that most volunteers bring to the table.
I’d suggest every organization out there that has volunteers put, an actual dollar value on their volunteers. Guess what, you would probably be a tad surprised and probably flabbergasted at the value. Appreciate them ALL a bit more and thank them more often. Volunteers are priceless.
I’ll ask again. What is the Value of a Volunteer?
by Heather T. | Aug 28, 2017 | Bed and Breakfasts, Lodging, Marketing, Social Media
Today I was supposed to teach a short instructional webinar on using Youtube Slideshow Creator. A very useful tool that I found out this morning (when I logged in to Youtube) that it’s being retired on September 20, 2017. Apparently, they had put out a notice (not very widely apparently) that is was going away permanently a few months ago. I did know that Youtube is revamping it’s Creator studio, which I have Beta access to, and am quite excited to see the full version of, but I was unaware of this. Caught a bit by surprise as I usually know about most social media changes way ahead of time, I am to say the least, extremely disappointed they are retiring this feature as it was very useful for B&Bs. The explanation is “that it was not widely used”, similar to Facebook retiring it’s lists feature earlier this year (and there is a workaround for them at least) the feature was a victim of the fact that hardly anyone used it, because most didn’t even know about it.
If you do want to explore Youtube slideshows, you have until the 20th to do so. Youtube says it won’t be doing away with any videos created with it prior, so if you have a few minutes and some good still photos, take advantage of it now. The slideshow feature can be replicated with other programs (I am looking into good suggestions for replacing) but access to the availability of royalty free music (that Youtube provides with the slideshow creator) is not as easily replaced.
I had done a blog in 2014 about using the slideshow option, so if you would like to play with it in the interim of the feature going away, please visit https://chefforfeng.wordpress.com/2014/02/27/how-innkeepers-can-leverage-youtubes-photo-slideshow-option/. You may need to use Firefox (recommended), Safari or Internet Explorer as Google Chrome is blocking the Flash plugin used to create the show.
If you have a current version of Powerpoint (within the last 4 years) there is an option of turning your slides (with effects) into a video that is uploadable to Youtube.
While there are literally 100s of options for programs to do slideshows and export to video ranging from $29.99 to $99.00, and many more in the higher price ranges with more bells and whistles, there are not many options out there for free.
Windows Movie Maker (PC only) (http://www.windows-movie-maker.org/) is one option that Windows users can download for free. Avid Media Composer (PC or Mac) is another, but maybe for the more technological inclined (http://www.avid.com/media-composer-first). I would very much recommend not downloading many of the other options that tout themselves as “free” without first checking them out heavily online. Many contain Spyware and Adware which can be even more malicious, and in many cases much harder to get rid of than regular viruses.
Kizoa (https://www.kizoa.com/) is one online option, but the free version limits what you can do. I have not trialed the paid version but it looks promising. There are several others online as well that offer “free” but with limitations as well. I’d recommend testing out the online ones available, with the caveat be careful what links you click on, especially if the program landing page has lots of ads on it, similar to the downloadable options for slideshow editors, be cognizant that some links may take you to malicious sites.
We are continuing to research other options for this and will post an additional post when (and sadly if) we find more comparable (free) equivalents to Youtube Slideshow Creator, Avid we had been aware of prior, and Kizoa we came across today and trial tested (and recommend to check out as a possible option) after looking at and testing about two dozen other options today.
by Heather T. | Aug 9, 2017 | Blog, Lodging, Marketing, Social Media
Did you know you can download a full backup of your Facebook business page, including all the photos, videos and posts you have posted since you started your page?
Why back up?
- Ever look for that illusive post, you KNOW you posted awhile back but couldn’t find?
- Many innkeepers upload great photos of the inn and the surrounded area to their business page, but never back it up to their computer for use in other social media, or to have a copy for their media kit or other advertising?
- Have you uploaded regular videos to your page, or Facebook live videos and want to re-purpose them? Social Media Examiner (one of my favorite sites) wrote a great post last year: How to Repurpose Your Facebook Live Videos which gives some great ideas about re-purposing and gives instructions for downloading one video at a time, but downloading the archive takes a step out.
You can also download individual albums, which I would also recommend doing frequently if you don’t want to download a full archive.
Downloading the full archive though is a piece of cake, once you select “download the archive” it will walk you through some additional steps and it will also send you an email letting you know the download is ready.
Don’t forget you can also back up your personal Facebook account photo albums, which is also worth doing occasionally, especially mobile uploads.
Facebook may also be rolling out a new feature for Facebook admins, I have only seen this option from new pages that have been created, but I hope it’s not just a test, but something they will add to all pages for the admins, it would be great to be able to invite connections and give them a more personalized invite than just “like this page”. When you receive an invite to like a page, a small text editable invite looks like it can be attached to it.
There are some new options for Facebook group admins if you want to check out the changes, click here for a brief overview.
