Guest written by our friend Gladys Fuentes
Opening my restaurant last year was terrifying, for a myriad of reasons. The first night we were open, three of my seven servers just failed to show up, and my lemon distributor was also M.I.A. How was I supposed to make lemon chicken with no lemons? Besides the obvious hiccups within the restaurant, I had a hard time getting our restaurant’s website live and showing in search results as well. Creating the actual website was no hassle at all. I researched domain names at sites like http://www.domainnames.com then worked on the site myself in my spare time. I had a full menu and photos to boot, but the trouble came when local search results started merging my restaurant with a similarly named Mexican restaurant down the street. Now when people searched for “Italian Portland” the Mexican restaurant showed at our address! It took months to get the issue straightened out, but now I think we’re back on track. That first night proved to me that I can make it through any curveball the restaurant biz throws at me which unfortunately, appears to be a lot!
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Opening my restaurant last year was terrifying, for a myriad of reasons. The first night we were open, three of my seven servers just failed to show up, and my lemon distributor was also M.I.A. How was I supposed to make lemon chicken with no lemons? Besides the obvious hiccups within the restaurant, I had a hard time getting our restaurant’s website live and showing in search results as well. Creating the actual website was no hassle at all. I researched domain names at sites like http://www.domainnames.com then worked on the site myself in my spare time. I had a full menu and photos to boot, but the trouble came when local search results started merging my restaurant with a similarly named Mexican restaurant down the street. Now when people searched for “Italian Portland” the Mexican restaurant showed at our address! It took months to get the issue straightened out, but now I think we’re back on track. That first night proved to me that I can make it through any curveball the restaurant biz throws at me which unfortunately, appears to be a lot!
) and find your representatives. Then just copy, paste, and personalize the letter below. You are not limited to your districts representatives. The more you contact the better! If you would like to thank Grace for all her hard work and help fund her efforts you can donate money to her below. I will send her all the monies I collect at the end of each month and plan to share 1/2 of my advertising profits. Don't forget to share this post with all of your NJ baker friends!
by Toba Garrett is a must read for any aspiring cake decorator. Months ago this book was featured in 
and I have finally been able to read it. As a self-taught decorator, it is obvious that when it comes to the business side of the art, I'm a little lost. This book helped correct that.
