Spice Up Your Event With Modern Dishes

Think back to when you were a child attending a wedding. There was dancing, there was excitement and laughter, and you may have been let down by the boring food. Cold briskets with bland vegetables that you have to sit down and properly eat were the worst, but you powered through knowing that the cake would come soon. Unfortunately, there was a plot twist because the fondant cake was also boring and unsatisfying!

Don’t let the food bring your wedding party down! Spice up your menus with modern twists that won’t weigh your guests down.

Comfort Food

No one knows how to eat and feel warm inside like Southerners which is why their comfort food is trending. Avoid basic roasts and serve up some fried chicken instead. It’s a comfort foot that can be quickly enjoyed by hand.

Also, put on a modern twist on a classic favorite, meatloaf. You can have your meatloaf stuffed with parmesan cheese and spinach for a delightful surprise inside, wrap it in bacon, or serve it on a sandwich.

Many types of meat are being served with updated sauces and glazes with hints of southern traditions. For example, salmon pairs great with a peach and pecan glaze, steak pairs well with spicy avocado sauces, and chicken goes great with an almond sauce. The creative possibilities to spice up the meats are endless.

Don’t forget southern sides! Nothing makes a person feel warm inside like hot, made from scratch macaroni and cheese. Plus, fried okra is always great to have around. No one knows asparagus better than southerners so check out their herb crusted and garlic recipes.

Everyone loves pizza and pasta, so consider serving up those dishes to please everyone on your guest list.

Keep it Light

People are healthy these days and don’t want to be weighed down, so serve them up a few clean and simple options.

A salad bar is always a good way to keep health conscious guests happy and snacking. They can serve themselves a variety of fresh and crisp veggies with an array of salad dressings to choose from.

However, isn’t salad slightly boring? Jazz things up with a fruit bar instead. Offer multiple varieties of cheese, nuts, and fruits to get the grazers happily nibbling on healthy items.

Also, you can stick with lighter meats like fish and chicken. Red meat often makes people feel sleepy and too full to function.

Keep it Moving

While being served plated food is nice and elegant, it’s also a little stale. Keep your party lively and fresh by getting people out of their seats!

People won’t mind getting up to serve themselves when you have exciting craft your own food stations. Taco and fajita stations are on fire right now. Guests can go up and request personalized entrees or serve themselves with their custom ingredients.

Baked potato bars, burger bars, and oyster bars are also tons of fun.

However, one of the most shocking food bars are the ones with breakfast for dinner! How exciting, people can have made to order pancakes, omelets, and waffles with personalized ingredients and toppings.

Miniaturize it

Guests don’t wanna be weighed down by huge meals anymore. How can they dance if they’re super full or bloated? Plus, big meals take a long time to eat, so consider making your food mini so people can quickly pick up a few items and eat them in no time.

Trending miniature foods include miniature tacos, mini burgers, mini mac and cheese bites, mini roasts on a bun, and even miniature bowls of ramen. Each of these items are fun to eat and can have personalized toppings.

Food Truck it

If you missed the food truck craze where have you been?! Food trucks have become increasingly popular and are popping up all over the city! You can have a few drive up to your venue and serve their local, creative dishes to your guests.

Each guest can pick which food truck they want to visit for delicious food creations from Korean BBQ to southern delicacies on a stick. They will really give your guests a fun memory from your event.

Stay Salty

You know what really kills a cake or nice cocktail? Too much sugar! Pair your drinks with something salty and delicious.

French fries are always a popular menu item. You can serve them cut straight, in curls, or even in a waffle shape. They can be placed in easy to grab containers like mason jars and enjoyed. You can even include healthier sweet potato fries! Regular ‘ole potato chips also pair really well with sweet beverages.

Pretzels and popcorn are salty treats with endless possibilities because they pair with excellent toppings like cheese, jalapenos, chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry sauce, powdered sugar, and more!

Update Your Dessert

Big, fondant cakes live in the past. Don’t stay stuck there with them! New desserts are taking the world by storm, like miniature pies ranging from apple to pumpkin. There’s a pie for every season.

Also, who doesn’t go nuts for donuts?! You can set a variety of donuts up for a beautiful, yet mouthwatering dessert display.

Throw your guests a curve ball with desserts that bring back childhood memories, like cookies and milk, s'mores, or ice cream sandwiches.

Don’t forget about custom sweets to pick up on-the-go like cake pops or hand-frosted sugar cookies.

Are you Hungry now?

We are too! We didn’t mean to get your mouth watering, but we wanted to make sure we could help you jazz up your event with delicious, hot and trendy food. Learn more event tips at Inspherio.com.

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Use A Great Program to Manage Your Event Business

If you are in the Wedding Business or if you would consider yourself to be an Event Professional, you are probably too busy preparing for your events to worry about all the meticulous details to run your business properly. 

If this is true, you are not alone.  Thousands of event professionals around the country are not taking advantage of the full potential of their business.  This common trade-off occurs when an event professional decides to go after more work and make more money, or devote less time to new jobs, and more time organizing their business. 

Thanks to Inspherio, no one should have to choose between staying organized & staying busy with new jobs.  Inspherio allows a business owner to manage their leads from start to finish as well as manage their finances, receive online payments, send Electronic Contracts, and much more! 

With a web-based event management software program for any type of Event Professional, you can stay busy doing what you love, because Inspherio helps you take care of all the meticulous details behind the scenes.  just think of how beneficial it would be to only enter your contact's information once, and from then on, it will auto-populate on all the required forms like contracts, invoices, an agenda for the event, and more.

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How to Turn Any Feedback Into a Positive One!

Customer Service is one the most important tasks in your business regardless of whether you are a B2C (your direct customer is a final consumer: Wedding Planner, Photographer) or B2B (your direct customer is a business: Party rentals, Florist) type of business.

Click Here to read our recent blog about handling customer complaints to learn some very important information about Customer Service.

Photos is a courtesy of Pixels On Paper. http://www.pixelsonpaper.biz

Today, we would like to talk about the times when the customer feedback goes public and the word spreads around. What to do and how to do it.

• As we mentioned earlier:  act fast. The faster you address the complaint the better.
• Contact the customer directly (if possible) asking for all the details of their complaint
• Start working on rectifying the issue, try to make it as fast as possible.
•  It is extremely important that the customer is satisfied with the recovery process.
• Go the extra mile, WOW your customer by anticipating the next step of the process or go beyond the usual line of service. For example, if you are a photographer and the bride is not satisfied with the picture quality. The usual step would be to make steps to improve the quality, if any way possible, and the extra step would be to mail picture copies to the relatives and friends of her choice at no cost.
• Depending on how the word got out, try to make an announcement via the same channel... i.e.: Facebook, Twitter, Yelp.  If possible, ask your customer to pass the word along that the issue has been rectified and to recommend your service in the future.

  Visit Inspherio for more ways to improve Your Business!

   

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7 Better Business Tools

Think about all the tools you need to complete a simple task - like cooking a dinner for example: pots, pans, spatulas etc. There is a tool for every task. Have you ever tried to use the wrong tool? If so, it is likely it was not the outcome you hoped for.

So, to continue our discussion about Organizing your Business, we will be talking about Tools today.

If you have read our previous blogs you would have learned about separating your business into departments and keeping all of your files organized and up to date. So, what’s next?

Look through the files and Departments. Are you using the most up to date tools available?

Does the speed of your Internet meet your business requirements? If not, call your internet provider right now!

Do you have many different ways to be reached by your clients?

Make sure that your phone works and the phone number is listed correctly in the directories of your choice, including your website!

Do you even have a website? If you don’t your business is too 1990s! Get it fixed, get a website! Inspherio can give you one for free as part of our basic package.

Do you participate in social media? If for some reason you do not, (I hope you do, since you are reading this blog), you may be underestimating its power. Harnessing Social Media may be one of the greatest investments you can make. While it takes quite a bit of time, it will pay off in the long run.

Access your clientele. How do your clients prefer to be contacted? Is it e-mail, phone or, maybe Twitter? Be sure to know that and set up all means of contact to be available on the go: smartphone, tablet or laptop. You never know when your client will need your assistance. In the modern world there is nothing that makes more difference in winning business like great Customer Service! Inspherio allows you to keep all your clients’ information at your fingertips, no matter where, you will never be caught off guard again.

Do you still use paper receipts and bill your clients via paper bills? I have news for you: while you are waiting in line at the post office; your competitors are closing deals with their next clients. Is that really what you want? Send your next bill with this automated feature via Inspherio and move on with your day!

Ditch the paper calendar! Get a shared calendar that you can access anywhere, anytime and even set up a reminder for the task to be performed. It will be especially beneficial if you have a group of people working with you in different locations, give access to the calendar maintenance to your key staff to in order keep everyone up to date.

What is the tool that saves you time the most? Share with us, we’d love to hear from you!

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Invoices or 3 mistakes you could have avoided

Have you or your office assistant ever lost an invoice in the confusing labyrinth of your desktop software or even in a mountain of paperwork on your desk? 

Businesses like yours waste time and money due to inadequate business management each day. It’s hard to put a number on it, but think of the many hours you spend on billing and other menial office duties. In the Event Planning business, it is important to bill your client promptly and accurately to ensure your clients’ satisfaction. How do you do that?

Inspherio allows you to quickly generate an invoice with a unique invoice number (no more guessing and coming up with complicated file names to identify your invoices.) right out of your “booked event” page by using the same information you already have in the system. You can even do that on your phone, if you like.

Your client can also view the invoice immediately and pay it, right then, by using PayPal, Google Checkout or Authorize.Net.

Do you have a client that needs a bill today? What are you waiting for? Check out our website and take advantage of 30 days free trial.

We will be happy to hear from you, give us your feedback at support@inspherio.com, Facebook or Twitter.

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The following article was originally posted on DigitalBrandMarketing.com by Megan Harris


The wedding industry is not only high-grossing but highly specialized. According to the 2011 BRIDES American Wedding Study, the average wedding costs $26,501. While that figure has fallen about 5% since 2009 due to the economic recession, weddings are still very high-paying and nearly recession-proof business. Even in tough times, couples like to celebrate their nuptials in style, which is often not cheap.
As a freelance writer and editor, I have had experience with the wedding industry from the first article I wrote for a client trying to break into this competitive market. Here are some key points I have taken away from my work in the wedding niche in regards to business branding. Perhaps those in the wedding industry and beyond can find these tips helpful!

Supply a Need in Your Products or Services

Does your startup do what everyone else does? Chances are, if it is part of the wedding industry, it won’t take off. It’s a harsh but true reality that following the crowd will not get you noticed, and this is especially true in weddings.
Businesses must fill a unique need in their products or services. This is how BridesView, a wedding inspiration community, went from being a small startup to being featured on Mashable in a very short amount of time! They found a unique need to fill and found it in linking vendors and brides together through a photo sharing community.

Provide Value to Clients and Customers

One of the biggest hurdles in the wedding niche is getting noticed. It’s a competitive market, and you can bet every major city in the U.S. is teeming with photo booth rentals, DJ and lighting professionals, and floral designers anticipating that busy summer season. However, if you are not the kind of professional that provides outstanding service, you’ll get left behind!
Some of the best businesses not only are great at branding because of what they do, but because the mission of their brand shows through their work. I have had clients that are widely recognized from the five-star reviews they receive on WeddingWire and repeatedly gain recognition for their work.

Network, Network, Network!

One of the best ways to grow your brand is to partner with others in the wedding industry. Partnering with other businesses not only helps you gain their trust and expertise, but can help you come up with all new ideas!
Let’s say you want to provide a unique wedding editorial blog to your region. Why not partner with a wedding photographer or graphic designer to get your blog some traction? Perhaps they can send their clients your way once the blog is up and running. You will gain more exposure with partners and can likely find help in an area you do not know from an expert.
Regardless if you are working in the wedding industry or not, you can learn a lot about branding from it! Successful wedding businesses fulfill the needs of their client base; provide high-quality services or products; and are not afraid of working with others to improve their business. Try using some of these strategies in 2012 to boost your business!


This Blog was originally posted by Megan Harris on DigitalBrandMarketing.com on 1/29/2012
Re-Blogged by Inspherio on 2/7/2012

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