The Arizona Food Service Network connects all people, events, resources, and organizations associated with Arizona food, food service, and food science.
Your guests’ habits and daily routines drive a large portion of your restaurant’s business. But consumer behavior completely changed during the pandemic, causing them to create new routines as they stopped their day-to-day activities that normally lead them to your restaurant. So how do you stay engaged with your customers? Read more here.
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With my game plan in place, I got up in front of the attendees at the April ACFAZ meeting held at Metro Tech High School’s Culinary Arts dept. and shared my goals for the Arizona Food Service Network, how I was launching the newsletter, and moving forward with the website.
Shortly after that, remodeling and home maintenance hit and it was hard to manage both so a summer hold it was. Hard to complain as the extra time has given me an opportunity to start working with a marketing company for collaboration, and to really focus on delivering information you, the reader, wants to see and expects to see from Arizona’s largest food, food science, and
Thrilled to be behind my desk again, remodeling almost finished. There has been some great food shows and meetings recently and look forward to that follow up as well. With the summer over and the holiday’s insight, great time to launch the newsletter. More details to follow on that in another post.
Right now, I’m cleaning up the Business Directory and adding more keywords and structure for the search engines. I’m also doing the finishing touches on the website, I have a few changes to make.
Reaching out to the community is next, so much follow up to do. From total disruption to reigniting my passion for my purpose, here I am, and here we go.
Thank you for your patience and support.
Madonna Kash
Publisher of the Arizona Food Service Network
The 10th year reunion for WordCamp happened Feb. 15-17, 2019 downtown Phoenix which has provoked reflections and had hit the refresh button for me as well.
For those of you that don’t know, WordPress is a free and open-source software content management system for websites. Over 32% of the internet is using WordPress and so are many well knows brands are, here’s a list. In Phoenix metro, we have a tremendous WordPress and tech community here.
WordPress gave me the tools and resources to move into online marketing on my own without the need to pay someone to build or manage a website. So thankful for this. This meant I didn’t have to pay someone to manage my website, that was painful.
So, ten years later, what’s changed? Well, the biggest change has happened this past year with the new Gutenberg editor. I swear, I almost cried the first time I used it, it was that much of a welcomed change. An editor is what you use to publish your posts in WordPress and it’s really
The other notability take-a-ways from the weekend I’m still sorting through. Many good presentations with great information and because it’s WordCamp, they’ll post the videos and slides of the presentations online, which is something
Happy to share this information as it comes in, and other events I attend to support our Arizona Food Service Network community with their marketing efforts. One of the best things to come out of this weekend was a reminder of my WHY for doing all of this in the first place.
One of my first steps moving forward is more automation and to refine the newsletter marketing. Will post what I did when I’m finished. Focusing on automation is something we all benefit from as it’s a time saver and a more efficient way to manage your marketing.
Two other commitments to come out of this is attending regular WordPress Meetup’s and listening to more podcasts from the WordPress community. For the Meetup events, go to Meetup.com and type in “WordPress” in the search bar to find a listing of events in your area. Make sure you choose events based on your skill sets and goals.
For Podcasting, here’s an article noting “16+ of the Best WordPress Podcasts to Listen to in 2019“. It’s as good as any place to start, something to needs to fit you, and your skills sets and goals.
More to share as it develops, much follow-up on my end for now. Highly recommend checking out the WPPhx schedule and making note of sessions you’re interested in listening to when released. I’ll revise this once they are.
Happy Marketing!
Madonna Kash
The fourth quarter of 2018 brought some challenges in my personal and professional life, and a soy allergy. I took the opportunity to do a hard reboot and well, I’m back and welcoming 2019 with a plan and a fresh perspective.
In preparation for the new year, I’ve invested time in de-cluttering, re-organizing, and preparing myself for a positive 2019. Personal and professional mise en place, getting rid of what doesn’t serve me, and focus on what needs to be done.
The goal- get the newsletter going. Start date, January 28, 2019. Woohoo! The next steps, reconnect with a lot of industry people for networking, information sharing, and get some of these goals working.
My background is in
The Arizona Food Service Business Directory has the largest public food service directory in Arizona with 168 different categories and over 1,600 listings. Great tools and resources for marketers.
The Events segment is pretty awesome as well. With the events aggregator feature, we can set it up to automatically sync up with your event once posted. Such a great time saver.
RSS Feeds are such a great way to share information. RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication, which is a quick way to share news and information and it’s easy to manage too! Another great tool for marketers.
ChefStudent Connect. I look forward to getting an event going. First the newsletter and then, add an event. 🙂 Love that site, and concept.
Last but not least, the Blog! Another feature to encourage community communication. We want to hear about your new product, rebate, company, and information about our industry. The Blog is a great way to share it. Once shared here, we can share it with social media, and in the newsletter.
Always supporting culinary education and networking, trade associations like the American Culinary Federation Chef’s Association of Arizona will be a priority in the newsletter and within the site, and with ChefStudent Connection.
The year in review- grateful to be here and healthy, time to move forward. Couple keys takeaways from 2018 are Anthony Bordin’s passing, and my soy allergy. Anthony’s voice was (is) a voice in my head that encouraged me to put my thoughts into writing. Translate my thoughts into words, be more descriptive in expressing them, and take these influences with me as I develop my own style.
Of course, we know he committed suicide. My personal connection with that is, my adoptive mother committed suicide did too when I was 8 years old. My thoughts are with his daughter, Ariane, as from what I’ve learned from losing a parent to suicide at a young age is grief hits you at different stages in life like a car accident.
The most recent hit for me was last quarter when looking through photos and keepsakes I haven’t seen in over 20 years, some I’ve never seen. This mixed with my step-mother’s passing in October and the holidays, it’s been a lot to process. The new year could not have come at a better time.
The soy allergy brought a new perspective on eating, holy. I feel like I’ll be able to give a TED Talk one day on “how my soy allergy saved my life”. Soy is in so many foods, it’s been a learning curve, and at times, hard to accept. I have to read every label or ask if there’s soy in everything I eat and to be honest, it can really suck.
Now from a food service perspective, the allergy opens up new experiences operators. Learning how operators treat allergies has been an awakening, and sometimes a rude. Thankful the allergy isn’t at anaphylaxis level as the learning curve would have killed me by now.
Welcome 2019; here comes the
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