August 2012
3 posts
Give Back to Get Ahead in Business
Small business owners are an integral part of every community. They create jobs, pay taxes and provide valuable products and services to the community.
Many companies spend months or even years and thousands upon thousands of dollars in advertising trying to build a loyal following. The easiest approach is to advertise through every medium you can afford. Of course you are competing with...
Smart Entrepreneurs Avoid These Mistakes
Starting your own business may be a lifelong dream, but too often it can turn into a nightmare. By some estimates, half of all small businesses fail in the first four years, while other estimates paint a much more gruesome picture.
As smart entrepreneurs we can learn from the mistakes of others and adapt the best practices in the industry to weight the odds of success in our favor. Analysts...
Beyond the Home Office
There are a number of things that make launching a LocalUp site a compelling opportunity for budding entrepreneurs. These include relatively low startup costs, incredible support from the LocalUp team, increasing market demand, few significant competitors and the list goes on.
Especially appealing to many young owners is that it’s possible to manage the site solo from a home office. ...
July 2012
3 posts
Develop Your Brand to Elevate Your Business
Things are looking a little different around LocalUp these days. We’ve got an amazing new logo, a great slogan, and the new website is shaping up nicely. This rebranding effort has been a huge time consuming project, but we are really happy with the results, and with 100% certainty I think we can all agree that it was worth it.
You might be asking why we’d undertake such a dramatic...
Freeing Yourself with Consistency and Process
Small business owners start with dreams of the good life. Dreams of being your own boss, setting your own hours, and endless exotic vacations. The reality for many owners is more like a nightmare than a dream, constant worry, never ending tasks, and issue upon issue.
With a little planning though you’ll be able to realize your dreams and free yourself from the headaches of running a...
A Fresh Look and a Focused Brand for LocalUp
Things might be looking a little different around LocalUp these days. We’ve been hard at work creating a marketing strategy and unified branding message that really tells people who we are and what we stand for at LocalUp. Stakeholders across the company were interviewed and we’re excited about the results.
We’ve simplified things a bit. We’ve gone with a strong bold...
June 2012
8 posts
Which Type of Small Business is Right for You?
You’re charged up and ready to become an entrepreneur. After considerable thought, you’ve got a firm grasp on what your business will offer customers and you’ve even decided on a catchy name for your new company.
Now it’s time to start making things official. One of the first things to do is register your new business with the state government, a service typically...
Launching a LocalUp Site an Interview with Robert...
Launching a new LocalUp powered site is a busy and exciting time around the office, but the real challenges fall to the site owner. Recently Robert Botto, the founder of OwlEats (http://owleats.com) in Glassboro New Jersey, took a few minutes out of his hectic schedule to let us in on some of his experiences in making his site a reality.
Robert grew up working in the food industry. His...
How Technology is Disrupting Society and Business...
How has technology changed our social lives? How has technology altered the business landscape? This latest info graphic seeks to answer a few of those questions with some pretty impressive numbers detailing just how influential technology has become.
Fruits and Vegetable Growing Infographic
Hard to believe the kind of impact that eating properly could have on the economy just through new local food/farming sector jobs. (via Food and Tech Connect)
Thaw Out Those Cold Calls
To be a successful entrepreneur you’ll have to master a thousand different skills. Running an small business like a LocalUp powered site is going to require HR skills, accounting expertise, sales and marketing talent and so much more.
It may seem a little scary, sure there is a lot to learn but it’s a process that never really stops. However, one skill that often paralyzes...
Crazy Times for the Online Restaurant Review...
The new LocalUp platform is being deployed to sites across the nation as we speak and one thing to notice is that Yelp reviews play a prominent role in every listing. Under each restaurant name is a five star rating system and the number of reviews it’s based off. Click on that link and another tab will open up to the restaurant’s Yelp listing.
Yelp is a prominent player in the...
May 2012
4 posts
Five Spring Cleaning Tips to Maximize Your...
Starting a business is an incredibly challenging undertaking, and once your business is established the path remains daunting. It’s all too easy to become overwhelmed with every day tasks and simply operate on auto-pilot. Follow these five tips to do a little spring cleaning on your business and you’ll be ready to take your business to the next level.
1. Know your sales process -...
Much Improved LocalUp Platform Generates Higher...
LocalUp has just launched the newest version of their powerful online restaurant discovery and ordering system that has users excited and is much more efficient at driving more orders to participating restaurants.
Packed with new features and performance enhancements the latest LocalUp platform contains:
- A bold new user experience that strips out all the distractions and focuses on keeping...
Online Food Ordering Picks Up Steam
While there are glimmers of hope in recent economic numbers, the economy has challenged businesses in all sectors. Restaurants haven’t escaped, IBISWorld estimates that the restaurant business has shrunk 2.9% annually for the last five years.
The news isn’t all bad, e-commerce sales accounted for 51% of Domino’s delivery business and 16% of total sales. Last year only 39% of...
Incredible Market Potential as Most Restaurants...
Technology may rule most aspects of our lives, but surprisingly not when we eat out. Restaurants for one reason or another are for the most part still running their businesses the old-fashioned way. A recent study by Restaurant Sciences most shockingly discovered that over half of the restaurants surveyed didn’t even have a website.
More interesting/shocking facts uncovered in the survey:
...
April 2012
4 posts
Twitter Lists to Follow
Below you’ll find a few Twitter lists that we follow and think you might like too. I’m already putting together a few more lists and I’ll continue to update this post with all that information, so check back here often.
LocalUp Powered Sites (18 members) - LocalUp has spread around the country. Follow this list of the official Twitter accounts for each locally branded...
Steve Jobs Success in 14 Factors
Steve Jobs was making waves across the interwebs last week when Walter Isaacson published an article in which he identifies these 14 factors that he highlights as keys to Steve Jobs success.
Focus
Simplify
Take Responsibility End to End
When Behind, Leapfrog
Put Products Before Profits
Don’t Be a Slave To Focus Groups
Bend Reality
Impute
Push for Perfection
Tolerate Only “A” Players
...
The Forgotten Art of Bootstrapping
Starting a new business is a difficult proposition. Studies have indicated that nearly 80% of new businesses fail within the first five years. These failures come from all the usual suspects including a lack of funds, lack of dedication, a poor business model, but a new survey suggests that the number one reason small businesses fail is that they grow too fast too soon.
Growing too fast...
Turn Loyal Customers into Super Fans and Reap the...
Spring appears to have finally emerged from the dreary fog of winter. In neighborhoods across the country people are spending hours outside getting their hands dirty with a little gardening. Small business owners should forgo the carrots and spinach this spring and instead focus on cultivating their super fans.
Super fans are developed from your most loyal customers. These customers are the...
March 2012
3 posts
Restaurant Owners Find Success as LocalUp...
Image courtesy of Flickr user lumaxart
Owning a restaurant is an incredible challenge requiring intimate knowledge of customer habits, competition and the local food industry. Restaurant owners are intimately aware of what’s important for their business and how their marketing efforts can increase sales. Unsurprisingly, these areas are just as critical for LocalUp site owners tapping...
Get Funded! Finding the Money to Launch
Photo Courtesy 401kCalculator.org
Starting a business is the lifelong goal of countless people from all walks of life. Unfortunately many of these goals go unfulfilled because people all to often assume they don’t have the necessary funds to get started. They couldn’t be more wrong. Starting an online business requires a lot less money than a traditional brick and mortar store,...
Opportunities Abound as Hyperlocal Advertising...
Photo by Richard of England
Recent research performed by The hyperlocal focused blog Street Fight has shed some light on the advertising trends for small and medium sized businesses (SMBs). With competition growing fiercer and margins shrinking, SMBs are experimenting with new and novel ways of acquiring customers. Daily deals, check-in offers, location based discounts, social media and SEO...
January 2012
1 post
LocalUp featured on BBJ's "Making the Pitch"
With the quick service restaurant industry in recovery, it is the perfect time to take a look at LocalUp’s place in the market. The Baltimore Business Journal has profiled LocalUp Solutions in its “Making the Pitch” section, dedicated to featuring emerging Baltimore companies tell their stories.
Sign in to your BBJ online account to view the profile
If you can not access the...
December 2011
3 posts
6 tags
Kyle Fritz on Maryland Morning Radio
LocalUp VP of Software Development, Kyle Fritz, was a featured speaker on today’s Maryland Morning radio show, discussing the topic: “Making the Classroom Safe for Twitter”
Listen to the full version and/or radio edit HERE
Licensee Spotlight :: Katie from HungryHoo
Katie McNally, UVA student and Account Exec for LocalUp Owned, HungryHoo.com, answers our questions in this Licensee Spotlight!
—
Where are you from?
I’m from Roanoke, Virginia but I spend most of the year in Charlottesville where I am a student at the University of Virginia.
How did you find out about LocalUp?
I am a columnist for the student newspaper, The Cavalier Daily and last...
November 2011
3 posts
LocalUp... From the Restaurant Owner POV
Here at LocalUp, we were curious to know how a restaurant owner really experiences our software, value adds, and team. We also wanted to see how that experience differs for a “Mom & Pop” local restaurant and a large franchise.
Director of LionMenus, Brittany Karcher, tapped the owner of her local Papa Johns, as well as State College favorite, Fresh Harvest Kafe, to answer our...
WatchLocalUp CEO, Chris Jeffery, was featured on ABC’s Good Morning Baltimore to discuss our company owned site, EatBmore.com! - watch the video above or go directly to ABC2’s site: http://lclup.com/tamkwM
Licensee Spotlight :: Jeff from HungryRams.com
Jeff Marcus, the tornado behind HungryRams.com, as well as a local restaurant owner, answers our questions in this Licensee Spotlight!
—
Where are you from?
I am from Pittsburgh originally. I moved to Colorado to go to Colorado State University in 1989, and now I live in a small town called Brush, Colorado.
[Editor’s note: This was followed by a “go Steelers – boo Ravens”...
October 2011
4 posts
Just-Eat Acquires GrubCanada
Our last blog post was about Online Food Ordering as a hot industry - major rounds of funds are being raised and acquisitions are happening left and right… we didn’t mention the others in any specific manner, so why do we care about Just-Eat scooping up GrubCanada?
This acquisition in particularly interesting to LocalUp and our business because the founders of GrubCanada were former...
Hot Industry Alert!! A look at Online Food...
There has been a lot of buzz around the tech and business communities about Online Food Ordering. Major players, GrubHub and Seamless, recently raised substantial rounds of capital and made large corporate acquisitions within the industry. LocalUp is still quietly flying under the radar, scooping up the second and third tier markets that remain mostly vacant. Everyone on the team has been out...
Licensee Spotlight :: Ben Weston from EatWC.com
Ben Weston, the powerhouse behind one of LocalUp’s newest sites, EatWC.com, answers our questions in this Licensee Spotlight!
—
Where are you from?
Originally from the suburbs of Philadelphia, Schwenksville (shhwanksville for pronunciation purposes) a small town about 40 min outside Philly. Since 17 my home has been either prep school in Massachusetts or a billet home in New...
Licensee Spotlight :: Bryan & Dusty from SBmenus...
Bryan Brand & Dusty Stutsman, the brains and braun behind SBmenus.com and BuckingMenus.com, answer our questions in this Licensee Spotlight!
—
Where are you guys from?
Dusty: From a high mountain town in Colorado called Aspen. I spent my last three years of College in Fort Collins at Colorado Stat University. After graduation in the summer of ‘09 I moved to Santa Barbara to hold it down...
September 2011
1 post
Adapt... and adopt social media for your...
Social Media is becoming more important every day, and it’s time you, as a restaurateur, understand how to best use Facebook and Twitter and foursquare, etc, to boost your business and remain relevant online in the virtual world.
Most restaurateurs are late adopters with respect to technology. I’ve run into local restaurateurs who still don’t have an email address, let alone understand best...
August 2011
4 posts
Baltimore Business Journal features LocalUp
LocalUp Solutions was featured in the August 26, 2011 edition of the Baltimore Business Journal. Writer Gary Haber discusses the company history, mission, and future goals. To read the article, visit the BBJ here:
http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/print-edition/2011/08/26/localup-seeks-5m-to-bring-food-guides.html
If you don’t have a subscription to BBJ, you can view a PDF of the...
Art of the Menu
UnderConsideration, a graphic design enterprise that runs a network of blogs, publishes books, organizes live events and judged competitions, and designs for clients, has launched a new site: Art of the Menu.
They are dedicated to cataloguing the underrated creativity of menus from around the world.
At LocalUp Solutions, we see a ton of menus on a daily basis, so we can definitely appreciate...
LocalUp Featured in Street Fight Mag
StreetFightMag.com, a magazine dedicated to hyper-local news, recently interviewed LocalUp’s CEO, Chris Jeffery. To view the piece, click HERE
5 Ways LocalUp Helps Restaurants Reach Coveted...
It’s a tough market… the economy is bad, people are spending less money, and consumers are wading through a sea of mostly-meaningless information on the web.
The Millenial generation of consumers (age 16-34) is a coveted target for businesses in all industries, especially restaurants, which are always searching for a way to drive guest traffic. Sites like Groupon and LivingSocial seemed...
July 2011
2 posts
According to TechCrunch, "...LocalUp Could Be Onto...
LocalUp is featured on TechCrunch today! Check out the full article at the link below:
http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/06/localup-wants-to-be-a-hyper-local-grubhub-for-smaller-cities-and-neighborhoods/
The Future of Online Ordering and POS Integration...
With the recent news of the Self-Service Order Interface Working Team, many companies in the online ordering space are breathing a big sigh of relief – I know we are at LocalUp. :-) Now what does that mean? SSOI is a long way of saying POS integration… an easy way for online orders to go to any point-of-sale (POS) system, which is how restaurants often manage their order flow. Since our...
June 2011
3 posts
Tech Cocktail calls LocalUp Solutions "One to...
LocalUp Solutions is featured on today’s Tech Cocktail!
Writer Monika Jansen discusses LocalUp’s hyper-local approach to online food ordering, our unique business model, and calls our company “one to watch”. To view the full article, please visit Tech Cocktail’s website HERE
LocalUp Rolls Out New Site Designs
LocalUp Solutions is happy to announce that we have just launched a new design for our partner sites. Check out a few examples and let us know what you think!
http://www.lionmenus.com/
http://www.dubvmenus.com/
http://www.hungryhoo.com/
You can check our case studies map to find an online ordering site near you or contact us to start your own.
Happy ordering!
Ouch – “The Single Worst Decision I Have Ever Made...
What a cringe-worthy headline on TechCrunch today – http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/09/groupon-single-worst-decision/ – and just before Groupon is scheduled to go public.
As the daily deals space has heated up, we’ve had a lot of people ask, why don’t we go this route? Why don’t we grab a larger share of the restaurant’s revenue? Why don’t we push these crazy deals?
...
May 2011
10 posts
"I literally use it every time I want to order...
There was a great article in the Boulder Weekly newspaper at the end of last week about HungryBuffs.com, about “ordering your food online in Boulder” Colorado. HungryBuffs is a great site, and the guys have done a ton of work to really build up the market out there. The proof of their success is in what people think about the site: “I literally use it every time I want to order...
Running your own local website
Running your own local website is not an easy thing to do unless you have the right business partners to complement your skill sets. There was an article on EditorandPublisher.com that describes how to run a localized site perfectly and it complements what LocalUp provides to its licensees. Their articles focuses more on local news sites, but the points that are made in the article apply to...
The Future of (LocalUp) Advertising is Integrated
tl;dr – With LocalUp, the content is the ad, and keeps things authentic. 20% CTR. Yeah, that’s right. Integration with online ordering makes the whole experience seamless. In a post on TC by Mark Suster from GRP Partners titled “The Future of Advertising Will be Integrated” found here, Mark makes the case that he believes the future of advertising (especially online) is one that helps make...
How to overtake a major brand as the little, local...
Given the nature of the localup business model, to date we’ve spent a lot of time in college towns. We try to get involved in our markets as much as possible and one of the ways we do this is by connecting with other local entrepreneurs. If there’s an organization for student entrepreneurs, we make sure to get involved with it. This is great because it gives us an opportunity to...
