Restaurants get more creative to lure diners

The economic pressures on consumers, coupled with high gas and grocery prices, are cutting into a popular American pastime: Dining out.

While not all Coachella Valley restaurants are struggling, many are offering discounts to lure customers these days.

Fixed-price summer menus — usually three-course meals — are popping up around the Coachella Valley. Early bird specials, two-for-one deals, happy hours and “kids eat free” deals abound.

Some eateries are getting even more creative

http://www.mydesert.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080718/BUSINESS/807180359/1003/business

Restaurants learn to Yelp

Restaurant owners have a new item on their to-do menu: Come up with a Yelp strategy.

Four-year-old Yelp is a San Francisco-based online community that’s become a budding force in the restaurant industry, and one that is not without controversy.

Using the forum, registered “Yelpers” can critique or kvetch about anything from taco trucks to gas stations, pedicurists to podiatrists, and the more strongly worded, the better. The site boasts 11 million unique visitors a month, a number that is up about 40 percent this year.

Restaurants are one of the site’s most robust categories: More than 4,000 San Francisco restaurants have been reviewed, some hundreds of times.

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2008/06/30/story1.html?b=1214798400%5E1660726#1

sduxbury@bizjournals.com / (415) 288- 4963