We've Found the Perfect Summer Getaway with Island Way Sorbet

Summer weather is upon us and the temperature outside is heating up. Now is the perfect time to think about new ways to chill down customers with the coolest new product we’ve seen in a long time. It’s a sorbet product just launched by Pacific West Foods Australia who are pleased to announce the introduction of Island Way Sorbets.This isn’t just any standard issue frozen treat…far from it. Sure it’s delicious sorbet flavours, but the innovative way Pacific West serves up Island Way Sorbets is guaranteed to turn customers’ heads and have them talking and telling friends and family about it long after they have left your restaurant.
Ice cream sorbets are a refreshing way to finish a traditional pizza meal and are a well-known food that cleanses the palate after a meal, but Pacific West adds a novel and unique twist. Island Way Sorbets are an all-natural fruit based sorbet ice cream, but presented in a real fruit skin.The real natural half shells of fruit have been cored out, leaving just the shell then filled with great tasting, refreshing, low fat, natural fruit flavoured- frozen sorbet.

By now I am sure you have already looked over at their advertisement and seen how ‘cool’ this product looks.Your customers will too when they see one of your waitstaff carrying one (or three) of these across the dining area or see another customer walking out with one in hand. Because Island Way Sorbets come in their own dish they are the perfect takeaway treat too.All you need to do is hand it across the counter with a plastic spoon and customers are on their way with a smile on their face.

A variety of citrus and tropical fruit flavours are available allowing the discerning operator a selection of dessert options. Choose from tropical orange and mango, coconut or the refreshing citrus taste of lemon, lemonade or orange.The sorbet comes in a choice of cored fruit ‘dishes’ too, such as pineapples, lemons, oranges and more.With all of these different fruits and sorbet flavours, customers will never get bored with the same old dessert served the same way they have had a thousand times before. Like us, they will probably set their mind to try them all… over several trips to your restaurant. Now you have a great tasting dessert that requires no labour and no mess that gets attention and makes customers talk and want to come back.

In the summer months when everyone wants to look good at the beach but still want a frozen treat, Island Way has the perfect marketing point. Island Way Sorbets are a healthy low fat sweet and are 95% fat free (* Coconut Sorbet is 91% fat free). From an operational point of view, nothing could be easier because Island Way Sorbets are each individually wrapped and portion controlled allowing for greater cost control.This eliminates the guess work and creates a profitable menu addition that won’t vary in portions and cause your profit margins to fluctuate. Island Way Sorbets give you the opportunity to offer your customers a premium sweet with out taking your focus from your core lines. Island Way Sorbets come packed for your convenience in 4 packs per 1.56 kg carton. Each pack contains 30 pieces…that’s 120 desserts per carton!

As they say at Pacific West, it’s like “A Holiday in Every Bite!” To learn more about other great products by Pacific West, visit their web site at www. PacificWest.com.au. Island Way sorbets exclusively distributed in Australia by Pacific West Foods Pty Ltd and are available from your frozen food supplier.You can also call them for your local distributor at the following numbers:

NSW Phone (02) 9630 0188
VIC Phone (03) 9848 5144
QLD Phone (07) 3890 1171
SA Phone (08) 8357 6066
WA Phone (08) 9386 5961
Pacific West Foods New Zealand
Phone (03) 5487 693

Finally...A POS Buily With the Aussie Pizza Operator in Mind
Finding a POS system is hard enough, but finding one perfectly designed with the pizza operator in mind can seem like an exercise in futility…until now. Sorento Systems has created a POS system with several packages that cater to pizzerias that eliminate the stress.

The Pizza Starter Pack is a fully featured basic POS solution that can easily add other capabilities such as caller-ID and kitchen displays.The new Sorento Xpress Pizza range have been designed with small to very large pizza establishments in mind.All featured pizzeria packages include powerful, yet easy to use and manage, pizza builder software that can also be integrated with efficiency enhancing add-ons such as wireless handheld devices and kitchen displays.

The Pizza Kitchen Pack easily makes your pizza shop more efficient by sending orders directly to the kitchen.This solution has all the benefits of the Starter Pack with the addition of a high quality and robust impact kitchen printer.

Pizza Alfresco Pack is one of their most popular solutions. Sorento have combined the efficiency of the Kitchen Pack with a cost effective handhelds package that will really impress your customers and your staff. By using handhelds, staff can take orders right at the table and immediately send them to the kitchen and even process credit cards right at the table. This can cut up to 5 minutes off the time it takes to receive an order, give it to the kitchen and pay for it. Multiply that times the number of customers you have each week and you can see how easily the Sorento System POS can pay for itself in no time at all.This solution is perfect for all multi-level / indoor-outdoor and large venues.This solution has been specifically designed to save time and money.

Sorento Systems hardware includes: 15” fanless touchscreen POS terminal, thermal receipt printer, and a heavy duty electronic cash drawer. Software includes:Aldelo Restaurant Pro, 100% touch-pos with pizza builder and easily integrates with wireless PDAs, polling servers and kitchen display
All of their Xpress Hospitality solutions are pre-tested and configured to clients specifications and include menu configuration for up to 100 items.Additional menu configuration can be purchased.They also include 12 months telephone and email support coverage, Easy to use and learn, Sorento Systems has a POS for you. Contact them at 1300 790 241 or email sales@sorentosystems.com.au.

Foot to Mouth Marketing
The food and beverage retail industry is going through some of its best years at the moment, with more and more new businesses opening up around the country, it is evident that many business people, families and individuals still respect the need for good quality food at competitive pricing.

With this is mind, one of the biggest hurdles that we come across is how to advertise correctly to the general public. This is an age old debate! Do you employ experts to come in tell you who you’re demographic are and put in systems to manage your business accordingly? Or do you listen to what other people say, be it you parents or their parents, stories and recipes passed down through the family for generations? Or is just a matter of looking at your competitors and copying their mix?

It is important to realise that many things work for different businesses and by the end of this series of articles, I will have shed a little light for you on successfully marketing your business and its assets to the general public.

Allow me to introduce myself; I am Josh Ingham, Marketing Co-ordinator for the Essential Brands Group of Companies. Based on the Gold Coast we are the leader in Australasia in the supply, service, consumables, products and marketing of Non Traditional Automatic Espresso Real Bean to Cup coffee & Hot Chocolate machines. We are also the fastest growing Slush Company in Australasia. Our Brands: Espresso Essential and Essential Slush Co.

So where do we start? Today we are looking at the fundamentals of your business and then in the coming issues we will start to work on your branding and how you market to the customer. We will then finalise in bringing it all together to ensure that we have opened your mind to new opportunities, funky marketing and most of all; not just attracting new customers but keep them coming back!

Let’s start! The Pizza industry has gone from the traditional dine in environment to fast becoming a fast food and take away industry. In many respects, this is killing of the charm of tradition in the Pizza industry. But on the other hand, overheads are lower, staff costs are lower and overall the lifestyle is more appealing. Not to mention profits are greater in many areas. No longer are you relying on just pizza to keep your doors open but now are looking to value add your business with new products, drinks, ice creams, specials on bulk orders, meal deals, free delivery and so on.

With this in mind, who is your customer now? To be honest, the customer has not really changed all that much. With today’s work force becoming busier, we are seeing a bigger trend for working families having less time and money to go out for a meal, so they just get take out. Most families have a Pizza night set in their weekly calendar.

So first we need to ask ‘what are families looking for when it comes to pizza?’ Every business is going to tell you that their customers want different things...And this is very true, but there are some common criteria that we follow.

Customer Service
It is a common fact that customer service still rates as the biggest thing that customers look for in buying a product.
Price
Obviously price is a big influence when it comes to choosing one product over another.
Taste
The quality and taste of the product comes in 3rd on what the customer rates in order of preference when choosing products.
Cleanliness & Hygiene
A point that many people look as more of an internal issue, but to many customers, if they walk into a well kept, presented, clean and hygienic business, chances are they are going to purchase and come back again.
Quality
The overall quality comes back to the ingredients, the equipment, the staff training etc of the business and its products.
Presentation
Not only presentation of the products and packaging, but also the business as a whole, the layout of the business, staff uniforms, delivery vehicles, staff manor etc.
Healthy
You would think that this would rate a lot higher, but there is a pretty clear understanding that pizza is not a healthy product in terms of fat content etc.
I will leave you with these points and in the next issue we will go through some of the key points outlined above and look at how we can tie them into your marketing and overall what differs your business from the next.