From Idea To Reality In Thirty Five Days - Anatomy of the TasteCasting startup - by Dan Harris

From Idea To Reality In Thirty Five Days

Thursday, March 19th, 2009 | Posted in Blog | 4 Comments »

Sleepless In Columbus

On February 14th 2009 I tried to sleep but I couldn’t. I had too much on my mind. The economy, friends who owned their own businesses that were struggling, layoffs and I was also thinking about what had happened just the day before. On February 11th, 2009 @cherylharrison, and @amandacallicoat along with sponsors pulled off a great tweetup at The Chocolate Cafe called the Sweet Tweet Meet.

Music Magic Meal

There were 112 people that showed up for this event. Music. Magic and a Meal. That day we had the worst rain, hail and wind storm you could imagine, but people showed up anyway. The Chocolate Cafe had a great evening financially and had mentioned the phone was ringing off the hook all week and new people were visiting the cafe. I kept thinking to myself that this turnout, and the resulting success for the restaurant was happening because our small group of socially connected and social media savvy people were informing, educating and promoting this establishment and this event.

8 Pages Later

I believe it was 4:00am when I finally crawled out of bed, and around noon I had written 8 page document titled Twitter Tasters. This idea was born. I had it in my mind that I could recruit tasters by offering them free eats in return for taste tweets. I wasn’t sure if it would fly, so I started twittering the general idea. “Anyone interested in becoming a Twitter Taster?” Within minutes I had more than 10 people responding. A few minutes later, I had restaurants, coffee shops, and even ice cream shops DMing me wanting to hold an event.

CbusTasters Was Born

Other twitter followers were asking to join. Within a few hours I had 20 people who wanted to become CbusTasters. I made the decision to start a new hobby. I would use social networking and social media to help restaurants, cafes, coffee shops, ice cream shops and, really, any establishment that has a menu of items to taste, get the word out. I ran the idea past @blantonious and @wyliemac, two very close social media friends, and that is where we discussed the name. We couldn’t really use Twitter Tasters, because we couldn’t use Twitter in a twitter idea. We also thought it was too limiting. Tasters could use any social media platform to get the word out. So we put pen to paper, came up with a few ideas. When we thought about what the team would be doing, which was tasting, the first word TASTE made sense. As we thought a bit more, we realized we would be broadcasting the message to our networks. Wa-lah. TasteCasting was born.

35 Days Later

Fast forward 35 Days. It is now March 20th. We’ve held two tastings, have more than 25 members on the tasting team, launched the site, have team shirts, have been interviewed by Channel 10TV to air tonight, launched this site and we have new requests from restaurants coming in daily to: Meet, they will TREAT, We will EAT, and then Tweet and Repeat.

What An Amazing Team

The CbusTasting team is a great! They really are the ones creating new opportunities for our local restaurants and helping to make my sleepless night all worth it. I plan to profile each and every one of the team in this blog in future posts so you can get to know them, follow them and cheer them on.

1. Who is TasteCasting?

We’re a fast growing group of socially networked people that enjoy connecting and meeting with others over food and drink and broadcasting our experience to our connected network on-line.

2. What is TasteCasting?

At TasteCasting we love to share our experience through social media and the technology available via mobile technology including audio, video, images and text

Business owners know, that traditional marketing, advertising and promotions are expensive and the benefits are not always apparent. In addition to cost these efforts can be extremely time consuming and a nightmare to coordinate.

TasteCasting was formed so that establishments serving food or drink could invite a team of the regions most socially networked people to a complimentary tasting.

In exchange the TasteCasting Tasters tell thousands of our collective connections on social media networks about the experience using text messages, links to images, photos, and video.

The media streams live to the Twitter followers online and the media will also be distributed to social media sites like TwitPic, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin, and the many blogs operated by the TasteCasting’s Taster teams.

The business owner can repurpose the media for their own promotion on the businesses website, newsletters, twitter feeds, and other social media.

The complimentary and promotional taste testing events build instant awareness for businesses, promote the business and encourage people to find, visit and buy from the regional bakeries, restaurants, cafés, diners, coffee shops, and ice cream parlors.

3. Why TasteCasting?

Why not? This is a way that locally connected people participating in social media can help a small business raise awareness, promote specialties, effectively advertise and encourage others to help small business owners and in turn help our economy.

There is also value from the TasteCasting Team members perspective. You get the opportunity to meet new people, , learn about social networking, gain referrals for other business, discuss best practices and learn how to use new tools that are available.

4. The Establishment Serves Complimentary Food & Drink?

Sure, the TasteCasting Tasting team gets to sample for free whatever the establishment would like to promote through the social media network The cost of a few samples is a small investment to make. This can also act as a focus group for establishments testing out new menu items. It is a win-win for all.

5. Where Do TasteCasting Teams Taste?

It can be any type of food service or entertainment establishment that provides food or drink. It will be up to the team to decide how far they want to travel within the region to conduct a taste test. The cost of transportation is the responsibility of the TasteCasting Taster Team members, not the restaurant owner.

6. When will TasteCastings launch in my city?

City teams are forming across the country. As teams form, people reading tweets, facebook walls, linkedin shares will hear about this through word of mouth. After a person contacts tastecasting via the Start a Team link, they will be interviewed provided with the systems and processes and the founding team will help them launch. Based on experience it takes a captain about 30 to 45 days to assemble the team, arrange tastings and launch. As teams launch we will promote the city launch on the site. Press releases will be written after the teams first tastings.

7. Who’s volunteered to be a TasteCasting Taster?

A group of Social Media members have agreed to learn more about and volunteer their palettes, fingers, thumbs and connected devices. In addition to Columbus, we now have team captains starting teams in Denver, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Tucson, Aspen, Pittsburgh, and Tampa and several more cities.

8. What’s Required To Become A Captain or Team Member?

To become a captain or team member it is important to have a large enough network that you interact with on a regular basis. The minimum number of follower’s, friends, fans, subscribers, contacts or links we expect is 250+. The network can be across several social media networks, blogs, forums, newsletters, or web sites you write for or update. This can include: Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, MySpace, Blogs (i.e. Blogger, WordPress, etc.) YouTube, Flickr, Viddler, Digg, or others. This is important because our promise to establishments is we will Taste and Broadcast to our networks.

It is recommended that Captain’s be able to write blog posts and better yet if they already have a blog they can use to enhance a central post on TasteCasting.com.

It is ultimately up to the Team Captain for a city to approve the team members. In several cases people with smaller networks have been accepted on to the team as long as they were willing and able to grow the network and interact more on social networks. In every city, and on every team there are people who enjoy teaching others about social media,and social networking.

9. How Much Time Will I Have to Devote to TasteCasting?

This is a volunteer, membership driven team. You can put as much time or as little time as you choose. As the founder I spend roughly 20 hours a week working on this project. Team captains will spend more time recruiting team members and working with establishments so I would imagine team captains spend about 4 to 6 hours a week initially. Once a team is formed team members will contribute and help the team captains find and book establishments, conduct administrative team tasks like keeping track of the team’s network size, creating name tags, talking to establishments and or potential team members.

In the cities launched so far team members have decided to meet prior to launching and then on a regular basis. In Columbus we met several times to get to know each other and we have now held monthly meetings and included networking and training time so newer members could learn from older members. The teams love this.

10. How Long Does A TasteCasting Event Last?

Tastecasting events are typically 90 mins. This will all depend on the establishment and the agenda they would like to showcase.

11. What Does A Typical Agenda Look Like?

At a high level the Agenda includes:

Arrive 15 mins prior to the Tasting

1. Team Announcement prior to tasting to include mentioning the Twitter # (hashtag) to use for the event

2. Introduce the owner, chef, management or establishment team.

3. Establishment contact talks to the team about the food, the establishment, the menus and what the tasters will taste.

4. Tasters Taste, Tweet, Video, Take Pictures, Interact with each other on Twitter or Facebook. Blogger’s ask questions of the establishment contacts for notation on their blog post or the post on TasteCasting.com - Have Fun

5. As the tasting winds down make sure to thank the establishment and all involved.

- “on behalf of the TasteCasting team thank you to…..”

6. Make this announcement: “Team – The post for this event will be posted to the TasteCasting site within 24 to 48 hours. As team members you will be notified and asked to post your comments, links to your blogs, photos, posts etc. in the comment section on the main post at TasteCasting.com.”

12. Are Establishments Interested?

The answer is YES! Once establishment here about the idea they have questions, but they are highly interested. It is a win win for the establishments and the tasters. The tasters taste food for free, and the establishments have their message, their site, images of the featured food distributed to the team’s network.

13. How does it work? (This will evolve over time.)

1. The TasteCasting Taster website powered by Qlubb will be the portal for the captains and tasters to post the establishment’s offer of a TasteCasting Tasting date, time, location, and number of TasteCasters they would like to host.

2. The TasteCasting Tasting offer will be available on the Taster website and the team will be assembled by first come, first serve online RSVPs.

3. A TasteCasting Tasting Team Captain or Co-Captains needs to be appointed for each event. The role of the Captain(s) is to make sure the team is introduced to one another and to the establishment’s representative. Captains are also encouraged to make sure the team continues to Twitter, post the videos, and photographs after the event. Last but not least the captain(s) will be required to follow-up via e-mail to deliver all links to the establishments contact following the event.

14. What Do We Wear?

TasteCasting team members are encouraged to wear appropriate clothing for the venue you’re invited to. This can include TasteCasting apparel, name tags, or badges to the event so the establishment knows your affiliation to TasteCasting. Shirts in a variety of styles and colors are available for sale on the TasteCasting store.

15. What Is The Role Of The Establishment?

The establishment representative is your host. In addition to the tasting, the representative may provide the TasteCaster Tasting Team with a behind the scenes tour, introduce you to the owners, tell you the stories of how they started and introduce you to the staff. It will be important to capture as much of the experience in twitter messages, videos, and photos to be able to share with your networks.

It will be up to the establishment what they want to serve and promote as well as how much food and drink they want to provide as a part of this event. The experience that the owner wants the TasteCaster Tasting team to have is up to the establishment.

16. What Are The Roles Of The TasteCaster Tasting Team?

The Team should get to know one another, and actively engage in the tasting and hold each other accountable for making sure everyone is

“Tasting – Tweeting – Taking Notes, Asking Questions interacting with one another throughout the tasting. Video, images and audio will be posted to the TasteCasting.com site and broadcast to the various social media sites.

17. What If You Don’t Like The Taste?

TasteCasting Teams receive tastes of establishment food and/or beverage at no cost. They are encouraged to share their experience good, bad or indifferent via the Social Web and to state their own, genuine opinion.

My goal for this idea is to HELP small business owners. Please remember – Everyone’s tastes, likes, and dislikes are different. If you or other team members experience something you don’t like we will take the opportunity to tell the establishment representative during the tasting. We can HELP them with our honest opinion.

Because we’re invited guests to the establishment and we are being served the selections – in some cases we may be a focus group for new menu items.

I strongly encourage anyone who joins the team and or writes blogs or comments to be constructive in your communications.

18. What do we do if we have an opinion about the food or establishment or the venue?

IF there is something that you do not like it would be helpful and extremely valuable to provide constructive criticism directly to the establishment. If the food is too salty, the bathrooms are in disorder, the food is too hot or cold tell the establishment.

19. How Do You Measure TasteCasting Tasters network, quality and value?

For each TasteCasting Taster several tools can be used to define what level of network they have and the quality of the network. The following tools can be used.

1. Check followers on the various sites.

2. Run userid through twitterholic: http://twitterholic.com/

3. Run userid through twittergrader: http://twitter.grader.com/

4. Use “What’s Your Tweet Worth.

20. What Are The Short-Term Goals?

Launch successfully in Columbus and then recruit founding team captains in cities all across America and around the world.

21. What Are The Long-Term Goals?

The long-term goal would be to build teams in all major cities, try new menu items, new venues, revisit previous locations and help the restaurant owners get their message out via the social media event we call TasteCasting Tastings.

22. How Will This Be Supported? How Will It Grow?

As a way to support and grow the idea nation-wide, pay for domains, website development, hosting, coordination and administration there will eventually be a small monthly or annual taster membership fee and for establishments an optional and affordable subscription-based enhanced business profile section and spot banner ads available so the establishment can position and feature their establishments in line with the tweets, video, and photos taken and place links, maps, hours of operation, and menus on the site in exchange for becoming a sponsor of TasteCastings.

23. Can TasteCasting Tasters Benefit Financially?

If the TasteCasting network of establishment and tasters continues to grow we will consider rolling out an advertising profit sharing opportunity for people who are interested in becoming independent agents.

24. My Hope, My Wish, My Dream

My hope is that this helps business owners promote their establishment, food and drink in an affordable, efficient and effective way.

My wish is for this idea to grow into a national recognized sensation that helps business owners, AND, provides a tasty free option for social networkers to get out, get to no one another in small groups, help new social media friends learn how to use social media. learn from each other and use the incredible social media tools available to improve their lives and help others.