In Gowalla Branding Coming Soon?

Looks like Gowalla is getting close to releasing these branded trip/badges/passport stamps I was talking about yesterday. One of the founders, Josh Williams (@jw) (not the one from KC), tweeted here and here today about the new National Geographic tips where they have allowed them to do this.

So when do the rest of us get this?

More Ideas for Locals

So my post about the Roasterie’s menu screens ended up introducing me to Danny O’Neill (the owner of The Roasterie) as well as Will Greggory (@wgpr), who runs PR and Social Media for them, along with some other food and drink clients in town. If you follow me at all on Twitter - you’re well aware of my love for food and drink. So Will pretty much has my dream job. Anyway - I had coffee with Will at the Roasterie yesterday morning to talk about those ideas. That’s where I met Danny as well - who appears to be 8 feet tall and was a super nice guy.

We discussed the idea of setting up a new monitor on the wall that would be more of that window into social media. It could run twitterfall (or something like it) on news searches, mentions of the Roasterie etc. I touched briefly on this stuff in my last post, and it sounds like something Will is going to push for. I’ve kind of fleshed this out a little more and expanded on it, like tapping into The Roasterie’s physical network to have group tweetups centered around events and hashtags, and I will get into those soon - but I kind of wanted to jump to a different idea. It was an idea I was thinking about for a different local beverage company - that I kind of thought would work for the Roasterie too and passed on a little to Will.

A couple weeks ago I heard one of the founders of Gowalla, Scott Raymond (@sco) talk about the origins of Gowalla, as well as the future of it, at Free State Social. I was not very familiar with Gowalla* at the time as I use Foursquare and just assumed they were pretty much the same thing. They are not. I won’t get into all the details about Gowalla and why it’s different - but instead just wanted to talk about one of their features.

*Every time I try to type “Gowalla” I type “Gowallace”. They should totally change the name.

In Gowalla you can set up a trip. Basic idea - I can join 5 (or more) different locations together in a trip. You collect a badge at each stop when you check in and when you have hit all the places on the trip - you earn the trip badge. The first people I thought of was Boulevard Brewery (@Boulevard_Beer). Seems prefect for them. Not only do they have their own base location (the brewery) where they put on events - but they distribute to pretty much every bar and restaurant in town. They need to set up trips all over town and reward people for completing them. Create multiple trips. A Waldo/Brookside Trip, A Downtown Trip, on and on. Even have a massive Marathon like trip that takes people all over the city. A dive bar trip, a fine dining trip. I can stop right...you get the idea?

These are things that do not have to be accomplished in one day, but over the course of time (except for a few brave souls that I hope flag down a taxi at the end of the night). Now to make this better - when you earn the trip badge - you should get something for it. I don’t know what - that can be figured out later. What you would like is for there to be a virtual reward given on Gowalla - that could be taken somewhere to cash in for a real reward. Gowalla is just starting to play with these types of things from what I understand - so I don’t see that option yet. But I know they have experimented with things in the past like this for people. The good news...Scott Raymond, one of the founders, is from Kansas City. So maybe he can be talked into experimenting on this idea with a local company on the verge of national attention.

You end up getting some good buzz for being the first person to do this. You essentially are giving out a reward/carrot to your customers. If Boulevard did this correctly - getting on one of these trips could be good for business for these bars and restaurants. Give them a sign/decal to put in the window that they are “A Stop on the Boulevard Beer - Gowalla Dive Bar trip”. (See if Gowalla will co brand those signs with you).

So that’s that idea. I mentioned to Will that he could pull the same thing off with the Roasterie. The Roasterie is not just a Cafe, but the premium coffee brand in Kansas City (and growing outside of KC according to Will). The coffee is in a ton of restaurants and served in other coffee shops all over town. So you can do the same type of trip - one that ends at the Roasterie for a free cup of coffee. Reward the other establishments that buy from you, reward your customer for seeking out your coffee and get some good buzz along the way (pun noticed - not intended - but noticed).

Will tells me the Roasterie’s plant and Boulevard’s brewery are right down the road from each other and these two local drink companies started at about the same time. I think you could set up some great cross promo coffee/beer trips together.

Taking this collaborated Gowalla trip idea further, I saw Chef Celina Tio (@crtio) while I was at the Roasterie (sorry I did not come by and say “Hi” Celina - you looked like you were in a good conversation). Celina is a James Beard Award-winning chef that recently opened up a new restaurant in Brookside called Julian’s (@juliankc). It’s one of my favorite places in town and the crispy pork shoulder is so ridiculously good I can’t put it into words (although she tells me it’s not on the summer menu - I’ll be stopping by soon to see if this is true). Celina prides herself on serving local Boulevard Beer and uses a seasonal brew in one of my favorite appetizers there, her Bowl o’ Mussels. Celina is an avid Twitter user and gets social media. I’d like to see the Roasterie, Boulevard, Julian’s and maybe a couple other businesses in Brookside get together create a trip. A trip that ends with me getting the crispy pork shoulder preferably.

I’m done.

Update: Celina says the Pork is still on

Another Update: Turns out Celina's conversation was with Brent Anderson (@andbrent) who does her branding. He does amazing work - check him out at andbrent.com.

Pssst - I was talking about you

If I write a blog post about someone, or mention them on some other network, I feel like I need to send them a tweet letting them know I was talking about them. It’s not that I really care if they read it or not, but If I don’t tell them about it on Twitter - it seems I was somehow talking about them behind their back. Like Twitter is the only real legit channel of communication or something. I't's weird. Or I'm weird - whatever.

The only time I did not do this was when I wrote a post on how the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum was missing the boat on social media. I had to send an email to them. I couldn’t tweet them, because they did not have a twitter account - and holy cow I just checked and they still don’t. As a matter of fact, go to their website and the only contact options you are given are mailing address, phone and fax.

I better send a fax over to let them know I just mentioned them again.

Too Much Thought About Coffee Shop Menus

We stopped by the The Roasterie Cafe (@theRoasterie) today after the Brookside Art Annual and noticed they had four 50+ inch  Hi-Def displays behind the counter showing their menu instead of the old menu board that had hung there in the past. My first thought was “cool” my second thought was “that’s stupid”. I mean, I guess it would make it easy to add or take things away from the menu - but that seems like a silly reason to spend that much money. My wife and I discussed it briefly. She agreed, it did not seem to make a lot of sense. I’m sure at this point she never thought about it again.

I starred at the screens for a long time thinking that something must be changing on them and I’m just missing it because I am looking away. So I looked up at them and tried not to blink for a minute, but nothing changed. At this point, any other person would have decided to move on and stop thinking about it.

I went a different direction. I started thinking maybe they switch one over to TV and show the news every once in a while. But looking around, over half the people in there were working on laptops. They probably don’t want Kieth Olberman yipping in their ear while they work/study.

And of course, few of these people probably get their news from TV anyway, but instead twitter and the web. So hey - that would work. You could run a Twitter search on one screen. Or maybe set up a list of hand selected tweeps to display. Local people, coffee people, mentions of @theroasterie. Maybe pipe in foursquare check ins in the Brookside area to the stream.

Or how about this…over half the people on there are on computers. Come up with a hash tag like #RoastChat (or #coffeetalk) and throw out a topic for discussion. Let everyone join in that wants and the others that don’t can follow the discussion on screen. Of coarse open the discussion to people not there as well.

As I’m writing this I just ran across this tweet from Jerimiah Owyang (@jowyang) who I just met at Free State Social (@freestatesocial) last week (yeah…I just geek name dropped. But to level it out, let me also mention that he forgot me shortly after talking to me and thought I was someone else not but an hour later). So these menu screens are starting to pop up in other places too - even though these seem to only show the menu as well. He mentions they could eventually show customized info for the customer. That could be interesting. But what about showing customized info about the customer instead. I have a frequent customer card they swipe at the Roasterie when I go in. So maybe they swipe my card and it shows my Twitter profile pic, recent tweets, last couple drinks I have ordered, etc. Maybe even auto checks me into foursquare or gowalla. Kind of introduces me to the other customers currently in the Roasterie. Takes that social media junk and applies it out there in real life and introduces me to real, in the flesh, people.

Or maybe that’s just too much info to be giving out to everyone drinking coffee. That might get creepy.

And this has been way to much thought on screens hanging on the wall at the Roasterie. I’m a little ashamed to have even written something this long on it. But they have to have bigger plans for them that just showing the menu. Because that seems like a waste of money and opportunity.