Postagram Is the Perfect Marketing Tool for the Modern Chef

All members of the Hospitality Industry are aware of the great tradition inherent within our Industry. There is simply not a era untouched by the culinary tradition. From Napoleon's favorite cognac to the zen dishes of Kyoto's grand temples, the heritage provided by food and beverage is always with us.

Yet all that is modern is always with us as well. No contemporary property can function without iPhones, tablets, computers. In fact, sometimes it seems there is far too much 'modern'. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest - they are useful but they demand to be maintained and fed daily.

And while useful, there is often an urge to throw one's hands up and yell' "No More!", There is, however, one new digital service that can easily become a chef's favorite new marketing tool: POSTAGRAM.

Once on one's mobile phone, tablet or computer and at the Postagram site, the busy professional can easily create a high quality individualized glossy postcard, complete with a personally chosen image, digitally inserted.

Postagram then create an actually postcard and mails it to the address you list. Once there, the recipient can punch out the digitally inserted picture of your restaurant, cuisine or guests (complete with your original message retyped on the back). 

Postagrams can visually secure enjoyable memories, prompting guests to return again and again. What could be better: it's professional-looking, easy to create and inexpensive.

How inexpensive? It's a mere 99 cents to send a Postagram within the US and $1.99 to send a card internationally. For that small amount of coins, one can save a lot of time and still make a lasting impression.

But don't take our word for it: Try it out for yourself.

Click here and try it for yourself, free of charge. 

The cards are stunning!

Your Culinary World Copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel  2014

The Hundred-Foot Journey Charts a Path to More than Food

The best food films ask the viewer to consider questions beyond fixed recipes and easy menus. Rather the films with lasting value probe deeper asking why community matters and to what use talents should be put.

               Produced by Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey and Juliet Blake. Directed by Lasse Hallstrom at DreamWorks Studio

DreamWorks Studio has recently released just such a film: The Hundred-Foot Journey. Based on worldwide best-selling book of the same name by Richard C. Morais, the film’s producers include the Hollywood power house team of no less than Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey and Juliet Blake.  

Yet it is the value of the film itself that merits a trip to the theater. The film consists of circles of relationships that overlap between cultures and kitchens and finally the human heart.

The film begins in India where Hassan Kadam (played by Manish Dayal) learns from his mother in the family restaurant that adding spice to both food and life results in delight. But Hassan’s peaceful world is suddenly destroyed when angry members of an extremist political party smash the family’s restaurant and he sees his beloved mother die in the resulting fire.

Fleeing India’s political turmoil, the family relocates to Europe, hoping to find both peace and a new safer location for both their restaurant and their way of life. A broken car and an inspiration from above prompt the father, (played by Om Puri), to settle in the quaint village of Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val in the south of France. 

There is only one problem: The location for Papa’s new Maison Mumbai restaurant is directly across the road from Le Saule Pleureur, a Michelin rated restaurant. Madame Mallory, the owner, (played by Helen Mirren) is not amused to say the least. She is the embodiment of tradition, restraint, classic technique. From her point of view, here is just too much music and too many spices being used in that new 'foreign' restaurant across the lane.

Soon a feud of culinary tit-fo- tat breaks out between the two restaurants escalating in a second fire and hate graffiti on a wall. Though traditional, Madame Mallory is horrified at the violence and a tentative truce is declared between the 100 feet that separate the two restaurants (hence the name of both the book and the film).

With peace comes romance between Hassan and Madame’s sous chef, Marguerite (played by Charlotte Le Bon) and the awareness by Madame Mallory that Hassan has the potential to be a culinary great – if he adds professional culinary training. to the skills his mother taught him.

Again cultural limits are strained as Hassan’s father struggles, but finally, releases his son to the larger world of fame and fortune. Will the young chef succeed and what will be the cost? What will be the relationship between the two restaurants, between the two owners once Hassan reaches for his own Michelin stars?

The answers to these questions makes the film well seeing (and owning when available) but be assured lovers and cultures do eventually meet over the final truth of cuisine: What matters in the end is not critics’ stars or cultural superiority but rather understanding the nature of fellowship, both in kitchen and at the table.

This thoughtful film, which contains no car chases or X-rated sex scenes, offers a reminder that diversity is a gift, not a curse. Diversity provides an opportunity to learn, to change, to create a new - in short, an opportunity to widen our circle of understanding to include the whole world. 

Your Culinary World Copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel  2014