KENNY LAO:
With Twitter and with these other applications and doing the Facebook is that you can kind of control the message a little better and as a business owner you like controlling things.
ZAK PELACCIO:
It allowed me to open a forum and a discussion regarding pricing and purchasing and, you know, the workings of a restaurant, so it sort of lifted the veil a little bit. And I found that useful. If you like my restaurant, you know, my restaurant will have a Facebook page and you can—and if you sign on as a fan and you want to get updates, you'll get updates of what our specials are and events that are happening. And it's a great way to break down the middleman. We don't have to go through the, you know, the classic media, the means of, you know, a Grub Street or a New York Times or something to get the word out that, you know, we're going to have a party on a Saturday night, you know? You are a fan, you can go directly there. We're generating our own content.
KENNY LAO:
Hearing directly from the business owners about what to expect really lowers fears and gets people excited to go in. And, you know, listening to our customers is really, really valuable.
FRANCIS LAM:
When your customers start to feel like it's a part of their lives beyond something they transact with, I think that's when it becomes really interesting. That's when it becomes really powerful. And I think there's this idea of, you know, it used to be like oh, you would only go shop at your local neighborhood grocer. You'd only go shop at your, you know, you'd go to your local neighborhood restaurants because you feel like you know those people and you feel like you're a part of their lives and they're a part of yours… This is a way of sort of extending that natural impulse across geography.
(END OF TAPE)