Alberta Business Marketing

This is a guest post by Dee Mason.

In most large cities, if you say the term “street meat” to anyone, you will receive a nose wrinkle and a full-body shudder in return.  Everyone, at some point in their life, somewhere in the world, has visited a curbside food vendor.

Some are great and lines stretch around the block.  Some are awful, and are completely deserving of their "roach coach" nickname.  Brussels, Hanoi, many cities in Mexico, Rio de Janeiro, London, and Los Angeles: they all have long traditions of street food that is both excellent and cheap.  Recently, however, the Vancouver Street Food scene in British Columbia has begun to give these other "street meat" meccas, a run for their money.

People often look to Canada for ski deals but now they can think Vancouver for excellent street cuisine.  Restaurants can be licensed to set up carts all around the business district and the downtown area.  With more and more carts being welcomed to the street food scene every year (36 so far), the variety of offerings can actually feel a little overwhelming.  Though not every street cart operates at the same time, there is usually a wide array of prices and styles on offer.  As many publications have already noted with enthusiasm, the quality of the food available is quite high.  Food from multiple countries, and carts dedicated to vegetarian, vegan, or halal food abound.  While all are worthy of a try, there are a few standouts that deserve a special trip.

Korean-Mexican Coma Food Truck

Locations:  Varies - Check comafoodtruck.com for up-to-date info.

Serving traditional Korean food like bibimbap and kimbap, alongside Mexican-Korean fusion items like kimchi quesadillas, the Coma Food Truck offers a funky combination of tastes that is pretty addictive.  Portions are human-sized and reasonably priced, topping out at $10 with a drink.

Tacofino Cantina

Location:  Robson Square - Weekdays 11:00-15:00. - Check tacofino.com for more information.

Tacos, tacos, and more tacos, made ridiculously well, with great ingredients.  The Tacofino Taco Truck, is a bright orange vehicle, which specializes in producing great fish tacos, the "must-eat" chocolate Diablo cookie, and other Baja-style dishes.  Owner Kaeli Robinsong, recently launched the Blue Burrito Truck as well, serving a wide variety of burritos.  Prices range from $2.50 up to $15.00 depending on the food item and how fancy you want to get with it.

Nu Greek Street

Location:  Granville Street - Monday to Saturday - Check www.nurestaurant.com for more information.

Great Greek food is heavenly.  Nu Greek Street, which is the street vendor offshoot of the restaurant, Nu, is definitely getting it right.  Very tasty homemade pita bread, impeccably prepared meat, and fresh veggies, combine to make this street cart stand out.  They also offer a vegetarian pita that has received high marks.  Prices are very reasonable and range from $3 - $6.50.  Be prepared to wait in line a bit.  It is well worth it.

Other Places to Mingle

If standing on the street to eat is not quite your cup of tea, there are also some great alternative eateries housed in more traditional settings.  For coffee and tea aficionados, take a moment to visit the newly opened, Revolver, at 325 Cambie Street.  If you are looking for a more laid-back, "get together with friends" vibe, check out, Rumpus Room at 2689 Main St.  They combine great food with board games and movie nights, among other offerings.  For those who want to see and be seen, make a beeline for Sanafir at 1026 Granville Street.  The delicious Mediterranean cuisine and ambiance make Sanafir the king of hipster nightspots.

Whether you like your food on the go, or want to sit down and mingle, Vancouver has something for everyone.  Vancouver's traditional restaurant and food cart communities, have grown exponentially.  It will be interesting to see what culinary fusions evolve out of the city's eclectic food scene, and even more interesting to sample them.

---

Copyright © 2011 The Other Blokes Blog. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact admin@otherbb.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana

Post from: The Other Blokes Blog

Vancouver For Sophisticated Street Food

Technorati Tags: street food, Vancouver, vendor

Related Posts

• April 29, 2008 -- Stanley Park, Vancouver, Google Search (0)

Tags: Business, hospitality, street food, Vancouver, vendor
Posted in Uncategorized | | Comments Off

It is estimated that there are more than 6,000 wineries in the U.S., another 6,000 in Australia, and over 360 in Canada and each may produce 10 different wines or more.  Add in Europe and South America and you clearly have a very, very crowded market-place.  Even if you decide to purchase through your local wine store, the choice is formidable.  The BC Liquor Stores Product Catalogue, for example, lists 3103 table wines.  If you are one of those wineries, how can you try to ensure prospective customers hear about your wine.

Shiraz Wines Extra-ordinaires

One way is to give a memorable name that delighted customers might share with their friends.  However that has already been done quite widely.  Just look at these wine names from the BC Liquor Stores Product Catalogue among the 245 Shiraz wines that are included.

• Cabernet Sauvignon Shiraz – Yalumba The Scribbler 07 Australia
• Cabernet Shiraz – Long Flat 08/09 Australia
• Cabernet Shiraz – Majella The Musician Coonawarra 06/09 Australia
• Cabernet Shiraz – Shot In The Dark 08/09 Australia
• Cabernet Shiraz Pinotage – Winds Of Change Organic 09/10 South Africa
• Extramadura – Mad Dogs & Englishmen 05/06 Spain
• Lucky Penny Red Australia
• Painted Turtle – Shiraz Canada
• Shiraz – Shoofly 2006 Australia
• Shiraz – Barefoot California United States
• Shiraz – Binder Mitchell Gunslingers Barossa 06 Australia
• Shiraz – Bird In Hand Two In The Bush Mt Lofty 07/08 Australia
• Shiraz – Black Swan Australia
• Shiraz – Black Tractor 07/08 Australia
• Shiraz – Chapel Hill Parsons Nose Mclaren Vale 09/10 Australia
• Shiraz – D’Arenberg The Dead Arm 00/07 Australia
• Shiraz – Fat Bastard France
• Shiraz – Fetish The Watcher Barossa Valley 2008 Australia
• Shiraz – Funky Llama Argentina
• Shiraz – Gray Fox 2003 United States
• Shiraz – Henry’s Drive Morse Code Padthaway 08/09 Australia
• Shiraz – Henry’s Drive Dead Letter Office 06/07 Australia
• Shiraz – Kangarilla Glimmer Of Hope 2008 Australia
• Shiraz – Kilikanoon The Lackey 07/08 Australia
• Shiraz – Lulu 07/09 France
• Shiraz – Mollydooker Carnival Of Love 07/09 Australia
• Shiraz – Razor’s Edge Mclaren Vale 05/08 Australia
• Shiraz – Shotfire 06/08 Australia
• Shiraz – The Little Penguin Australia
• Shiraz – The Lucky Country 07/08 Australia
• Shiraz – Two Hands Angels Share Mclaren Vale 06/07 Australia
• Shiraz – Two Oceans South Africa
• Shiraz – Woop Woop 09/10 Australia
• Shiraz – Xanadu Next Of Kin Margaret River 08 Australia
• Shiraz – Yellow Tail Australia
• Shiraz Cabernet – Kangarilla Hellbent 07/08 Australia
• Shiraz Cabernet – Mollydooker Two Left Feet 2009 Australia
• Shiraz Cabernet Petit Verdot- Wirra Wirra Scrubby Rise 09 Australia
• Shiraz Grenache – Timbuktu Offshore 2008 Australia
• Shiraz – Cat Amongst The Pigeons Nine Lives 07/09 Australia
• Wild Horse Canyon – Shiraz Canada
• XOXO – Shiraz Cabernet Canada

Wine Labels On The Edge

If even extra-ordinary names are commonplace, how else can you stand out from the crowd.  The answer is to be ‘on the edge’ in more ways than one.  As the Vancouver Sun tells us, Holy Moly … Vancouver firm wins top awards for innovative wine labels in San Francisco competition.

Brandever’s wine labels earn a Double Gold for the labels produced for Blasted Church Vineyards in the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia.  This small Vancouver firm is making its mark in the often staid wine-branding field, with cutting-edge labels such as Swear to God (Chardonnay 2008), Bible Thumper (Pinot Gris 2008), Holy Moly (Petit Verdot 2008), Cross to Bear (Malbec/Syrah 2008) and Nothing Sacred.

“We do things that are out in left field and daring,” said Bernie Hadley-Beauregard, founder and owner of Brandever Strategy Inc., which won nine of the Wine Label Design Awards handed out at this year’s San Francisco International Wine Competition in June for its innovative labels for these made-in-B.C. wines.

Here are some of the winning labels:

The Double Gold Individual Label Award for Nagging Doubt wine, also of Okanagan Falls, also is on the technical edge of label design.  It uses codes on the label that allow the buyer to scan it with a smartphone and see a video showing how the label was created.

Brandever, which has won awards for its offbeat labels at previous San Francisco wine competition shows, also had 20 of its wine labels exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art this spring.

Perhaps surprisingly if you are looking for advice on Building A Wine Brand, then you might wish to listen to the news from India.

A global wine brand that comes out of India: that’s the ambitious goal of Pune-based Good Earth Winery, says Navin Sankaranarayanan, the company’s CCO.

This is a company focused on marketing. “We believe 40 per cent lies in the quality product and 60 per cent in everything else around it to build the brand, from proper labels to expensive manpower,” says Sankaranarayanan. “We are looking to create aspirational brands.”

According to Vinexpo statistics, India has become the 10th largest growing nation for wine consumption, in value and volume terms, for the period 2009-13. According to the grape board, by the year 2020, India has the potential to become a world player in wine.

Clearly the task of standing out in that even more crowded wine market-place will take much more than just innovative wine bottle labels.

---

Copyright © 2011 The Other Blokes Blog. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact admin@otherbb.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana

Post from: The Other Blokes Blog

Award Winning Wine Labels

Technorati Tags: brand, shiraz, wine label

Related Posts

• October 18, 2009 -- VTEA a special needs acronym (0)
• March 26, 2009 -- Alberta Tries Brand Marketing (0)
• November 12, 2008 -- Brand Canada – Aw Shucks (0)
• October 9, 2008 -- There Is No Space In Brand (0)
• June 26, 2008 -- Island of White Rock (0)

Tags: brand, hospitality, Popular, shiraz, wine label
Posted in Marketing | | Comments Off

There are three essential ingredients to getting started with video:

• shooting video (which was the focus of part 1 of the series)
• editing and producing video
• posting and sharing video

Editing and Producing Video

Editing and Producing Video is perhaps the most challenging aspect of getting great video online for your tourism business.   It can be made a whole lot less challenging by doing things as efficiently and with high quality when shooting video.  The less edits you need to make, the fast your video production will be.

How long should my finished videos be?

If you speak to most people who watch videos online, shorter is better.  Once you have edited your video and you think you have a finished story, go back and trim even more content.  If you have edited a very good 5 minute video, chances are you will have a great 3 minute video if you trim back the content even more.  I like to think of video production as much like making maple syrup.  In the forest we start with 33 gallons of sap and distill that down to just one gallon of syrup.  We could stop boiling sooner and we’d have more sweet liquid for folks, but most people prefer a smaller amount of a better product.

How much video does it take to make a great three minute video?

In general, the more video you start with, the better the finished 3 minute video will be.  Sometimes, a video can be very good, with very little editing.  In general, you’ll only use about 10-20% of the actual raw video you shoot in a great three minute video.  That means 15-30 minutes of video captured on your camera and loaded into your computer produces three minutes of finished video.

What does it cost to edit and produce videos?

The vast majority of video producers will never in their lifetime need to purchase software to make movies on their computer.  The only real cost is time.

How long does it take to edit video?

For starters, plan on spending one – two hours of editing for each minute of finished video.

Do I need any special computer hardware to make videos?

Any new computer or laptop has more than enough power for anyone to edit and produce video.  Computers designed specifically for the task of editing video (like the MacPro) have more processor power so they can do most tasks more quickly.

Most people will find it much easier to edit video if they setup their computer with dual monitors – one for using the editing tools and one for seeing the video as it is being produced.  Desktop PC’s can easily add a video card which makes it easy for a second screen to be added.  Both Mac and PC laptops are ready to use a second screen just by plugging one in and setting the screen preferences, so you can use your laptop screen and an external one, side by side.

The most important consideration for editing video on a computer is free hard drive space.  Hard drive space is where the very large video files go while you are editing your video.  Editing Video and HD video requires a significant amount of free space.  This is why laptops are sometimes a poor choice for editing video, particularly if they are used for a lot of other tasks.  If serious about editing video, the smallest hard drive I would recommend for a desktop computer is 1 Terabyte.   Same goes for external hard drives for laptops.  Bigger is always better.

How do I make the best use of space on my computer?  What about backup copies?

The solution we have used for years in dealing with large video files is to keep as much space as possible available on the computer hard drive or flash drive at all times.  We upload the video files we are editing onto the computer, and once a final video is produced and uploaded to the Web,  we move the new video to an external back up hard drive for safe keeping and delete the original video files – freeing up space for the next project.  Digital video camera tapes are relatively inexpensive.  Most professional video producers keep the original tapes they used to shoot video as their back-up, clearly labelling the original tape with the date and video content information and storing tapes in a safe location.    If shooting video to a hard-drive or flash drive video camera, consider saving the original video files used to edit your video to a back up hard drive, along with the finished video.

What software is needed to edit video?  Is it beginner-friendly?

If you are new to making video, most computers come with basic, easy to learn, editing software that lets you slice video clips and move them around on a timeline, add simple video effects like titles and screen transitions, add photos and audio tracks.  If you are purchasing a new computer to edit video, use what James Cameron and his team used to make Avatar - an Apple Computer.  Most beginners find Apple’s iMovie simple to learn and use and it has numerous effects that can be used to add your personal touch to your productions.  It comes pre-installed on Apple computers and it will take years of production before you are probably ready for a more powerful editing tool like Apple’s Final Cut Express. When you feel like a pro, join James Cameron who uses – Apple’s Final Cut Pro, core component of Final Cut Studio.

On a PC running Windows, Movie Maker has come pre-installed on XP and many versions of Vista.  The new Windows operating system – Windows 7 requires movie-makers to download MovieMaker.  It’s free to anyone.  When ready for extreme movie making on a PC, move on over to Adobe Premiere.

I haven’t got any time to make movies, how can I get video online?

For the absolutely fearful beginner, online tools like Animoto let producers slice together photos and video into instant automated videos shows for free.  Although we produce and edit our own movies using software and tools described above, we also sometimes like to produce quick little videos with no muss, no fuss.  That’s why we subscribe to a paid version of Animoto in addition to our other investments in video production.

Where do I get music to add to my videos?

The easiest, least expensive and legal way to add free music to your videos is by using CreativeCommons licensed tunes from Jamendo. The music on the site is royalty-free, meaning you pay nothing to download and use these tunes in your videos.

Is it OK to add music from my commercial music collection to videos I make to promote my business?

NO.  Never.  Seriously.  Never.

Tweet This

Tags: edit video, hospitality, tourism, Video
Posted in Alberta Business | | Comments Off