Book of Cooks » Website Updates

Getting Started on Book of Cooks – How to Attract Potential Customers / Patrons

admin — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 21:40:46 +0000

You just signed up and are eager to start showcasing your cuisine, specialties, or skills? Here are some recommendations that will help you get started and contribute to make your profile more visible and attractive (see embedded presentation for visuals):

1. Upload a profile picture to let potential patrons/customers know that there is a real person behind your profile (very important!).

2. Create a 150 character teaser that makes your profile stand out from the crowd (we call it the “Refrigerator Pitch” as in “Elevator Pitch”).

3. Provide a street name and number so that your profile shows up on the maps and on the home page (see the “Address” field on your account).

4. Say a word about yourself and feel free to link to your website, recipes (see “About Me”). Think of BookOfCooks as a storefront!

5. Consider inviting a few peers, clients, and friends to write a candid review that will help bring your profile to life; as you know, testimonials go a long way!

ps. Remember to adjust your privacy settings to show your contact information (telephone or email)!

Happy Cooking!!

We’ve setup a feedback forum so you can tell us what’s on your mind.

Julian — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 19:50:55 +0000

We’ve setup a feedback forum so you can tell us what’s on your mind. Please let us know if you have questions, encounter bugs or if you come up with cool ideas that may help us improve the site. We are working towards a new [2.0] release of Book Of Cooks that will incorporate some new features and dramatically improve the user experience. Feel free to include requests for bug fixes, ideas for new features, improvements to the website’s user interface, navigation. Tell us what you like, what you don’t like. It’s super valuable to us!.

Oh! And you can choose to give us feed back anonymously or log in using any of the methods supported by UserVoice (for example, you can use your Facebook, Google, or OpenID usernames!). We greatly appreciate your feed back! Click here to be directed to the forum.

Website Improvements & Fixes

Julian — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:40:36 +0000

Posted by Julian

If you have been to our website today you may have noticed a dramatic improvement in speed. Indeed…yesterday, Luiz Lopes (Book of Cooks Lead Developer) flew us through a major server migration that we had been planning for some time, and then landed us safely at our new home in Media Temple. For a period of 4 hours Luiz was our own “Sully” Sullenberger. Awesome Luizinho! We have a long list of website upgrades and big fixes that we will be addressing over the course of the next weeks, and we think you are going to lo love them! Please stay tuned for more details.

Maintenance: 7/24 between 12 am – 4 am.

Luiz Lopes — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 16:00:47 +0000

We would like to inform you that tonight, 24 July 2009, between 12:00 AM and 4:00 AM EST, we will be placing the website on maintenance mode, in order to move it to a new server. We hope that this new move will help improve your experience on bookofcooks.com website, and help us better serve your needs.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

IDDICTIVE.COM: “Booking the Cooks”

Julian — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:12:57 +0000

IDDICTIVE by Mark Nagurski provides “a daily dose of innovative business ideas to inspire your entrepreneurial juices or soothe your insatiable curiosity”. Here’s an excellent article that he wrote about Book of Cooks today.

“…Visitors can use the site to find cooks in their area to deliver prepared food, cater an event, cook for you in your home or even work with you to create a great meal. Users and listed cooks connect directly via the phone number or email address the cook lists in their profiles, so the actual agreement might be anything that the two parties come up with. It’s a great idea. In particular, the chance for amateurs or part-time foodies to earn via the site could be a huge attraction…” [Read the full article on IDDICTIVE.COM]

“Booking the Cooks”

How to appear on the maps

Julian — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 02:14:53 +0000

Posted by Julian

A few users emailed me asking why their User Profile wasn’t appearing on the maps whenever someone conducts a search. So I thought I’d write a quick post to clarify this (there is also a Support Topic on the forum). Everyone who signs up on Book of Cooks has a User Profile. But only those users who activate their Cook Menu (My Account==>My Menu) become Cooks, and are displayed on the maps. If you want to use Book of Cooks to showcase your services and specialties and be listed on the maps, you need to do this.

It’s pretty easy and straight forward:

Go to My Account ==> My Menu:

1)Fill out the Refrigerator Pitch (the orange box)

2)Select at least one Food Specialty

3)Type a Valid Address (you can check if the address is valid by clicking Preview on the upper right). Without a valid address the system will not be able to locate your coordinates on the map!

The Book of Cooks Beta is now Live!

Julian — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 19:59:55 +0000

Posted by Julian

Our beta site is now live! You can get to it by clicking here. During the first weeks, the cooks who sign up (it’s free!) and become followers on Twitter, or become fans, friends, or group members on Facebook will be appearing (for free!) on the home page’s “Featured Cooks” module and on the home page’s “lightboox”(*) (it’s pretty cool! Free Ad). So if you are a foodie, a cook, or a caterer and are looking for cost-effective ways to get your name out there, this is a great opportunity to do that. In order to appear on the home page lightbox a cook menu must have a valid address, at least one food tag and a refrigerator pitch. Use the Invite PIN: “LIGHTBOX”. If you stumble on anything that doesn’t work quite as you’d like please let me know so that I can make an effort to fix it or improve it. Once again, thank you so much for your support!!! Have fun with it!

Thank you!

Julian — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 19:56:15 +0000

Posted by Julian

It’s been a long journey since we first brainstormed the idea of creating a food marketplace of the people, by the people, and for the people. Book Of Cooks (The People’s Restaurant) is almost a reality now, and I wanted to take a moment to thank every one of you who contributed with ideas, suggestions, all nighters thinking, researching, writing, designing or coding. A lot of work by developers, designers, copywriters and media producers went behind this first release, and a lot more work lays ahead. I want to thank particularly, Nikos, Manish, Vipin, Adri, Kat, Daniel, Satyam, Nicki, Neha, Ramphool, Jeff, Lee, Ryan, Josh, Steuart, the Lantern team, Christian, Les, Adam, and everyone who contributed in any way, shape or form to the Book Of Cooks’ beta. Thank you for your support!

Hello World!

Julian — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 05:10:34 +0000

Posted by Julian

Hey there! We’ll be writing posts here on occasion to keep you guys up on new developments and announcements as we approach our launch date (can’t believe we are so close!). We would also like to use this blog to share some links and articles that we stumble on from time to time, and that we think you might like. If you are not yet familiar with Book of Cooks please visit the About Us section on our website. If you have a couple of minutes, you can also watch our Video Tour, which we are posting below – hope you enjoy it. If you’d like to stay in touch with us as much as we want to stay in touch with you (a lot), you can follow us on Twitter of visit our Facebook Page. And of course, feel free to email me directly if you have any questions or comments. This is our website beta (first) release, and everything pretty much is under revision. Your problem reports, ideas, and questions are very welcome and will help us provide you guys with a better user experience. In fact, we have set up a section of our user forum where you can leave us Feed Back. Thank you for stopping by!! We look forward to staying in touch.