Athens Restaurant Starts Twittering For Lunch and Dinner
Maddi Mas Cafe on South White Street just off Courthouse Square in Athens has a new thing on the menu. It tweets, but it's not a bird.
While building the website, web designer Noel Jones was asked by Jim Carr who along with his wife, Vickie, own and run the cafe, to make it possible for him to post the specials daily on the website.
Jones runs his web design business off a MAC computer and Jim has a PC, so at first it seemed like it was going to be complicated for Jim to do what he wanted.
The reason it's important to Jim is that they have installed a new kind of oven, designed not only to bake but also to hold at a temperature for an extended period of time without drying the food out. "It's what every cook has wanted, an oven that cooks the food and serves it up as tasty and moist as if it just came out of the bake cycle, no matter what time the kids get home." says Jim, a who is from Sweetwater originally, returning to the area from Florida and purchasing Maddi Mas from Gary Allen, who wanted to pursue other interests.
Jim and Vickie kept the name, the painting of Gary's children on the kitchen wall, the chicken salad recipe and best of all, the staff. And they are all busy as they have expanded into serving coffee and cutting and selling Angus steaks to order as well.
The latest addition to the kitchen means that they will be able to offer dinners now with a promise of 5 minute service. Order and be eating or out the door with to go that fast, due to the new oven. They intend to have different meals each day, so being able to post the day's specials on the internet seemed important, no matter how difficult it might be.
Seated at Jim's computer, Jones had a sudden idea and within a few minutes had created a Twitter account. A Twitter account lets you post short messages and people can see them on your website, which seems like it would be the answer to Jim's request. But that's not all it will do.
According to Jones, a church musician, composer and publisher who learned to program websites in support of that work, "The best part of this is that anyone who wants can go HERE and "follow" the Twitter messages, called "Tweets"." This means that within seconds of Jim posting the list of specials for the day, everybody who has signed up won't need to go on the Maddi Mas website to find out what's for lunch or dinner. The Tweet will arrive on their computer and tempt their taste buds the rest of the day.
Jim likes the concept. "It's permission marketing. That means that people choose to get the little short Tweet message so it's not like getting spam emails that clog up computer emails with pictures and text." says Jim, "I'm like everybody else, I only want to get information I have asked for."
The new oven that holds food at a temperature is much more scientific that old fashioned steam tables that used to serve the industry. Having an oven that cooks and holds food at safe temperatures is a natural for Maddi Mas, a restaurant that had high health inspection ratings until lately, when it got the highest, a 100. Customers joked that service slowed down just a little bit as Jim left Vickie running the kitchen while he showed off the prized inspection hung on the bulletinboard.
So Jim has his wish. He just has to keep it under 140 characters, the longest message a Tweet can be. Tweets start today, Monday April 20th. You can read them right on the cafe website or sign up to get them sent to your computer. Jones has even included a fast loading weather map with Athens area radar and forecast on the site to encourage people to visit the Maddi Mas website frequently.
Maddi Mas, 10 South White Street, Athens. 423 649-3627 www.maddimas.com Open Monday - Friday 9-6, Saturdays 10-2.
