Time to Tune up Your Business

Properly prepared food is one of the most common concerns for parents and caregivers of young children. Babies and children under the age of 4 years of age need to have their food prepared in a safe and sanitary way to insure they stay healthy.

Food safety is not just about how you prepare a young child’s food, but also the way you serve your child their food. Our food safety article includes tips on the preparation, serving, and supervision of a young child.

Here are some more tips for preparing foods correctly.

1. Food should be cut into easy to swallow, small pieces. Especially foods such as carrots, hot dogs, bananas, and grapes. These can all create a choking hazard.

2. Limit the types of food given to the child. Some foods just do not need to be given to a child under the age of four. Some examples include: popcorn, pretzels, peanuts, chips and marshmallows.

Food safety is equally as important for school aged children. Think about the things that you give your child to take to school in their lunch bag. Make sure that these are items that can remain in the lunch bag for several hours without becoming contaminated. Also, make sure that you prepare the items safely.

Here are some tips for school-aged children’s foods:

1. Use an insulated lunch bag. This type of bag will keep the food cooler longer, ensuring that your child’s food does not become contaminated. You can even include an ice pack to keep items extra cool.

2. Make sure to boil hot foods. Before putting hot foods, such as soup, to a boil before pouring it into a vacuum-sealed container to keep hot in their lunch bag this ensures that the food is safe to eat.

3. Give your child instructions. Encourage your child to place their lunch bag out of direct sunlight so that it does not get too hot. Also, have them keep their foods sealed off so that they stay fresh.

Using these tips should improve the safety of all children’s food from birth through elementary age.

Children can learn about food safety and will know what is safe to eat and what is not. So, teach your children as you go along as well. It is too important of a topic to just skip over in your life. Encourage them not to take food from others which is not prepared correctly or if they are unsure about it. Saying, “No thank you” is a simple polite way to refuse food they are unsure about eating. This will ensure that you know your child is safe when it comes to the foods that they consume.

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Wendy Wood is the owner of Mommies Magazine.com, an online website geared to mommies of all ages. Wendy, and her panel of experts, share information on topics from Current Fashion Do’s and Don’ts and Parenting Teens, to Menu Planning and Health-Related Topics that covers all ages of family individuals. Can’t wait to learn more about Diabetes and other health-related topics? Visit Mommies Health Section Time to Tune up Your Business19694Time to Tune up Your BusinessWhen is the last time you checked under the hood of your business? Checked for leaks, outdated business strategies and inefficient process? After time, many businesses are put on autopilot using systems and automation that may or may not be creating revenue issues or operational inefficiencies. In today’s age of rapidly moving technology, educated consumers, an increasing competitive environment and an unstable economy, businesses need to adapt to survive. Many business owners who fail to incorporatetune ups into their businesses often find themselves in a reactive position when challenges arise. Here are some suggestions to tune up your business:

1. ExperienceThe Customer Experience

To ensure that your customer’s are being treated at you expect them to, it is a good idea to go through the entire process exactly as your customers do and take notice of the details that make up the experience. Is it what you intend it to be and what can you do to improve it?

2. Look for ways to automate

Evaluate what your employees are doing and the tasks that they perform every day. Often, there are ways to automate that will bring your business significant efficiencies and a streamlined process. Look for things like keystrokes how many times a piece of information is entered into multiple systems. Look for reports and paper and a way to use digital files. Look at your accounting systems, can you easily get downloads from your bank to easily populate your system or can you pay on line and eliminate checks and postage.

3. Integrate your efforts

As technology continues to move forward, the ability to integrate your efforts becomes easier. Look for ways to eliminate tasks from your operations and sales efforts. If you use outside providers or business partners, can your system talk to theirs? In your marketing efforts, can you integrate information from your sales efforts thru to your operations and to your accounting and follow up processes?

4. Watch your spending

In an economic downturn, many business owners immediately begin to slash budgets often resulting in a poor customer experience, loss of market share and missed marketing opportunities. Since most of your peers have pulled their marketing effort, here is a time for you to amp yours up. But if you do need to cut back, look for the best approaches to pulling back such as, marketing tactics that do not yield you desired results or business non-essentials.

5. Don’t cut price add value

Successful business starts with value and do not succumb to market pressures by cutting prices. Price reductions are difficult to recover from especially when the market rebounds. Your brand message is created by the value you bring to your customers; do no commoditize your brand by immediately cutting your pricing. Instead, see how you can add more value to your customers and create marketing messages that show your customers you care and what you are doing to help them weather the economic storm.

Taking the time to tune up your business at least once a year, will assure that you are moving with the times , keeping your business fresh and ensuring the relationship you have developed with your customer is being nurtured how you intend it too. If you don’t alter the way you do business, you risk not being in business in the long term.

How is your business running?

Kellie D’Andrea, The Positioning Coach, teaches small businesses how to attract, convert and retain more customers. She is the creator of the BLAST Marketing System, a program designed to teach you how to brand, lead and sell your products and services so you attract the right clients to your business. To learn more and to sign up for her free weekly marketing classMarketing Mondays go to http://www.kelliedandrea.com