Articles by Josh Stone

1) Style Tips for Your Business Choosing The Best Selection of Uniforms
If you are working with a staff of males and females there are several things that you can do to ensure that your whole staff looks well pulled together. Of course taking the time to carefully plan out the uniforms will ensure that everything flows together perfectly, but this is not always a simple task. After all, if running a business was simple there would be no employees. Everyone would own their... » read more

2) Business Tips Should You Use Formal Wear Uniforms
Many business owners struggle with the idea of using formal wear when they are trying to pick out the perfect uniforms for their business. Yet there are many who do not have the need to spend the extra money. Additionally, putting your staff in formal wear under the wrong circumstances could greatly alter the overall feeling of your business and can potentially hurt you. This means you need to be... » read more

3) MySpace - For the Young or the Older
Looking around MySpace it may seem as if there is nothing there for people who are over the age of 35. The site is typically designed for most people who are young and looking for friends. However, upon a deeper look the site is perfect even for older people to connect with some friends and even stay in close contact with family and loved ones. This makes MySpace perfect for people of all ages. While... » read more

4) Performance Arts in Pittsburgh
Looking for a great night out on the town then Pittsburgh is the best place to be. From a wide range of performance arts available in the area, you are sure to be pleased with the outcome of all of the shows and options that are available to you. Regardless what your favorite type of performance art is you are sure to be excited and thoroughly entertained watching shows at Heinz Hall, Pittsburgh Post... » read more

5) General Pittsburgh Travel Tips
Traveling to Pittsburgh is always a great option there are so many wonderful activities that you can do, and so much stuff that can keep you busy for any length of time you decide to go on vacation. There are some tips you can follow though to ensure that you are traveling as safely as possible. First, always remember that it is best to travel with as little cash as possible. Take a debit card or... » read more

6) Humor in Customer Service and How It Can Help Your Business
Now, wait a minute. You are not a stage comedian or an actor. Your job is to sell something, not put on a clown act. How does humor fit into customer service? And that's exactly why this works: Everybody thinks just like the above paragraph. Because everybody thinks that way, nobody uses humor to ease a customer transaction. This causes the business world to take on a droning, monotonous tone: "How are... » read more

7) How to Plan Your Company's Dress Code
One of the milestones of a growing small business is the point at which you decide you need a dress code. It was all in good fun when you were just a shoestring start-up in a tiny store-front, and there was just five of you running around in jeans and polo shirts. But now you have enough staff that making them conform to a uniform standard of fashion. Sometimes, the incident is provoked by someone... » read more

8) How to Identify With a Customer in Your Business Industry
No matter what industry you work in, this can be applied to your line of work, especially in the hospitality industry. Nearly half the jobs held at any given time are service positions. It's the way our economy works. The vital function of helping customers get the service and goods they want is pretty much everything that keeps the wheels going round. Amongst the special skills this position takes is... » read more

9) How to Deal with a Hostile Customer
Any job which involves customer service will, before long, involve a few unpleasant encounters with at least one customer who has a problem about something. There is a notable difference between customers who have an understandable complaint, and those who seem to just seem to have a personal problem. Some complaints will have merit. For instance, if something was defective or missing. The chef made the... » read more

10) Entering a Culinary Arts School
Your kitchen career starts here. They say cooking is the first art. Before mankind learned to speak, draw, or write, he learned to prepare a meal. And this art is passed down to your generation, in the form of a wide and diverse field of culinary specialties to choose from. A cooking career is limitless; it can take you anywhere, and you can explore it all of your life and never find the end of... » read more

11) Designing a Restaurant Menu
When you're a start-up business with a shoe-string budget, that photocopied sheet with a simple list of your dishes was enough to get by. But as your business grows and becomes more successful, the time will eventually come when somebody says, "Isn't it time we got a more professional-looking menu?" Yes, indeed, a full-featured, laminated menu just like the big restaurants use will definitely be... » read more

12) Are You Brave Enough to Find Your Ideal Career?
Ok, it's philosophy time. Turn off the TV, close those chat windows. The world won't miss you for a few hours. What did you want to be when you grew up? Kids naturally do this; they try to imagine trying on different lives and decide what they want to do. They imagine very fanciful things when they are very young, and they lower their expectations until their teen age years, when they have enough... » read more

13) Advice on Picking and Developing a Career
Have you wondered why it seems some people are so successful in their career and others are not? This is true, since most people who are unsuccessful in their career give up their hopes and dreams. These are the people who settle for something lower than their own capabilities would qualify them for. They did not do the things which people who are successful in their career do, which is keeping their focus... » read more

14) What Every Prep Chef Should Know About Cutlery
Ah, the prep chef, happily whacking away with a steady rhythm. You have no worries about how the Hollandaise sauce is going to turn out, nor how fussy those customers at table seven are. All you have to worry about is making food the right consistency before passing it off to someone else. You can go through the day in an almost Zen-like calm, just tending to the little stuff. The best restaurants will... » read more

15) The Origins of Tea
Besides water, green tea is the most consumed beverage in the world. It is estimated that over one-half of the world's population drinks tea in some form. Although England and other Northern European countries share a liking for tea with the rest of the world, they don't actually call it by the same word. It is instead called "cha", the Chinese word for it. Chinese history attributes the origin of the... » read more

16) Dressing Your Restaurant for Success
Marketing your restaurant is something where you tend to turn your sites to the external. You think of signs, billboards, and radio and TV advertisements. But you might want to look inside as well; your restaurant staff could be attired in such a way that it builds up brand identity. In addition to increasing productivity, uniforms will boost your brand awareness. Take an example: the Starbucks barista.... » read more

17) The Ten Pet Peeve Customers of Restauranteurs
OK, we may be smiling chefs, well-mannered waiters, magnificent managers and suave sommeliers, but under our professional guise we're human beings. Things get under our skin, too. Particularly these ten habits of highly annoying customers, culled from an industry-wide survey. See how these stack up to your own experience, when difficult customers make you want to dash the dishes to the floor and walk out... » read more

18) Creative Costume and Uniform Ideas for Your Restaurant Bar or Resort Business
Everywhere we look, we see the businesses such as restaurants, bars, resorts and casinos, that theme their uniform style to match their business' atmosphere. That's all well and good, but sometimes you might think that the uniform styles out there are a little homogenized. Of course, it's understandable that you want to keep to a professional image at all times. But you might also be feeling more creative,... » read more

19) Fascinating Facts About Tea For Restaurants
I still remember the best cup of tea I ever had. It was at a Mediterranean restaurant on the Las Vegas strip. After an excellent meal of falafel, hummus, baba ganouch, pita bread, and lamb, I ordered the tea and was presented with a pot of steaming water and a container of fresh, wet whole tea leaves. You let the tea leaves sit in a basket strainer in the cup to steep until the desired strength. It was... » read more

20) Why Local Produce is Better
Today's food buyer has choices which previous generations never dreamed of. At any given time of the year, they can go to the wholesaler and buy produce that was once only seasonally available. You can have strawberries in November and corn on the cob in February. One is tempted to throw restraint to the wind, offering a year-round menu of unlimited potential. The problem with this, is your offering... » read more

21) A Guide to Exotic Fruits For Chefs
We will explore the fruit varieties of the world which are far removed from the usual fare. For the bold, the creative, or the daring gourmand... Hautbois - Or "musk strawberry" to we common folk. Musk strawberries grow wild in forests in and around Central Europe, Scandinavia, and Russia. The gourmet community has held it in esteem for decades for its intense aroma and flavor which is comparable to a... » read more

22) The Top Ten Myths About Fat Burning
Ah, you chefs! You tempt us with your delicacies, engross us with your artistic mastery, and seduce our senses into submission. That's what you hear a lot of, isn't it? The subject of weight gain and loss seems to come up a lot whenever there's a chef in the room. But if you really want a response or two, here's some myths about weight loss that the general public just keeps hanging on to. Put them to... » read more

23) A Chefs Guide to Sweeteners
The Industrialized world is obsessed with diets, and yet has the raging sweet tooth of a child. Everybody wants non-fattening food that tastes fat. And so here we are in the industrial age, working our laboratories round-the-clock to come up with a way to have the taste without the calories. This has given us a host of sort-of, one-off-from, and flat-out substitute sugars. The bewildering variety of them... » read more

24) Chef Career - A Chefs Guide to Exotic Fruits
Ah, the everyday fruits at the English-speaking table: apple, orange, banana. Tangerine, peach, strawberry. Maybe a bunch of grapes or the occasional kiwi. As anyone can see, the fruit table at the typical banquet is stuck in a rut. We haven't seen nearly enough exotic offerings to invigorate our taste buds with a new experience... and sometimes challenge our notion of fruit entirely! Here, we present a... » read more

25) A Restauranteur's Eye View of Vodka
To get one thing straight off the top, there should be two ingredients in vodka: water and alcohol. Barring any flavoring ingredients, of course. And the two kinds of ingredients you can get the alcohol from are either potatoes or grain. Potatoes were used first, in part because potatoes are almost the only crop they can get to grow in the far northern end of Russia. But using potatoes led to cases of... » read more

26) All About Honey
The consumption of honey by humans is an anomaly; honey is the only food produced by insects which humans eat, and is one of the only two substances produced organically whose sole purpose is for food - the other is mammalian breast milk. As a result, bees are the insect most commonly domesticated by humans the world over. History... As a food substance, honey goes almost as far back as recorded... » read more

27) A Chef's Guide to Vegans
A "vegan" and a "vegetarian" are two different things. That's one thing you have to get straight. While most vegetarians simply refrain from eating anything that had a heartbeat, but still allow eggs and dairy products, vegans go one further and exclude anything related to animals in any way, shape or form. This means that even though chickens are perfectly happy to lay eggs and bees are glad to make... » read more

28) Police Career - Linux Computer Systems in Law Enforcement
Law enforcement recently has been following the general tide of government and public service groundswell by seeking computing solutions in the Linux direction. Particularly in law enforcement, their needs match well with open source software. They have to work lean on a taxpayer's budget, and open source is free or low cost. They need top security, and Linux is still the highest-scoring operating software... » read more

29) Police Career - How to Keep Police Stress Syndrome From Taking Over Your Life
The law enforcement profession is legendary for its high stress. It is repeatedly in the top ten of most stressful jobs. And there's nothing like police work to make a candidate for 'bringing your work home with you', because you naturally encounter things on the job that take some processing in the off hours to deal with. The first tip is to lose the macho exterior. As John Wayne said, courage isn't... » read more

30) A Corporate Security Guide to Software Piracy
Almost from the first computer software commercially sold, software pirates have flourished. The international trade in pirated software mirrors criminal activities of other kinds such as drug trafficking - it has its own subculture, jargon, and connections. It is important to distinguish between stolen software and free or open source software. In fact, the vast majority of software available even... » read more

31) Casino Career A Reference Guide
A little guide to the hospitality industry's most flashy little subculture. Casinos have had their own little universe of jargon since their first origins. Use this as a clip 'n' save reference. All In - When a player has bet all of their remaining chips. Ante - The opening bet placed into the pot by all players of a poker round. Bad Beat - When one very high hand is beaten by an even higher one in... » read more

32) Restaurant Guide - Making Your Own Wine
One of the things that can put your restaurant on the map is serving your own in-house wine. Perhaps with some skill, you can compete with a name label. But even if your wine-making skills don't put you in ranks with the top French vineyards, the point is that you make your own house wine! Wine-making supplies are readily available through most larger culinary supply stores, and it's surprising how little... » read more

33) Hospitality Management Career - 10 Ways to be a Bad Hospitality Boss
With the low margins in the hospitality industry, you need every edge you can get. You've probably seen many articles on how to spot the bad employees. But what about warning signs that your own performance is lagging? Here's a list of mistakes to avoid which will help you get the most out of your employees and your hospitality business, be it restaurant, banquet, hotel, or casino. Have no annual plan.... » read more

34) Commonly Used Spices A Chef's Spice Guide
This guide is a quick look-up table for the commonly-used spices. Oregano - A peculiar leafy green herb, in that it is one of the few which is more potent dried than fresh. Taste like a cross between mint and lemongrass. Famously used in much of Italian food, especially pizza and pasta sauces, but also good on salads and noticeably complimentary to tomatoes. Oregano also comes in a Mediterranean... » read more

35) The Impact of 21st Century Culture on Law Enforcement
Not since the 1960's have so many commonly held assumptions about society been so scattered in such a short time. The past decade has seen shake-ups on virtually every front, leaving many law enforcement professionals feeling just a tad nervous. Where should your sympathies and allegiances lie? Which way are the public's attitudes going? The rise of big corporations and their heavy-handed influence on... » read more

36) A Unique Chefs Spice Reference
This guide is a quick look-up table for the commonly-used spices. Fenugreek - This is native to India and southern Europe. The part used is the hard, yellow-brown seeds that come from the plant's pods. Widely used in Indian and Mediterranean cooking, this plant has a confusing array of characteristics. By itself, it has a bitter taste, but ground and diluted it is found in everything from curry powders... » read more

37) Refined Field Interrogation Techniques For Security Careers
If you are already familiar with the Reid technique and some of the standard methods of obtaining information from an uncooperative subject, here are some extra tips. Be warned up front: coercion in any form is still illegal and immoral. With the correct use of psychological tactics, however, regular ordinary field interrogation is all you need anyway. These are all techniques that are useful in acquiring... » read more

38) Digital Music Piracy A Case Study For Law Enforcerment Careers
Amidst all the huge media press devoted to the subject of the recording industry's difficulty in protecting their interest in the new digital age, one might wonder - who are these people who download music? What is their motivation? Presented here, a case study. This is a composite study which blends together the reported experiences of many music downloaders - the study is true to a large part of this... » read more

39) A Chef's Spice Reference
This guide is a quick look-up table for the commonly-used spices. Allspice - Comes from the unripe berry of the Pimienta dioica tree. It has a flavor that is similar to cinnamon, pepper, cloves, and nutmeg, and so it gets its name from the effect of combining those flavors. Mainly used in the "Jamaican Jerk" seasoning blend. Also used in everything from curry to sausage recipes. You can't get spicier... » read more

40) A Pondering About Absinthe for Bartenders
Absinthe is one of those historic fascinations that never quite go away. We were just on the verge of letting absinthe settle into the dustbin of history when two events happened. One, the Goth kids heard about it, especially that (whoever the 19th century poet they pretend to have read) drank it, which means they must have a glass immediately so everybody knows how cool they are. Two, the cult classic... » read more