Viva la independencia!!

2010 is the year of the Bicentennial Celebrations in Mexico, celebrating 200 years of independence from Spanish rule, with the Bicentenario taking part in two celebrations: the Bicentennial of two hundred years since Independence (1810) and the second, no less important Centennial of 100 years since Mexican Revolution of 1910.

The uprising pitted the poor indigenous Indians and mixed mestizo groups against the priviledged classes of Spanish descent, pushing them into a violent and bloody battle for freedom from Spain, and on 16th September the entire country celebrates the day in 1810, when Mexico proved victorious with food and drink all being a big part of the celebration of course!

But if you can’t make it to Mexico City, Tijuana or Guadalajara for the celebrations, and you are looking for a Mexican flavoured lunch in Dublin, then we have a treat for you!

All next week from 13th-19th September, Hugo and the gang at Cafe Azteca on Lord Edward Street (Christchurch) have a special Mexican Food Festival ongoing!

Owned by an enthusiastic Mexican-Irish couple, the aim at Azteca is to transmit knowledge of the Mexican culinary art dating back to the Aztec empire and bring you right up to date, giving a taste of today's Mexican culture. You can be transported to Latin America for lunch if you so wish!

Certain foods are considered representative of Independence Day, and the team at Azteca has put together a special lunch menu, which will change daily for the week of 13th-19th September.
One favorite is pozole, a soup made of cacahuazintle corn, pork or chicken, while other like “chiles en nogada” and the famous “pico de gallo” have the colors of the Mexican flag; And it just wouldn't be a party without plenty of tequila!

Check out the full lunch menu here, and the specials here, and be sure to drop down for plenty of Mexican hospitality, Latino heat, and some of the best burritos this side of the Atlantic!

Some Mexican phrases if you do decide to pop down:

Waiter/Waitress- Mesero/Mesera
How hot is this Burrito?- Lo caliente que es este burrito?
Two tequila please!- Dos tequila por favor!
Best lunch ever! - Mejor comer cada vez!

Also, check out Azteca’s burrito offer, and special lunch voucher too!
VIVA MEXICO!!

www.mylunch.ie brings lunch value to the consumer

www.mylunch.ie has been up and running for almost 4 months now so many thanks for all your feedback, support and usage of our website. As I’m sure you are aware, we are focused on providing consumers with the most up-to-date lunch information and the best lunchtime value. The former has been achieved through daily interactions with retailers, bringing what they are displaying on their daily specials blackboards to their personalised www.mylunch.ie pages.

The latter has been boosted by great offers being run by retailers exclusive to www.mylunch.ie. The www.mylunch.ie vouchers have proven a roaring success, with the right offer bringing consumers flocking to avail of it. 2-for-1 lunch is something a lot of people are liking the sound of at the moment, with 2-for-1 lunch vouchers available on www.mylunch.ie for venues such as Dandelion, The Baggot Inn, Oil Can Harry's and the Ocean Bar, and 2-for-1 coffee at West Coast Coffee proving very popular.

Retailers have benefited too because they are not really losing out on 50 per cent of a purchase. Consumers are appreciating the effort being made and end up purchasing drinks/coffees/desserts to go with their meal because they know they are already getting that extra bit of value.

We would love to know your thoughts on the value you have been achieving thanks to www.mylunch.ie. As was stated above, bringing value to the consumer is a key focus of our business and we will have more great offers (including more free lunch with the 2-for-1 vouchers) coming onto the site over the coming weeks, so keep an eye out on the website for these as well as the other great offers.

If We Had a 100,000 Users

So it’s like this. www.mylunch.ie is a new website, and like many new websites it was started with great intentions in mind. We want to bring value and choice to all our users, whether it’s a 2-for-1 lunch voucher, or a free bottle of water with your sandwich, we want to know about it, so we can bring it to you.

So far we’ve got a number of these deals on our site, but we want more.... a lot more. We want to ensure that any user of www.mylunch.ie, anywhere in Ireland, can find the best lunch value in their area, on any given day, on www.mylunch.ie. We want to ensure that our users know which retailers on their street are willing to go the extra mile and fight for their custom. We want our users to get a great lunch, at great value, but we also want to reward the retailers that are making that extra effort for your business. That way, they keep running specials, and you keep getting value. The best way that we can do that is by bringing them custom from our users.

So if we want to bring you the best deals in your area, then we need to let the retailers know that we have the users. This begs the question, what would www.mylunch.ie do if we had a 100,000 users.

First off, 100,000 monthly users may sound like a lot, but this wouldn’t even put www.mylunch.ie in the Top 30 busiest websites in Ireland, so it’s a good place to start. Most of all though, 100,000 users would mean that rather than www.mylunch.ie going to the retailers and asking them to run a lunch offer for our members, retailers would be coming to www.mylunch.ie and asking for a way to target our users. In other words, www.mylunch.ie would have the combined bargaining power of 100,000 users (are you thinking He-Man at Castle Greyskull? or is it just me)

So what could we do with all that power? Well at www.mylunch.ie our concern is about 2 things.... your stomach and your wallet, so let’s keep the focus on these.

First off, www.mylunch.ie is about real choice. This means bringing you a wide selection of retailers, from the convenient shop on the corner, to the bar down the road, to the Michelin recommended restaurant around the corner that you didn’t even know was there. With a 100,000 users we will get 2,000 retailers on www.mylunch.ie before the year is out. That means that wherever you work in Ireland, we will have the retailers in your area on our site, and we will continue to ensure that we display their menu updated on a daily basis (because that’s just what we do).

So let’s talk about your wallet (or purse for the fairer among us). To date we run a lot of vouchers on www.mylunch.ie, but here’s the thing.... whether it’s a hangover of days that have passed, or something deeper in the Irish psyche, we’ve found that people just don’t like using vouchers with lunch unless there’s a significant saving involved. So with a 100,000 users, there would be great benefits available with the www.mylunch.ie card. All you will need to do is check out www.mylunch.ie before going for lunch and see the retailers that are running special promotions for www.mylunch.ie cardholders. Then simply show your card when ordering or paying and you could benefit from a range of treats be they 2-for-1 offers, a free beverage with your meal, or maybe an upgrade on the size of your coffee. What you can be sure of though, is with a 100,000 of these cards in circulation in Ireland, every retailer will want to show the www.mylunch.ie users that they are willing to fight for your custom.

All of this means your week of lunching will result in better variety, and more money in your pocket. So if you think www.mylunch.ie having 100,000 users sounds like a good thing, then help us make it happen. Visit www.mylunch.ie and register today for updates and our regular competitions, tell your friends about www.mylunch.ie, become a fan of www.mylunch.ie on facebook, follow us on twitter, (tweet or retweet) or create a link from your webpage to ours and help us all.

Thanks for reading

A Week Of Using www.mylunch.ie To Decide My Lunch: The Outcome

So I decided it was time to put www.mylunch.ie to the test, the test being to select places to go for lunch every day this week based on the offers they were displaying on the www.mylunch.ie website and to see what lunchtime value was really out there.
Here is how I got on:

Monday
The Monday blues were in full force and I wasn’t feeling too social, so I went for a quick soup and a sandwich from Spar on Dame Street. This cost me €4, including a free 500ml bottle of water. A good start to the week I thought.

Tuesday
Feeling a little more social, I decided to meet a friend for lunch and check out Dandelion’s new special offer. They are running a voucher on www.mylunch.ie Monday to Wednesday of 2 main courses for the price of 1. I printed off the voucher and made my way to Dandelion. Friendly staff, great food and a super location. I went for a chicken fajita and fries for €11.00 and my friend went for the lasagne at €10.95, so with our voucher it worked out at just €5.50 each… Sweet.

Wednesday
Café en Seine’s new offer looked intriguing so I decided to check it out. €5.90 for Soup & a Sandwich and I was very impressed. One of Dublin’s most upmarket night venues offering great lunchtime value too.

Thursday
Feeling like something different yet healthy, I headed for Wagamama. They’ve a great lunch special menu and I went for the yaki soba for €9.95, which came with a choice of free drinks. As I said, I was feeling healthy so I went for the Apple Juice, but the offer of a free Tiger Beer was very tempting.

Friday
It being the start of the weekend, we in at the office decided to treat ourselves. We checked the site and found that FXB on Lower Pembroke Street were serving up a steak sandwich for only €10. These guys are known for their great steaks, so at just €10, this capped a great week’s lunching.

So I think that’s some quality lunchtime eating for an average of just over €7 a day.
Think about what you spent this week. Did you get the same choice & value?
We’d love to hear your thoughts…..

mylunch.ie, The Hottest Lunchtime Offers:

Our lunch specials and offers website, www.mylunch.ie, has been up and running since November and we’ve had a great response so thanks to all who have become regular viewers and users of the site.

We’ve set up the website so that it is as user-friendly as possible and easily brings people to the information most useful to them. Say you are working in an office on Lower Baggott Street, our research tells us that your main lunch concern will be what lunch offers are available in the surrounding area. A visit to www.mylunch.ie and a quick selection from our homepage dropdowns shows you what restaurants, cafés and pubs have lunch specials available in and around that street. A click on one of these retailer’s logos then shows you the lunch offers they are running for that day.

The fact that we update retailers’ lunch specials daily means it will definitely be worth your while to check back to the site any time you are thinking about lunch. As we mentioned in our last blog, we are about promoting lunch value, so if you want to easily know where this value lies then your best bet is to consult the www.mylunch.ie website.

Our stance on who to include on the site was to be open-minded. We want to cater for the needs of everyone; from those looking for a low cost lunch to those looking for the best value fine dining. People’s lunch venue preferences and requirements do change daily so our site has factored in these changes and everyone should be able to find something to their liking on any given day.

Our site and our business offer a new, original experience so we would be delighted to get some feedback on how people are making use of the site in fulfilling their lunch needs. We would love to know what influences your searches (e.g. would you primarily click on the lunch venues you are familiar with or do the places less well known to you draw your attention more?) and how often do you actually end up buying the offers you have seen through our site?



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It is Now the Era of the Lunch Deal

My concern for the lunch hour has prompted me into action. I know I said before that lunch was about more than just a meal, but if you walk around Dublin these days you will see some great lunch deals.

Admittedly in the past the off-putting high prices could have influenced my lunch preference for a quick take-away sandwich accompanied with a quick retreat back to the office. Now though things have definitely changed, and even though people might have less spring in their step about work I think they can at least find some comfort in knowing that they can expect greater value when they go out for lunch, no matter what their dining preference.

Myself and some colleagues are confident that people are recognising that this is the era of the lunch deal and embracing it wholeheartedly, and so we are developing a website, www.mylunch.ie, that will conveniently show people just where this lunch value lies and the lunch specials that are on offer in these outlets that day.

Anyone else been impressed by the newfound eagerness for business being expressed by lunch retailers through their updated deals and specials?

Give me back my lunch hour!

What ever happened to the lunch hour? I now find that lunch has become something you have to get over with quickly because time away from the desk is time away from productivity. Most days my lunch is eaten at my desk, in between calls to clients. I am sure many of you face a similar situation as a rushed lunch appears to be becoming the standard practice everywhere.

I can just about remember the days when the lunch break had meaning and was something to be treasured.
For me, with a lunch hour came:

-Less stress
-Greater job satisfaction
-A greater sense of freedom
-A more sociable working environment
-A chance to get some fresh air
-A work day that went by quicker

I miss these forgotten days and I want to start a petition for a reinstatement of the lunch hour. Are you with me comrades?!