Today’s blog is by Margaret Stewart, Director of HR and Administration at SafeSourcing Inc.

You may have noticed while researching topics or just browsing through videos online that there are topics that say “trending”. So, what does that really mean? Like any trend, it is something that is growing in popularity, most likely at a higher rate than normal. Sometimes topics or videos “trend” due to recent media coverage and a large number of people are seeking more information. Sometimes, though, the trending topics seem obscure. Is it possible that “trending” could be based on more than popularity alone?

The short answer is yes. You can, with a certain amount of money, pay to have your video, tweet, or topic show “trending” in certain platforms. The idea behind this is that if your chosen topic trends enough, you will get a larger amount of exposure, thus increasing personal ad revenue, site traffic, and simply gaining a larger audience of potential customers.

While this may seem entirely good, there can adverse effects. Let’s say your topic is trending and many people are exposed to it. What would happen if, say, you have a typo or bad grammar, or even worse – wrong information? Then any positive exposure you had hoped for is likely turned to negative and negative exposure can actually lessen your customer base. With the overwhelming power of social media, someone is able to expose wrongdoings like corruption in civil services or blatant discrimination, yet they can also resurrect a beloved television show or spread positivity of doing good deeds for others. So, being careful about what you present is important. We at SafeSourcing can help with your trending needs or help you achieve the trending goal of cutting costs without sacrificing quality of service.

For more information on how SafeSourcing can help your procurement efforts, or on our Risk

Free trial program, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative. We have an entire team ready to assist you today.

Today’s post is from our SafeSourcing Archives

Nobody hates workplace discipline more than those that are forced into having to dole it out. For management, performing disciplinary tasks are time consuming, awkward, personally taxing, and carry a huge opportunity cost. However, the need for disciplinary action can be reduced by getting ahead of the problem through investment as a preventative measure, and with exponentially better return compared to the alternative.

Most infractions can be reduced to shortcomings in SELF-discipline: Wasting company time, miss-management of schedule, not learning best practices, tardiness, lack of effort, lack of respect, etc. In these common examples, improving self-discipline proactively, prevents the need for discipline reactively. Self-discipline is not just a character trait to be valued in our personal lives; it’s a worthwhile investment for any company to make in its workforce. Although there are many different approaches to improving self-discipline, my research has found several recommended practices common to most approaches, shared below:

•  Do an assessment of your self-control: How “in control” of your life do you feel? When you have a goal, do you always accomplish it? Or do you feel rolled around by whatever random thought, unhealthy food, uncontrollable desire, distraction or consequence of poor planning might get in your way? Are your circumstances in control of you? If the answer is yes, you’ve found the reason to look seriously at the rest of the steps below, and identified their targets.
• Increase delayed/deferred gratification: Avoid activities of instant gratification for a while, with one target at a time. Rather than going out to eat: Cook a meal. Instead of buy: Build. Instead of streaming the movie: Read the book. Go throughout the day looking for opportunities to practice delayed gratification, find things you have to “earn” before you get the reward. Start with small things. The point here is to improve your ability to wait for the payoff. Once you can apply that to small goals with short waiting periods, you’ll can keep building up until you are able to accomplish anything no matter how long the investment period, or how hard the work..

• Increase “grit”:  Angela Duckworth defines grit as “perseverance and passion for long-term goals”. This trait is not the same as delayed gratification, but the two do depend on each other. Grit is a little bit darker, in that it deals with maintaining the belief in our abilities and a positive outcome, in the face of failure or hardship. How do we increase grit if our “grit score” is low (you can take a survey that will score you here https://sasupenn.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_06f6QSOS2pZW9qR)? Small wins are your key to success. Don’t give in to the temptation (or bad advice) to accomplish overwhelmingly large goals before you’re ready. Start small, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good, and get some small wins under your belt before graduating to larger ones.

• Find alternatives for accountability: Accountability can be summed up as ‘find something you value, and put it at risk as a consequence of failure’. Although it should be used carefully so as not to lead to discouragement or take unwise risks, many people have found this useful in keeping their feet to the fire when they would otherwise slack off. Online programs like www.stickk.com allow you to put money or other objects on the line, and partner with coaches to hold you accountable.
• Positive self-talk: Have you ever had someone give you encouragement that made you feel what they were saying, even if you didn’t believe it? That’s because the brain’s mirror neurons reflect what we hear emotionally, even if our cognitive functions believe something differently, and hearing ourselves works the same way. Try a quick experiment if you don’t believe it: The next time you find yourself assigned something you don’t want to do, keep telling yourself how tired you are/how difficult it is/how pointless it is. Then the next day compare the difference in how you feel to telling yourself that it’s NOT that difficult/you’re NOT that tired/this IS very important, etc. Using self-talk to get through a task or challenge you find particularly difficult can give you the small edge you need to get over the finish line.
• Mindfulness Meditation: I love learning. A lot. Sometimes so much so that I lose track of really important things, because I have so many thoughts running at one time that I’m not able to choose and prioritize. Mindfulness meditation involves concentrating on your breathing, then your pulse, then your muscle movements, and so on, until you are keenly aware of the here and now. If you find yourself distracted by your own thoughts, mindfulness meditation can help to pull your head out of the theoretical things you’re learning about, and into the present moment, where you can prioritize and accomplish the tasks in front of you. There are many places online where you can find more detailed instructions.

For more information on how SafeSourcing can assist your team with this process or on our “Risk Free” trial program, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.

We have an entire customer services team waiting to assist you today.

Today’s post is written by Heather Powell, Director of Major Accounts and Special Projects at SafeSourcing Inc.

A proprietary process is like grandma’s secret lasagna recipe. Lots of people make lasagna, but nobody does it quite like grandma. In fact, you don’t even like other lasagnas; because grandma’s is so much better that it makes all the others seems cheap and terrible!

You might be currently selling grandma’s lasagna but want to expand your customer base, or you are looking to take the recipe to a manufacture to create your own private label lasagna to be sold by distributors. How do you protect your recipe? How do you maintain ownership of the recipe if you want others to mass produce it?

To be clear, there are a lot of confusing technical terms that need clarification of how to protect your recipe:

Patents: Patents protect new, useful, and non-obvious inventions (ideas!). An invention can be a device, a structure, process, machinery, etc. A patent for a composition of matter, including a food recipe, allows you as a small-business owner sole right to prepare your product for sale to consumers and profit from those sales for a period of years. A United States patent has strict filing requirements, and the approval process can take months to years to complete. You must describe the shape, look and ingredients that go into making your product in great detail. Your product must also meet the “nonobvious” requirement, meaning your recipe must not be easily discernible to a professional with food training or the everyday consumer. A patent for a recipe usually covers either mass market products or those designed to perform specific functions within existing products. In seeking your patent, you must decide how you intend to use your product in the market. For example, if you’re designing a product to increase the shelf-life of existing products, you must name that as your product’s purpose in your patent application. You probably won’t win patent approval if you have no intended use for your product or concrete business plan.1

An inventor’s patent will expire after 20 years, and in any case, require the inventor to publish every step of his or her creation. In essence, filing a patent for a recipe requires the chef to let the cat out of the bag.3

Trademarks: Trademarks protect source identifications, usually for brands, slogans, logos, or designs (sometimes even scents or colors). A trademark protection may extend perpetually.

A trademark allows you as a business owner to protect a word, design, symbol or phrase used in connection with your company’s proprietary products. Many companies large and small choose to trademark brand names for products and business logos to ensure each company’s products and business logos remain easily recognizable to consumers. This helps companies maintain brand recognition over time. You have the right to enforce your trademark in court by suing for damages if another company attempts to use your company’s product symbols or business logo.1

Copyrights: Copyrights protect original textual works and visual or artistic expressions.

Copyright law does not protect recipes that are mere listings of ingredients. Nor does it protect other mere listings of ingredients such as those found in formulas, compounds, or prescriptions. Copyright protection may, however, extend to substantial literary expression—a description, explanation, or illustration, for example—that accompanies a recipe or formula or to a combination of recipes, as in a cookbook.2

Trade Secrets: Trade secrets protect valuable secret information like ideas that must be kept confidential. Others to whom they are disclosed to must also keep them confidential. Similar to trademarks, trade secret protection may extend perpetually.

Unlike trademarks, which protect recognizable designs, trade secrets protect information such as formulas, drawings, patterns, customer lists, programs, devices, methods, techniques or processes. A recipe may be either a “formula,” “method,” or “process” and can be legally protected as a trade secret so long as (1) the owner takes reasonable steps to keep the information secret, and (2) some independent economic value is derived from the information.4

How to Keep Your Trade Secret Top Secret?

Treating your signature product as a “trade secret” is the easiest and cheapest way to protect your culinary assets, unlike the legal hoops required in filing a patent or trademark.

• Keep your recipe under lock and key. Make sure only your top team members are in your “circle of trust,” such as an executive chef or manager. Word of caution: not every recipe on your menu can be a trade secret, but only those that have a unique feature that sets it apart from competitors’ offerings, like the recipe behind Thomas’ English Muffins’ “nooks and crannies,” may be a trade secret.
• Quantify the dollar value of your recipe. Keep track of the sales generated specifically by your signature product.
• Make sure the keepers of the recipe actually know it’s a secret. Include a confidentiality agreement in your manager’s employment contract. Also, remind these employees regularly during training and at staff meetings of their legal duty to not disclose your restaurant’s signature recipes.4

In part four of this series, the author will provide the clarification of a confidentiality agreement and non-disclosure agreement. Meanwhile, SafeSourcing can assist you in exploring your procurement solutions for your proprietary product on our “Risk Free” trial program for RFPs and RFQs, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.  We have an entire customer services team waiting to assist you today.

We look forward to your comments.

References:

1. https://smallbusiness.chron.com/recipe-patent-vs-trademark-20893.html
2. https://lizerbramlaw.com/2015/04/07/copyright-protect-recipes/
3. https://www.tuckerlaw.com/2018/03/19/secret-recipe-still-secret-protect-restaurants-signature-recipes/
4. https://www.tuckerlaw.com/2018/03/19/secret-recipe-still-secret-protect-restaurants-signature-recipes/