Atlanta Trip – CNN, Coca Cola and Ted’s Montana Grill
A couple of times a year I like to get out of my box and go and see the real world. Living in Orlando is a lot of fun but sometimes it’s good to get away and see how other parts of America work and what they have to offer. When I go away I’m always looking at new things and new ideas that I can bring back in order to benefit our customers and that’s why I visited two great American organizations on my trip to Atlanta recently.
First of all I visited CNN. This was a unique opportunity to see the stories behind the news and it was a fascinating insight into how the news is actually gathered and then distributed. On our tour we saw the control room where every element of live news coverage comes together. We also saw Studio 7E, CNN/US Newsroom, CNN International, CNN Headline News, CNN en Espanol and the world’s largest freestanding escalator.
The tour was around 90 minutes and it was very interesting to see how everything came together to provide the viewer with live news 24 hours a day.
The next venue I visited with a few friends was Ted Turner’s restaurant “Ted’s Montana Grill” in Downtown Atlanta. I hear there’s a recession at the moment but you really could have fooled me. We went twice, once for lunch and once for dinner and on both occasions we had a short wait to get a table. The food is pretty decent as well and there have been many rave reviews about the buffalo and the bison on the menu. The bison meatloaf is a firm favorite among locals and visitors alike but I settled for the cedar plank salmon which was excellent.
Have to say, I was watching how they handled being so busy and I was certainly looking out for some tips on how to do things but I ended up walking away thinking this was a business that really didn’t do much marketing as word of mouth is obviously so strong. There was no effort to capture our names, email addresses or birth dates so I can only assume that Mr. Turner thinks his restaurant will be there forever as clearly customer retention isn’t a high priority!
The next port of call was a tour of Coca Cola. I was looking forward to this and to learning a lot more about the world famous company. It didn’t disappoint. The first part of the tour was guided and we saw an excellent video introducing the Coca Cola brand and how they see everything they do as a team effort. After that we were then left to walk around the World of Coca Cola where we saw numerous exhibits, met with the bear, enjoyed the 4-D Theater with moving seats and saw the fully functioning bottling line. The guides were extremely knowledgeable and very proud to be working at Coca Cola.
The Icon exhibit was also interesting as we saw work by Steve Penley, Gordon Chandler, Corner Jennings, Burton Morris and Steve Kaufman which celebrated the “Icon” that Coca Cola has become.
Finally the tour concludes as you collect a free bottle of coke and enter the Coca Cola store where you can buy everything you can ever imagine with a Coca Cola logo on it! It’s a must visit place next time you are in Atlanta. Have fun!
