It is our pleasure to say that we have had two contests with winners from facebook! Greg Kellogg was fan #300 on facebook and Chris Stanley was randomly picked from a “like” this post! Both have earned themselves a free meal here at the Day By Day Cafe. It’s so exciting for us to have these contests and grant someone with a free meal. We plan on having a contest every week til the end of summer. Make sure to become a fan on facebook so you have the chance on winning a free meal at the Day By Day Cafe! Also, we post the weekend specials on facebook so that you can have a heads up if there is something you want to try. We would love any suggestions for any specials that you may have in mind. We love to make our customers happy and would like for our customers to have a part in our weekend special planning. We would appreciate any new ideas for our breakfast specials on the weekend! Just post a post on facebook and we will make sure to respond to your idea through facebook and let you know when we will be trying out your special. If it’s a great idea we will name the special after you and you will get to try your own idea on the house! This should be a lot of fun, working together with our wonderful, dependable customers to build our different varieties of specials!

Now it’s time for me to be done blogging with Amanda and Qwest She and Qwest have been so great and helpful. If Qwest had not contacted me offering such a great deal, I don’t think I would have put the time into rebuilding our website. Through all the hard work I have learned a great deal about social media. Facebook, Twitter, Yelp and Google statistics were great starts for me to build more awareness to the Day By Day Cafe. Updating Facebook with specials and having contests to replying to my @daybydaycafe mentions on Twitter to checking daily for new comments on Yelp and checking the statistics on Google has been exciting and rewarding. You don’t really know the amount of new people that you are able to connect with through social media until you try it. If you are looking to rebuild your website and are an amateur like I was myself, I strongly suggest getting in contact with Qwest and let them help build your business. I have had many new customers and people tell me how they became aware of the Day By Day because of the outreach I have accomplished via the internet. I have even had people in the neighborhood that were unaware of our full service restaurant come give us a try! So a big thank you to Qwest and Amanda for being so helpful and determined for me to make our website what it has become!

So posting updates through our website carries over to Twitter/Facebook thanks to Qwest.  It is just one easy step to write a post on my website and when I publish the post it automatically goes to Twitter and Facebook.  This way all of our fans and followers are kept in the loop when I have a new post.  The next step in building awareness to the Day By Day Cafe is to link up with our suppliers and other local businesses by becoming a fan on facebook.  Getting updates and posts from local businesses has been exciting!  Again, I didn’t realize how big the social media network is and I’m learning so quickly with the help of Qwest!  I feel it is important to see what else is going on in our neighborhood.  This gives me the opportunity to try and brainstorm new ideas to help build our restaurant to higher levels.  My blogging coach through Qwest has been great and I have had a lot of fun working with her and learning all the different resources that is essentially like free advertising.  I don’t think I would have been this successful with our new website without her.  This has been a lot of hard fun work with so far great results.  It feels so rewarding, and I love to connect with new people that we can bring into our “family” here at the Day By Day Cafe!!

As I stated previously, I have been working with Qwestand social media.  I have been having a lot of fun checking out comments and posts via facebook and twitter.  Last week my Qwestblogging coach suggested that I offer a free meal to our 300th fan on facebook.  Well early last week, we got fan #300!!  It was so exciting to be able to offer him a free meal.  Every Saturday and Sunday morning I log into facebook and post our specials for the day.  I love to get requests on facebook suggesting something new.  Just a couple of weeks ago a customer posted a request for Eggs Benedict.  Since we don’t offer hollandaise everyday, I wanted to make sure it was available to her and her family that was traveling from out of town.  Her and her family were please and commented on facebook their thanks.  I wasn’t aware how big social media had become until I started working with Qwest!  I also have been experiencing a little with Twitter, although it’s new to me, it’s a lot of fun signing in and responding to the awesome comments people have been leaving.  Without Qwest, I am not sure how long it would have taken me to get on board with Twitter.  When it comes to Yelp, I anxiously await customers comments of our restaurant.  It gives me the opportunity to see how people liked their experience and if there were any problems, how I can correct them.  It is very helpful using these different social media websites to try and build business with people who are unaware of the Day By Day Cafe.

Over the years at the Day By Day Cafe, it’s become somewhat like a family here.  Everyone from staff to customers are felt like family.  We have a lot of regular customers whom we have become fairly close with here.  It’s fun every weekend to see our customers return and catch up with what’s going on in their lives.  Day By Day Cafe has been known and even been voted for the best restaurant to bring kids.  Watching the kids grow up over the years has been a favorite thing of the staff.  We have toys everywhere from the wall to the buckets that we bring to the tables for kids to play with.  The kids also love to feed our koi fish and look at all the flowers on our breathtaking patio.  Our patio has also become somewhat of a home to some neighborhood cats and our customerslike to catch up with them.  As for the employees, we all seem to interact with each other more than on a work based relationship.  We believe that everyone who works here would be considered more of a friend than a coworker and would be there for one another if needed.  A lot of the staff have been here for quite some time so we have formed close relationships with one another and one another’s family.  We value all of our staff and customers and love to make new relationships with new customers!  Come in and join our big happy family here at the Day By Day Cafe!

The Day By Day Cafe was originally opened in March of 1975 by Shoreview Treatment Center and the current owner Greg Ekbom.  The treatment center was located in the West Seventh Street neighborhood and had a need for a catering facility.  The treatment center also wanted to start a cafe for the recovering community,  which would also provide a location for work therapy for the residents of Shorview Treatment Center.
The first location was a vacant dining car at 603 West Seventh Street several blocks from the treatment center.  The treatment center leased the space and offered the job of management/partner to Greg Ekbom who was then in an outpatient program at Shorview Treatment Center.  Greg had recently graduated from a cooking program at 916 vocational technical college which is now known as St. Paul Community College
Shorview Treatment Center went out of business in 1978 and Greg Ekbom took over on his own.  In 1980, Greg  moved the restaurant to its current location at 477 West Seventh Street.  It has expanded several times over the years, including building an addition from the ground up in 1996 called the “library.”  The library which has one wall lined with books and the other wall of big windows looking out at the patio and koi pond.  The library is usually the favorite place amongst the customers, unless of course the patio is open on a beautiful day.   Day By Day continues to hire people in recovery and to be a place for recovering people to come to, in addition to being a restaurant for the neighborhood and beyond.
The cafe is currently being managed by Gena Ekbom, Greg’s daughter.  John Ekbom, Greg’s son, has become a jack of all trades in the restaurant and beyond by maintaining the buildings and equipment.  The hope is that the cafe can go on for many generations to come, hopefully with Greg’s grandchildren, Adrianna, Jasmine and twins Gavin and Gabrielle.

Looking at other businesses websites made me realize that I needed to update our website.  I started by researching different providers and ended up receiving a call from Qwest offering me a sweet deal to redo the website and connect us to different social media services at no charge.  All I have to do is blog about my experience in the program. The way technology advances so quickly is the reason I decided to go with Qwest.  Without Qwest, I do not think I would have got the Day By Day Cafe out in the cyber world the way I have.  Working with Qwest has been great, they have taught me so much on social media and showed me how important it is to use it. After creating my website, they set up Facebook and Twitter accounts for the business. The best part is that they are all linked together which makes it easier for beginners like myself to learn! Now I am set up with a coach who I talk with weekly in order to become a pro on all of these networks. Day By Day Cafe has been around for a long time. I learned that no matter how long your business has been around, it’s good to get your business out there through social media. I’m excited everyday to see how many new people our business has attracted and connected with. My goals are to reach out to as many people as possible to make Day By Day Cafe known to everyone unaware of our beautiful restaurant, home cooked food, our big loving, family like staff and our relaxing koi pond and flower filled patio. Thank you, Qwest!

Day By Day Cafe is in the Garden Tour this year!!  Come check out our beautiful garden where you can enjoy your breakfast/lunch this summer!!  The date for the Garden Tour is June 18th from 10am-4pm.  Hope to see everyone this summer!!

Come and check out our new website!!!

We would love for you to visit our cafe, specializing in home cooked breakfast!

We have a beautiful koi pond and garden to enjoy your breakfast or lunch!