Customer base

• Teachers-- & student teachers, college professors
• Students--K through graduate school
• Homeschoolers--all grades
• General public--trivia, curiousity, family favorites, bar bets
• Culinary students--professional assignments
• Chefs & caterers--period-correct menus, historic recipes
• Food manufacturers--history of their products; help answering customer queries
• Restaurant owners--menu notes & trivia, suggestions for "theme nights"
• Reenactment participants--authenticity & period recipes
• Living history museums--recipes, cooking techniques, equipment dating
• Food editors/authors--history, recipes, background notes, fact checking
• Television shows--food history, fact checking, & "expert" witnesses
• Novelists--place/period correct foods
• Genealogists--help deciphering family recipes
• Drama set directors--historic accuracy for table settings
• Contest hopefuls--Marlboro quiz, which food does not go bad?
• ESL students--English practice

• Food history--specific foods, time periods, countries, ethnic/culture groups
• Recipe history--origin & evolution
• Recipes--specific dishes, time periods (authentic & adapted), place-specific, family favorites
• State foods--for 4th grade reports
• Favorite foods of famous people--presidents, sports heros, composers, artists
• Technology--cooking methods, ingredients, chemical/physical processes, food inventions
• Company information--product history, where to purchase specific items, verify defunct
• Historic food prices--economic history lessons, "roll back" menus, birthday gifts
• Party menus--suggestions for theme/place/period
• Trivia--foods that begin with the letter Q
• Language--what is the American equivalent for the British term "grilling"?
• Health & safety--food storage, diets for special conditions

When do they visit?
There is a predictable rhythm to FT usage. In the mornings (7AM New Jersey Time) our European and South Pacific patron counts are significantly higher. This wanes as the day progresses and U.S. patrons come online. Statcounter reveals most FT hits are made in the beginning of the week and slack off as the weekend approaches. School year (September-June) is busier than summer. Holiday planning periods are busy, but real-time holiday traffic is almost non-existent.

Patron visits vs. patron questions
Statcounter confirms between June 5, 2004-August 2, 2008 Food Timeline pages have been loaded 13,100,959 times by 6,469,391 unique users. Of these, 528,611 were returning users. We invite our patrons to ask questions and they do! Since the site's inception (March 1999) we have answered 19,000+ food questions sent from all points of the globe. Question traffic does not always corrolate neatly with site visit stats. Sunday evenings during the American school year may not report significant visit stats but they are exceptionally busy for FT questions. Why? Students (surprise?!) leave their homework to the last minute. Media attention (credits in articles, television & radio) often generates temporary service "spikes." Blog entries (I-am-bored.com, roadfood forum) can drive huge numbers of hits to a Web site for a nano-blip of time. Think: Warhol's 15 minutes of fame.

Market strategy
If you fill a niche, customers will come. Pure and simple. Our site began as a public educational service and so it remains. We don't pay seach engines for premium placement, solicit reciprocal links, partner with Amaszon, or sell advertising. In order to drive more traffic to our site we focus on metatagging (Statcounter tells us what words people are typing when they land on our site), content (adding what our customers request most frequently), and excellent customer service (answering questions in a timely manner). Customers are quite amazed to get personalized answers from Web sites. Sadly, many are conditioned to expect autosponders or no response. Library lesson here: if you invite patrons to ask questions, you better respond!