Take Out

It’s Foodie Fun Friday and it’s late enough that I’m already thinking about dinner (been a busy day – sorry I’m late!!). We usually bring food in on Fridays. When the girls were living at home, it was usually pizza but since it’s just the Mrs. and me our horizons have broadened, along with our waistlines, considerably. We keep  a book of menus here and around now we start perusing them, complete with annotations of what we’ve brought in before and what we’ve liked. Which of course is a business lesson.Some food just does not travel well.  For example, almost anything fried is going to be damp and not crisp when you get it home (steam in the package, usually).  I’m sure you have a restaurant that you frequent in person but the in-home food experience is a far lesser one.  Yet almost every restaurant I know has a take-out menu that’s indistinguishable from the on premises one.  And that’s the lesson.

If  you’re offering a different version of your product experience, you really ought to take the time to make sure that the alternative experience isn’t a denigrated one.  I’m pretty sure that most of the cooks who are rightfully proud of what they serve each night would be horrified at what often shows up when that same dish is taken home.

Watching a movie in a theater is still, for my money,  a better experience than at home.  The studios do all they can to make it a great experience, however, by recognizing that it’s different and taking advantage of the unique technology people have in their homes.  They adjust the product.  A concert recording is not a concert but well done ones, such as the “Dick’s Picks” series by the Grateful Dead are way better than a crappy audience tape that you hear so often on E-Street radio which is supposed to give us the joy o f Bruce in concert but sounds like a bunch of people cheering under water.

If you offer versions of your product, have you done all you can to tailor those version to reality?  Or are you just putting the food into a container and hoping it’s still hot?