Category Archives: food

September 23, 2016 · 11:15 am

Following The Competition

This Foodie Friday I’d like us to think about something you’ve probably seen happen in your town. A restaurant will offer a dish that becomes insanely popular and suddenly everyone is offering their take on it. Cronuts, dishes with foams instead of sauces, or even stuffed burgers (Juicy Lucy’s) are examples. It’s not just restaurants either. One soda brand goes “clear” and suddenly everyone has a “clear” or “crystal” or something similar. The supermarket is stuffed to the gills with innovative products and the several follow-ons produced by competitors.

What does this show us? That businesses pay attention to their competition and are tracking what the other guy is doing. That’s good and important. After all, listening is a fundamental skill. Listening, however, isn’t necessarily reacting. Tracking isn’t following.

It’s not just in the food business. When Ecco had huge success with their hip spikeless golf shoes, suddenly every shoe company had a version. Of course, what the other guys missed was Ecco’s fashion sense, and some of the products were as bad as just wearing tennis shoes to play golf. Microsoft wasted a lot of time and money following Apple everywhere and producing their own versions of Apple products. Still using your Zune?

If you’re going to do your version of a competitor’s product, the impetus for that should be your customers’ expressions of need and not some knee-jerk reaction to what the competitor is doing. First, you might not understand how well the product is selling for the competition. Second, you don’t know what their costs are to produce the dish. Third, even if you do know the previously mentioned data points, you might produce an inferior version which damages your reputation and enhances that of the competition. Finally, and most importantly, follow your customers. Are they defecting to some other brand? Why? Is it to the new product or because you’ve taken them for granted in your haste to follow the other guy rather than them?

Paying attention to what the competition is doing is important but following them can be fatal. Follow your customers, not your competitors.

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September 16, 2016 · 12:00 pm

When Is A McDonald’s Not A McDonald’s?

It’s Foodie Friday and our Fun this week is an issue that concerns every brand. It comes to us from the good folks at McDonald’s (they seem to be Foodie Friday Fun regulars, don’t they?). According to an article in LeFigaro (h/t Eater), McDonald’s has opened a McDonald’s in Paris under the McCafe name that doesn’t serve burgers or fries. No McNuggets either. In fact, all it will serve is club sandwiches, salads, soup, and other typical cafe food. You know – the sort of stuff that’s sold by hundreds of other Parisian places which are really French and not an American company’s version of French. Yes, McCafes are nothing new but the lack of classic McDonald’s fare is.

Logo of McCafé (McDonald's).

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve written before about how McDonald’s is trying to get beyond the burger/shake/fries branding and into everything from kale salads to rice bowls. This isn’t about finding a way to be successful in France either. MickeyD’s already has 1,300 stores there and France is a hugely profitable country for them. Honestly, I’m not sure what they’re thinking. I can give you a brief anecdote from personal experience, however, which might be helpful.

Several years ago, my daughter was studying in Italy. I went over there to bring her home and we were walking around Rome, my favorite food city in the world. We passed a McDonald’s and my child begged me to go inside. I asked her why, as we were surrounded by wonderful unique trattorias, ristorantes and tavernas and she wanted something that she could find everywhere once we got home. That was precisely the reason – she wanted to feel, just for a few minutes, as if she was home and not in Italy. By turning the all-American McDonald’s experience into something French, they just might be negating one reason people like to go.

The more obvious issue for any of us is what our brands stand for. It’s one thing to open a different type of restaurant under a different name,as countless brands have done with many line extensions. It’s quite another to change the meaning of the brand by changing the core product. I’m not a fan of that and think it should be avoided at all costs.

When you think of McDonald’s, you probably think of Golden Arches, Ronald McDonald, Big Macs, and fries. When you slap the McCafe name on a place that contains none of those things, you dilute the brand. Diluting a brand in its second-most profitable market is, well, not smart. I’m not loving it. You?

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September 9, 2016 · 2:01 pm

A Dyspeptic Foodie Friday

The end of the week has brought us to another Foodie Friday. Unfortunately, it’s not really a fun Friday this time. I spent the night with a nasty case of excess acidity inflaming my esophagus. That’s unusual for me since I’ve always fancied myself to have a bit of an iron gut. Still, the burning was real and uncomfortable but it did get me thinking.

diagram of a human digestive system

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Stomach acid is a normal, critical part of our digestive systems. For many folks, certain foods trigger excess stomach acid which finds its way back up. Tomato sauce is one of those foods and although I’ve never had an issue before it was part of my dinner last evening so maybe that was it. Whatever it was that triggered it, something that was normal and necessary had gone to an extreme and was now a detriment. Which is, of course, the business thought today.

Think of someone you know in business who is really smart. My guess is that they are also kind of impatient. They grasp things faster than many people and it seems to take them a concentrated effort to be patient while the rest of the team catches on. Take a boss who tries to be supportive of his folks but lets them cross over into being slackers. Those two examples are of good qualities – intelligence and supportiveness – which have gone to an extreme and turned into something detrimental – impatience and sloppiness. Like my digestive system last night, they require immediate action to rein them back to normal before real damage is done.

It’s great to be forceful but bad to cross the line into badgering. It’s fine to emphasize strategy but when you overdo it and upset the balance with the real world of execution and operation, you’re hurting the system. I’ll be a bit more careful with my normally wonderful digestion going forward. It’s probably not a bad idea to pay attention to all the good things in your business that might be heading to an extreme before the business requires  an antacid. Deal?

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