Category Archives: food

July 1, 2016 · 11:01 am

Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto

English: pizza) Polski: pizza

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I know what you’re thinking. Why does the Foodie Friday post have a song lyric as a title? Well, that’s the song that popped into my head as I read a piece about Zume Pizza, a food delivery startup.  The Ad Age article begins with this:

In the back kitchen of Mountain View’s newest pizzeria, Marta works tirelessly, spreading marinara sauce on uncooked pies. She doesn’t complain, takes no breaks, and has never needed a sick day. She works for free. Marta is one of two robots working at Zume Pizza, a secretive food delivery startup trying to make a more profitable pizza through machines. It’s also created special delivery trucks that will finish cooking pizzas during the journey to hungry customers…

Ouch.  Putting aside yet another human or three being replaced by a machine, I have other issues with this which are captured nicely in the Styx song:

The problem’s plain to see, too much technology
Machines to save our lives. Machines dehumanize.

Business needs to be about people.  When I eat, I want to taste the cook’s soul. I like the imperfections and that my pizza is different from how it will be the next time I order it. I enjoy personal service and the quirks of every individual with whom I deal no matter what the business. We need to be responsive to each customer in a human way. It’s why customer service agents reading from a script are just as bad as automated menu trees in my book. Who doesn’t prefer speaking with an unscripted human?

Do I think the hungry stoner calling for a pizza at midnight cares? Nope, and I suspect this startup will do well. I guess this is just the cranky old guy in me bemoaning yet another little bit of dehumanization in business. It’s right up there with programmatic media buying and selling and push-button espresso makers. Let’s stay human, people. Less efficient? You bet, but gloriously personable. You in?

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June 24, 2016 · 12:13 pm

Take Me Away

It’s Foodie Friday and I have a little blast from the past today.  I’m a fan of the animated movie Ratatouille, the story of a rat who loves to cook.  If you’ve never seen it, take a few minutes this weekend and do so (as of this writing I see it’s available for streaming rental). The whole thing is pretty wonderful but there is one scene in particular which speaks loudly to me and I think has some business inspiration for us all. 

 

I’m going to risk spoiling the movie here but I need to explain the scene of which I’m thinking. It’s when France’s top restaurant critic Anton Ego, whose previous review cost the restaurant in which Remy, the rat, cooks one of its stars. Without spoiling it too much, Remy and the chefs cook Ego a dish of ratatouille which brings back an astonished Ego memories of his mother’s cooking. The graphic you see on the right is the moment when Ego takes a bite and that’s our business inspiration.

Every time a customer partakes of our product or service, we have the opportunity to make a positive emotional connection. I’m sure you’ve had the sensation of recalling a memory when you experience a particular smell or taste something. We see this all the time with, for example, scented candles. There is a difference between recognizing the smell of a pine tree and experiencing the feeling of being out in a snowy woods standing among them.  We’re trying for the latter because that emotional connection binds the consumer and the product. Actors use this all the time via affective memory or sense memory.

As with many things we discuss here on the screed, it’s not an easy task. The benefits are worth the effort, though. You can see it even in something as simple as the “Calgon, Take Me Away” campaign. Maybe we’re all in the transportation business?

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June 17, 2016 · 11:58 am

Just Nice Isn’t

Foodie Friday, and this week I learned something from going to lunch. I’ve written any number of times about how critical customer service is, both in the food business and everywhere else. I found out from my dining experience this week that there is a lot more to the equation. Let me explain.

I was out for a business lunch. We were seated in a section that wasn’t particularly busy and greeted by our server. Let’s call him Jim. He was as pleasant as could be. He asked about our drink preferences and said he’d be right back with the drinks as well as some water. When he came back 10 minutes later with our two glasses of iced tea, I thought maybe he’d had to serve another table. No water either, but not a big deal. He also left without taking our food order.

Upon his return, he apologized when he saw that he hadn’t delivered the water. He ran to get it. He must have run a 3K because it took another 10 minutes. Jim was still incredibly nice as he took our food order – charming, actually – but I was beginning to realize that his demeanor was much better than his competence. Other tables that had been seated after us we receiving food as we were still ordering.

The rest of the meal went on like this. Smilin’ Jim would interact with us every so often and we would have to wait. The customer service was abysmal, frankly, although it was hard to get really angry about it. That’s the lesson I learned.

Nice isn’t enough. Jim was about as good as it gets with respect to customer interaction but he was a total failure when it came to customer service. It’s not enough to train the people who service our customers to be nice. We must train them to produce results and those results must be customer focused. If I go back to this place (the food was actually quite good once it arrived) I’ll be sure that Jim smiles on someone else.  Service with a smile is great, but remember that “service” comes first in that sentence!

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