Category Archives: food

February 12, 2016 · 11:37 am

Delivering

This Foodie Friday, we’ll return to the land of Top Chef.  Not only is it my favorite show on TV (House of Cards isn’t really TV now, is it?), but it almost always inspires broader thinking about business for me.  Last night was the conclusion of the annual restaurant wars competition in which two teams of contestants have 24 hours to conceive and execute a restaurant.  The losing team (and they really did deserve to lose) made some key errors, from which I think we can all learn a couple of things. 

First, their menu had no focus. Some of it was Asian inspired, some of it was Italian, some of it was influenced by the chef’s ego and nothing else.  There was no cohesiveness to the meal.  Any restaurant – and any brand – makes a promise.  I like this explanation:

A strong brand promise is one that connects your purpose, your positioning, your strategy, your people and your customer experience. It enables you to deliver your brand in a way that connects emotionally with your customers and differentiates your brand.

With no focus to the items being served, there was no connection – emotional or otherwise – to the diners. The next issue was execution. As incoherent as the menu was, had the dishes been prepared extremely well and had the service been spectacular, the dining experience might have been saved. Unfortunately, most of the dishes the losing team served were awful, led by a salad of strawberries, pickled cucumber, roasted beets, and arugula with a strawberry champagne gazpacho. The gloppy “gazpacho” was more like a desert sauce and the judges hated this dish. There was a pork belly served in a consomme that apparently was almost all vinegar. You know there is a problem when every shot of someone tasting it shows them looking like they’d just bitten into a lemon.

Great execution can make up for many flaws.  That too is part of delivering on the brand promise.  I’ve certainly been to restaurants where the food was just ok but excellent, personable service and reasonable prices made it someplace to which I’d return.

It’s one thing to make a promise.  It’s quite another to deliver.  Are you doing that?

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January 29, 2016 · 12:51 pm

The Pimp Of Shrimp

Our Foodie Friday Fun this week comes to us courtesy of “Restaurant Startup“, a show on CNBC. If you’ve never seen it, the people behind two restaurant concepts pitch for an investment. One is selected, given a budget, and has 24 hours to produce a pop-up version of that concept. If all goes well, they receive an investment. This week’s episode featured a fast-casual concept restaurant serving South African food. What struck me as I watched the show is something from which any business can learn. 

The restaurant is called Peli Peli Kitchen and the food was really good according to the people who tried it.  Of course, many people had no idea what the food was as they were ordering it because the menu descriptions of this unfamiliar cuisine (can you name a South African dish off the top of your head?) were terrible.  One dish was described as “the pimp of shrimp”.  Say what?

The issues with the descriptions were pointed out to the guy producing the menu early on.  He did a very smart thing as he was editing.  He had his young son read the menu and tell him what the food was.  Of course, when he asked the kid if he knew what “the pimp of shrimp” was, the kid had no idea.  I’m not sure if the writer was in love with his alliteration, but he didn’t change the description.  Not surprisingly, when the hosts and potential investors asked diners who were waiting in line if they knew what the various dishes were, based on the description, most said no.

The point is pretty obvious.  We can’t do things in business that confuse our customers.  We can’t be so in love with our own clever marketing that we lose sight of that marketing’s main purpose: to inform consumers about the product so that consumers become customers.  I realize that some marketers like to cause confusion – think placing sugary fruit juices near the fresh fruit as an example – but I’m not a fan of that technique.  If we need to cause confusion to sell a product we probably ought to rethink the product.

The menu confusion, in this case, wasn’t a deliberate attempt to mislead.  It was just dumb.  Then again, how many pimps of shrimp are on your marketing materials?

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January 22, 2016 · 11:13 am

Ripe

It’s Foodie Friday and this week’s post is inspired by my breakfast. My weekday breakfast almost always involves a banana, and this morning’s banana looked yummy until I actually bit in. It was not really ripe enough. The texture that too hard for my taste and the flavors hadn’t really matured. In fact, it was kind of tasteless and quite unsatisfying. The banana would definitely have benefited from another day or two of ripening. 

Despite my day not being off to a great start, a business point popped into my head. Many businesses suffer from the same phenomenon as the banana (although honestly I am not blaming the banana for being eaten too soon). We don’t let things ripen and we move overly fast. I see this with some clients who forget the original business plan when a new opportunity presents itself, losing sight of what had got the business to this point. That sort of action – moving too fast away from what was a good idea – does nothing but engender short-term thinking.

Failing to let the business ripen also means you’ve not got enough customer feedback. It takes time to scale, and even if you enjoy explosive growth, it takes time for both the business and your customers to figure out what feedback is meaningful based on repeat engagements, etc. You would much rather hear from a customer who has purchased and used your product several times that a one-time experience.

You need to ripen to assess the right size of your staff. You need to ripen to estimate what your real operating costs are and will be. To the extent scale improves product costs, you need to ripen in order to make that assessment. Finally, you need to ripen to ascertain what your real capital needs are. Early cash flow won’t be as promising as it will become down the road (hopefully) but those needs don’t present themselves right away.

I am all for moving quickly, particularly when a company is young.  Haste, however, can make waste when that speed and a failure to let things ripen means a loss of focus.  Make sense?

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