Category Archives: Reality checks

September 13, 2019 · 4:00 pm

Unlucky Food

Happy Foodie Friday to all you triskaidekaphobics out there! That’s right – it’s Friday the 13th and those with a fear of the number 13 apparently aren’t the only ones with some fears this day. As it turns out, there is a whole host of fears about food, most of which I knew nothing about until I consulted the Googles. For example, did you know that chicken wings are unlucky to have on New Year’s Eve? It is because wings are believed to make your luck fly away from you and who wants that when you’re just starting a new year?

Who knew that some people consider lobster an unlucky food? I always considered myself pretty lucky when I could afford to get one at a restaurant, but some folks think that because lobsters can swim backward, they too are avoided on the New Year’s menu. The thinking is that swimming backward means you have messed it all up and you need to start over in life.

Cutting bananas, not crushing eggshells, and how you place your chopsticks are all involved in food-related bad luck beliefs. As it turns out, there are some things that we can take away from misplaced beliefs. Many businesses have had their products also suffer from beliefs based on rumors and not on facts. I think you’ve probably heard the one that KFC had to change their name from Kentucky Fried Chicken because what they began serving was not actually chicken. Like an email that circulated when this was a hot rumor said:

KFC does not use real chickens. They actually use genetically manipulated organisms. These so-called ‘chickens’ are kept alive by tubes inserted into their bodies to pump blood and nutrients throughout their structure. They have no beaks, no feathers, and no feet.

Oy. For you Coca-Cola enthusiasts, you’ll be pleased to know that Coke does not contain a bug-based dye nor has anyone ever died from drinking it while eating Mentos, both “facts” that circulated years back.  Neither P&G nor Starbucks are devil worshippers which some folks state as fact based on their logos. Bubble Yum doesn’t contain spider eggs.

You can laugh, but every one of those companies and dozens more has had to spend resources fighting “facts”, most of which wouldn’t have ever seen the light of day in the pre-Internet times.  As a business, it reminds us that monitoring social media is critical to stop things such as these from ever spreading. It also reminds us as citizens that training ourselves (and our kids!) to exercise critical thinking and pursue facts based in truth and not in rumor is paramount.

Friday the 13th? A full moon as well? Shouldn’t it really be Halloween?

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August 23, 2019 · 4:23 pm

Tasting Change

I was thinking, this Foodie Friday, about how my tastes have changed over the years. Years ago I would eat pretty much anything except beets. They reminded me, as my youngest daughter often describes them, of eating dirt. Now for a vegan, which is what my daughter is, to complain about any vegetable it really has to be bad. Somewhere along the line, I gave them another try and I really liked them.

My older daughter’s tastes have changed too. When she was a child she loved eggs and puddings. Now, almost 30 years later, she is revolted by the sight of eggs and won’t eat them unless they are a binding ingredient in a baked good. If they’re a major element in, say, custard or pudding then she will pass. Something about the texture and smell. Her favorite foods have become her non-starters. Of course, today she will eat just about anything else when she would have to be tricked into tasting anything new back in the day.

Tastes change. Look at the decline in soda consumption or the increase in sushi consumption (you want me to eat raw what?). It’s a given in any market, not just food. It’s incumbent, therefore, on any smart business executive to be open to change. I don’t know about your experience, but mine has been that most executives are not. They generally feel that sticking with what’s been successful will carry them forward, riding the horse that brought them, so to speak.

Ask yourself if you’re really open to change. Can you accept multiple perspectives on things and, more importantly, can you hold off on forming an opinion until you’ve heard some differing points of view? Do you always ask the same questions? That usually results in you getting the same answers. If you’re seeking change you need to ask something different. When was the last time you or someone in your organization tried an experiment? It’s like tasting a new food or, even better, giving something you’d thrown on the trash heap another taste.

I have a friend who has had a limited culinary vocabulary in that she’s not been exposed to a lot of different cuisines. She’s tried some things such as the chopped liver and gefilte fish that even hard-core fans of Jewish cuisine struggle with. She didn’t like them but the point was that she tried them. She was open to change.

I’m sort of in that process. I’m migrating out of the world of management and business consulting and into the world of franchise consulting. It’s been hard to give up the old stuff since I’ve had 40 years of doing it. Truth be told, I’m enjoying the new work a lot more. My tastes have changed but had I not been open to it, I’d still be in the same old rut. Is that where you and your business are?

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August 16, 2019 · 10:44 am

Pumpkin Spice

This Foodie Friday, we’re taking a leap ahead into Fall, and if Fall means one thing to most people, it’s pumpkin spice. I know – you were thinking football, but no, my guess is that far more people are affected by the pumpkin spice thing than the pigskin thing. It’s a relatively recent development as spice companies didn’t actually make “pumpkin pie spice” until the 1950s and that became “pumpkin spice” in the 1960s. Some candle company began marketing a pumpkin spice candle in 1995, Starbucks picked up the flavor after many small coffee shops did, and the rest is food history.

Today, I saw what might be the last straw in the craze: Pumpkin Spice Spam. This is not a joke – it will be available only online and there are already cans of it out in the wild. Apparently, it doesn’t taste too bad – kind of like breakfast sausage. While I’m generally a believer in the “anything worth doing is worth overdoing” philosophy, I think we just might have hit our limits here, although one might wonder where that limit lies after pumpkin spice hummus, Four Loko, Pringles, gum, and vodka, to name only a few of the products that are out there.

There is a serious business point to be made here. Pumpkin spice is a flavor and a scent, and of course, you can add either of those things to a product to make it seasonally relevant, at least to some people. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you should which is the broader business point. There are often moments in business when we’re confronted with what some might call opportunities while others might see them as dilemmas. A bank might be able to make more money if it charges its own customers a fee to use their own ATMs or to have a debit card. That’s a bad idea.

There was a great piece published years ago called “Companies and the Customers Who Hate Them.” It talked about charging penalties and fees especially in the cell phone, cable, and banking industries. It concluded:

One of the most influential propositions in marketing is that customer satisfaction begets loyalty, and loyalty begets profits. Why, then, do so many companies infuriate their customers by binding them with contracts, bleeding them with fees, confounding them with fine print, and otherwise penalizing them for their business? Because, unfortunately, it pays. Companies have found that confused and ill-informed customers, who often end up making poor purchasing decisions, can be highly profitable indeed.

I don’t think that adding pumpkin spice to an already good product is on a level with some of the outrageous fees we’re charged as consumers but it illustrates the point that just because we can do something in business doesn’t mean that we should. Not only do you run the risk of having seasonal merchandise go unsold (unhappy retailers!) but also of having customers question your sanity. Neither is good business in my book. Yours?

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