September 19, 2014 · 8:12 am

Why Saving The Pots Is Bad Business

I’m not a fan of The Olive Garden which is our topic this Foodie Friday. I grew up eating (and cooking) Italian food and Olive Garden is pretty far from the cuisine I love. That said, I appreciate that it’s a lot easier for one to find authentic Italian food in New York and other big cities than it might be elsewhere in this great land of ours. The Olive Garden might have to do for those poor souls.

logo

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A hedge fund recently produced a very lengthy report on Olive Garden’s parent company.  You can read the entire report here – it’s a fascinating look at how a company can lose its way.  I want to focus on one very specific aspect of the report: the food at Olive Garden.  The lessons we can take from it are very instructive for any business.

One main criticism the deck makes is this:

Olive Garden has seemingly lost its Italian heritage and  authenticity.  (It) lost ties to suppliers that offered authentic Italian ingredients and Italian wines at compelling price points. Now Olive Garden serves dishes that are astonishingly far from authentic Italian culture, such as burgers & fries, Spanish tapas, heavy cream sauces, more fried foods, stuffed cheeses, soggy pasta, and bland tomato sauce. Olive Garden has moved away from its authentic Italian roots and now offers what appears to be a low-end Italian-American experience.

The deck has photos of dishes as advertised and as they actually show up on the table.  The difference is amazing.  But it was one last complaint – along with the reasoning behind why the situation is the way it is that really got my attention:

According to Darden management, Darden decided to stop salting the water to get an extended warranty on their pots. Pasta is Olive Garden’s core dish and must be prepared properly.

Uh..duh!  Which is the lesson for any brand.  Diluting your brand causes consumer confusion.  Olive Garden for tapas or a burger?  I think not.  Saving the pots to reduce costs at the expense of the customer experience is lunacy.  Damaging the product – especially the signature product – is a big step down the road to brand destruction.

Many companies lose their core identity in the chase for revenues.  That’s bad.  Hurting the products that got you to this point is worse.  It’s not, as the report points out, just one instance. Breadsticks are another signature dish.  “The lower quality refined flour breadsticks served today are filled with more air and have less flavor (similar to hot dog buns).”  Can your brand survive while committing this sort of product suicide?

Without a brand identity, you’re done.  When any home cook knows more about making your product than you do, it’s time to pack it in.  That’s true if it’s pasta or clothing or web sites or anything else.  Agreed?

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Consulting, food, Huh?

Tagged as , , , , ,

September 18, 2014 · 11:13 am

Polymaths

An item came across my inbox this morning that concerns what college kids are studying.

English: Self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci. R...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

No, not their phone screens. Instead:

A new study from the American Academy of Arts & Sciences on course-taking patterns of undergraduates finds a significant lack of crossover by majors in the humanities and majors in STEM fields. According to the data, engineers earned approximately 11% of their credits in humanities courses. Meanwhile, humanities majors completed just 8% of their credits in STEM fields.

That’s from the folks at Phi Beta Kappa and the rumor is they’re pretty smart.  STEM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.  What this is telling us is that something is happening in colleges that, frankly, seems to be happening to society as a whole.  Kids are tuning in to what is of primary interest and tuning out almost everything else.  That’s a shame.  What if Leonardo daVinci had stuck with one or the other?

Higher education is the one chance that those who are lucky enough to experience it have to explore everything.  That’s not happening:

  • Students who received undergraduate degrees earned more credits in humanities subjects than in STEM. Humanities credits represented approximately 17% of the total credits earned by the typical graduate, while the STEM share was 13%.
  • Approximately 37% of credits earned by humanities majors were for humanities courses.
  • Both in terms of absolute numbers and share of all courses taken, engineering students earned the fewest humanities credits (11% of median number earned by these students in all subjects) while social scientists earned the most (equaling 22% of all credits).
  • Humanities majors tended to earn fewer STEM credits than STEM majors earned humanities credits.

College should breed polymaths – a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. Such a person is known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems.  In other words, they’re well-rounded.  They have critical thinking skills and a broad range of knowledge from which to draw conclusions.  Those are the sort of people I want when I’m hiring (or making friends).  You?

Leave a comment

Filed under Huh?, Thinking Aloud

Tagged as , , , , ,

September 17, 2014 · 10:38 am

Telephone

Everyone has played the game of telephone.  Not telephone tag in which you and someone else keep exchanging voicemails: telephone.  You whisper a sentence to someone next to you who repeats it to the person next to them and so on until the message comes back to you.  Inevitably, what you said is not what someone heard.  In fact, it’s quite possible that the message is completely different when it comes full circle.

You don’t need to be playing that game to have this happen.  What we say isn’t always what people hear. You may not have malice, you might be telling a joke. They might hear it as threatening or as disgust.  When the cook asks you how you liked supper and you smile and say “it was pretty good” they might be hearing “I didn’t like it at all but I want to be polite.”  When you tell a salesperson that you don’t think you need what it is they’re selling, the good ones hear “I can convince you” instead of the firm “no” you were unable to say for some reason.

Listening is a critical business skill.  That said, people are often distracted as we speak to them.  Maybe the phone buzzed; maybe they are thinking about their last email or meeting.  Because of that, making sure that the message we meant to convey to the listener is what they heard is just as critical a skill.  We must think about how what we’re saying or presenting could deliver an unintended message.

For example – Malaysia Airlines recently ran a contest in which they invited travelers from New Zealand and Australia to answer the question, “What and where would you like to tick off on your bucket list, and explain why.” It offered them the chance to win an Apple iPad or return trip to Malaysia.  Message received?  Well, since a “bucket list” is composed of things one wants to do before one dies and the airline has lost two planes recently, any association with death is probably not the message you want people to hear.  You say win something; they hear that you are insensitive.

One trick I’ve learned when I have any doubt about if what I’ve said was heard as meant is to ask someone to repeat it back to me.  Obnoxious?  There is that risk, but in my mind the risk of being misunderstood is far greater since we’ll never know until the message comes back around.  Speaking and writing clearly are table stakes in business.  Getting people to hear you clearly is part of those skills.

Clear?

Leave a comment

Filed under Consulting, Helpful Hints

Tagged as , ,