October 4, 2019 · 2:01 pm

McRib And You

The big news this Foodie Friday is the return of the McRib sandwich. It’s only going to be around for a limited time and only at select McDonald’s stores (which is about 10,000 of them). If you’ve never had one of these babies, it’s a pork patty formed to look like pork ribs (but boneless) on a bun with pickles and onions and a fair amount fo a sweet barbeque sauce.

I’d be very dishonest if I said this concoction appalls me since I’m a fan of the thing, or at least I was before I both quit eating a lot of carbs (45g in this baby) and lived in a place where real BBQ pork sandwiches are easier to find than a decent deli. When it hit the market back in 1981, it was a dud. It’s been released every so often since into a limited number of outlets and it sells out.

There is something any business can learn from the McRib or the pumpkin spice craze at Starbucks or Dunkin’. It’s the smart tactic of giving customers a reason to come back. There is a restaurant here in town that I patronize on a regular basis. The food is quite good but there are rarely any specials. It gets boring, frankly. I’ve tried pretty much everything on the menu. Something special might get me to make a special trip as opposed to the every 10 days or so when I want a really good burger.

There is something else. Here is a quote from a marketing professor at Northwestern:

For fast-food chains in particular, which rely on familiarity, holiday items can offer consumers some variety. “You need consistency because that’s the brand mantra,” said Chernev. “But no matter how much you like something, consuming something different … increases the enjoyment of what you consumed before.” Chernev says it’s a neat marketing ploy: Although a specialty item may be exciting on its own, it can also remind consumers how much they like the basics.
In my mind, it’s like how being on vacation often reminds you of how much you like being home if that makes any sense. In any event, every business needs to think about how a special product promotion (vs. a sale price promotion) can provide an overall lift to the business.  Got it?

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October 3, 2019 · 3:16 pm

Don’t Waste My Time

I wasn’t going to write this week until Foodie Friday but I got aggravated and this seems to be one of my saner outlets to express my frustrations. As I’ve mentioned before in this space, I moved into a new home last February. In the new home, since it is newly constructed, are brand-new appliances. So far, they’ve been wonderful.

I especially like the ice-maker feature built into the fridge. That’s why, when it wouldn’t dispense ice last evening, I was horrified to find that the ice maker seems to have ingested itself. Somehow the little plastic tray that forms the ice and dumps it into the bin got tangled in the worm screw that pushes the ice to the dispenser. To paraphrase the Soup Nazi, no ice for me.

This morning I called the folks at Sears bright and early (7:30 eastern) to get a repair person out here and this is where the business angle comes in. If you’ve been following Sears at all in the business press (or even in this space), you know that they are in all kinds of financial trouble. Without getting into why that is, it’s safe to say that the last thing they want to do at this point is to alienate a customer. You with me so far?

Back to the phone call. Obviously, the fridge is still under warranty – it’s not even a year old. I called the number on their website that gets you to service for products under warranty and was greeted by an AI bot. I’m not a fan of these things – I think they aren’t that great yet and I’ve been frustrated more than once by a bot that couldn’t get what it was I wanted. Without a lot of gory details, I got this one to send me to a human. Except the humans weren’t in yet. “Please call back during business hours.” I spent 4 minutes getting to that point. They didn’t even bother to say what “business hours” were and in which time zone.

Let’s not alienate a customer, right? What would I have done differently? First, maybe they shouldn’t answer the phone with anything other than “our business hours are…” and ask you to call back. Even better – ask for my phone number so you can call me back when you get in. Don’t tie me up for several minutes and waste my time.

Sears isn’t the only company I’ve had a negative experience today. Two members of my family ordered new phones from ATT. Neither wanted insurance, told the salesperson so, and yet both were going to be billed $8.99/month without their permission. I know only because I got the “welcome to your new insurance” email since I’m the main account holder. That means more time out of my day to fix a problem that neither I nor my family members made.

If you run a business, especially a business that’s in financial distress or a business that is in an insanely competitive area, spend more time hugging your customers. Find ways to reduce their pain. Don’t waste their time or connive ways to take their money. Make sense?

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September 27, 2019 · 3:15 pm

What A Waste

In addition to it being Foodie Friday, it’s also trash day. Every Thursday night I wheel the trash and recycling bins out to the curb to await their pick-up Friday morning. That also means that each Thursday I go through the fridge and toss any food that has reached its expiration date or any leftovers that didn’t manage to get consumed after they were cooked sometime in the previous 5 days. In all candor, it’s one of the more frustrating things for me since I absolutely HATE to waste food.

Yes, I was of the generation who had parents that reminded us that children were starving in Europe (which they actually were as the continent rebuilt after WWII) and elsewhere but I don’t think that’s really what bothers me. It’s also not the feeling like I’m tossing cash money into the trash bin although that in effect is exactly what I’m doing. I just don’t like to waste anything. That’s one of the many reasons I’ve always admired Jacques Pepin who would always demonstrate how to make use of every scrap of food on his cooking shows.

This from a Food52 piece:

The average American ends up throwing away a full 103 pounds of spoiled food each year, according to a recent survey of 2,000 people conducted by OnePoll for Bosch home appliances. That works out to an average of 4 items a week, or the weekly equivalent of $53.81. All told, per the survey results, the average American adult will waste 6,180 pounds of food in their lifetime.

Food isn’t the only area where we waste perfectly good things either. Plastic bags are a plague, for example. I’m surprised stores still offer them or don’t hand out reusable bags. My supermarket sells big reusable bags at cost and will replace them for free if they rip. Trader Joe’s does something similar. It’s good for the customer, good for the environment, and good for the business since they don’t have to purchase as many single-use bags.

There is a lot of waste in business, of course, and I don’t just mean single-use bags. We produce reports that no one reads just because the report has always been produced. We don’t look at the analytics of what we’re doing on the web and in social media to understand if the bang is commiserated with the buck – the time and effort – we spend making those platforms hum.  We waste time in endless group email chains to solve a problem when one brief meeting would serve to fix the whole thing.

Be waste averse. Not just in your fridge but in your office as well. Your wallet and your CFO will thank you!

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