Our Foodie Friday Fun this week is pasta.
Strozzapreti pasta (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I’ve expressed my love of Italian food on many episodes of the screed and there’s nothing more Italian than macaroni. There are dozens of shapes and types . Long noodles, short noodles, extruded shapes, rolled shapes. Most are associated with a particular region and the type of sauce dictates the type of pasta. My personal favorite are the Strozzapreti – the Priest Stranglers of Roman cuisine.
Walking into a fresh pasta store in Italy is a mind-blowing experience. There are so many choices and what isn’t available can be made for you using the array of dies they have. Yet the basic building blocks are very simple – flour, eggs, maybe some oil, maybe some water. There are add-ins like spinach and squid ink but the basic as always the same. What does this have to do with your business?
First, many of us get frustrated in our attempts to “be different.” We tend to focus on being radically different when the reality is that the basic ingredients are, in many cases, the same. The little alterations – a pinch of salt, the cheese used in the filling – are what separates good from great and the same old same old from the fresh. If you change things up too much, like badly made pasta it falls apart.
So what are the basic business ingredients? The same ones we discuss all the time around here. A plan, an open mind, a focus on facts, a great team, and an ability to listen to everyone – customers, markets, and staff. Like flour and eggs, dozens of outcomes are possible depending on the circumstances. We determine which pasta to make base on the sauce we’re creating – delicate noodles with delicate sauces, ridged pasta to catch the sauce. In business we need to think about the sauce – the market – as we consider the pasta – your business.
If your business was a pasta, which one and why? Something to ponder!
