October 26, 2018 · 12:40 pm

Country Omelets

It’s Foodie Friday and for some reason, I’ve got omelets on the brain. I’m not talking about the egg concoctions they’d serve you at the local greasy spoon although as you’ll see I’m a fan of those. No, I’m thinking about the French Omelet and as it turns out, there is a business point that comes along with it.

If you’re not familiar, a classic French omelet (or omelette) has, as Serious Eats put it,  a smooth, silky exterior with little to no browning that cradles a tender, moist, soft-scrambled interior. It is a dish that relies almost exclusively on technique. As with any dish, you want the best ingredients, but unlike many of the foods about which I’ve written over the years in this space, this dish is a fussy little thing and without knowing the proper technique, producing the unblemished golden-yellow eggs with an ultra-creamy texture is almost impossible.

There is no person better equipped to explain the proper technique than the great Jacques Pepin. Here is a video in which he makes a country omelet (what you or I would make at home) and the classic French omelet:

With the first one, a competent 6 year old could handle the technique (or lack thereof). I’m pretty sure that the second technique would involve a fairly large mess.  So what does this have to do with business?

I’m not going to deny that there are “techniques” in business. Where we see them most often is in the sales area. I recall going through various sales training sessions years ago where I was taught closing techniques, questioning techniques, objection handling techniques, and so on. The problem is that many of these techniques are used without an ethical overlay. Salespeople often look at them as ways to trick people. Obviously, if you have the right customer, you’re selling them something that will solve a problem they’re having. Why would tricking them be necessary?

I’m more of a country omelet businessperson. Sure, there are skills involved in what I do and you need to understand how to use the tools at your disposal. I’m far less concerned, however, with technique and more concerned with putting out a product that satisfies the basic need: someone is hungry! Is the ability to turn out a perfect French omelet impressive? It is, but it’s also way more fraught with risk. Minimizing risk while producing a great solution to a customer’s problem works for me every time. You?

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October 24, 2018 · 10:57 am

Ethics And Profits

A bit of a rant today. Suppose you had a friend who lied about things. Maybe they told you that they had a great way to help your business when, in fact, their plan was to use your money to build up their own business. Maybe you gave them money to invest and they lied about the returns. Maybe you tell them information about yourself that you don’t really want public and they tell people anyway. Maybe you let them use your phone or your computer for a few minutes and they installed malware that spied on your constantly. Some friend, right?

Welcome to doing business with Facebook.

Now before you accuse me of hyperbole, let me remind you of the incredible breaches of trust that Facebook has committed over the years. If you look up “Facebook apologizes,” you get over 17 million results. They, like many companies, seem to be focused on one thing: shareholders. As one person put it in speaking about the fall of Sears:

“What’s happened is that shareholders’ interests have squeezed out other stakeholders,” said Arthur C. Martinez, who ran Sears during the 1990s and was credited with a turnaround. “The mantra is shareholders above all else.”

What happens to workers doesn’t matter. Amazon gave raises with one hand and took away stock grants with the other. What happens to partners doesn’t matter. Facebook begged marketers to use their platform to distribute content and then, once the platform had grown to an unimaginable size, cut off marketers who didn’t pay them from access to their audience. What happens to users doesn’t matter. Alphabet, Google’s parent, has over 88% of mobile apps gathering data for them whether users know it or not. Ever wonder how the ads Google serves you with a search seem to tie to something you were doing on a news or productivity app that had nothing to do with Google or search or even ads? Here’s a study that will explain it.

Why is it so hard to follow a moral compass to profitability for many companies? If the bulk of non-tech people truly understood how their data is gathered and used, they’d go back to flip phones. Why not put your customers first and treat them as you’d expect to be treated as a customer? Why not reward employees so that they’re doing better as you’re doing better? Why not put partners’ interests on a level footing with your own so that deals are equitable and profitable for you both? Why not allow vendors to make an honest profit? Without those four things – customers, employees, partners, and vendors – what the shareholders have will be worthless pieces of paper and not an interest in a profitable, growing enterprise.

My friends don’t lie to me and I don’t lie to them. We’ve had our share of messy moments because of that but we’re still friends because of that honesty. We need ethical standards in business every bit as much as we need profits; probably more so. OK, rant over, but do me a favor and think about that, won’t you?

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October 19, 2018 · 12:49 pm

By The Numbers

Foodie Friday at last! I went out for breakfast this morning and as I watched my server typing my order into the Point Of Sale system, I wondered what was coming out the other end. No, not if my order had been captured correctly or if the ticket would print out correctly. I wondered if the owners of the place actually used the data that had just been gathered. Restaurants generate a phenomenal amount of data although I’d be willing to wager that a minority of them actually look at, analyze, and employ it to improve their business. Then again, I’d be willing to bet that many non-food businesses suffer from the same omission.

Think about it. A restaurant gets information from their POS system – what’s selling and how much does it cost. They see if something is more popular at lunch than at dinner. They can look at their reservation system to know when they’ll be busy and their seating record to know how many covers they’re selling. Smart ones look at how many parties of which size were kept waiting (maybe we should turn the 6-top into a 4- and a 2?). They know what drinks have been ordered. Their suppliers have data for them – what’s available and what does it cost? Then they have their own internal accounting – labor costs, etc. Each of those things relates to the other. But there’s more.

What’s posted on social media? Whats the most-photographed dish? What’s liked and shared? How many reviews and are they positive? What are they about? There’s a lot of data to collect from a multitude of sources – OpenTable, Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, TripAdvisor, Foursquare, Urbanspoon or Instagram. All of the former data is very structured and it tells you “what.” The social stuff, along with any loyalty data you might have is unstructured and it can help you to understand “why”.

Maybe if you overlay the daily weather during service hours you can infer a causal effect on any of the above. You can adjust what’s displaying on your drive-thru board when it’s busy to show the menu items that may be lower-margin but quicker to prepare in order to speed the line. If you collect emails (your reservation system does!), you can use Facebook or some other data provider to build out profiles so you can know your customer and better target your marketing.

My point is that every business has a similar capability these days. We might not have reservation systems but we do have online commerce or websites or apps. We need to be less intimidated by big data and more proactive with respect to learning about our customers and how they interact with our offerings. Does that make sense?

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