Tag Archives: Business and Economy

February 14, 2020 · 3:43 pm

Eating At The Bar

It’s Foodie Friday! As on most Friday nights, I’ll probably go out to dinner this evening, and since it’s Valentine’s Day, I’ll go early to make sure I get seated before the love birds on their twice a year dinner out clutter up one of my favorite restaurants.

I usually sit at the bar to eat at this place. Actually, I generally do that at most places since I find the service to be better. It’s also a lot more social and I’ve met some interesting characters who’ve become friends of a sort. At this place, I know the bartenders quite well and they make sure my glass is filled and the food is right. Truth be told, other than the burger, which is terrific, the food in this place is really nothing special. It’s all good but there are rarely specials and it’s sometimes a challenge to find something appealing on a very familiar menu. So why am I there so often? As it turns out, there’s a business point.

It comes down to the discussion between great customer experience vs. great product. I think CX, which you can interpret as service, wins much of the time. When I was in the corporate world, we worked with, among others, two very large tech companies. One provided superior products but their account people were dreadful. The other’s technology was good but not as good. Their account people, on the other hand, were the best. They anticipated our needs and addressed every issue we raised immediately. Do you want to guess which company was our favorite?

We found out that the first company paid their people bonuses based on sales while the second company paid based largely on customer satisfaction. This alignment of customer interests with company interests is exactly where any business needs to be. There is a famous Bain study that says 80% of companies think they provide superior customer experience, yet only 8% of those same companies’ customers think they get a great experience. Getting everyone’s interests aligned can help mitigate that.

I think we’re at the point where price and product mean way less than service and experience. Obviously, I wouldn’t let my love for the bartenders make up for inedible food or prices that were too expensive for the product delivered but the food is as good as any nearby competitor’s food, a meal costs about the same, and that’s good enough for me. Where do you come out on this?

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February 12, 2020 · 3:49 pm

TLI

We live in a time when many people overshare. You know what I’m talking about. They post pictures of what they’re eating. They check-in and post about every place they go with the exception of the bathroom. Every random thought is posted with the hope of stimulating some response even when the thoughts are pretty vacuous and of interest to none but the author (Hey, be nice – this screed doesn’t count!).

It’s TMI – Too Much Information, and I’ll admit that at times I’ve been as guilty as anyone. In my defense, I’ve now accepted that you can’t win an argument on Facebook even when you’re armed with facts so I won’t be engaging in THAT anymore. But one thing that I find to be just as bad as TMI is TLI – Too Little Information and that’s today’s subject.

A real-life example. I represent over 500 different franchise brands. While I’m very well acquainted with several dozen, it’s not really feasible for my aging brain to retain complete information about all of them, especially the ones I don’t discuss very often. Fortunately, the network I’m part of provides an information page on each of the brands and often there are recorded webinars that provide even more information. The brands themselves maintain the pages. Some provide a few pages for us to read with key selling points, finances the candidate must have, etc. There are often sales brochures we can download and send. Most importantly, they tell us why their brand is different from their competition. The very best brands give us extensive information and it makes it easy to present their brand. No issues here.

A large number, however, gives us nothing. Oh sure, we know what the franchise costs and what the royalty rates are, but we don’t have any materials to send nor do we have any information beyond the very basics. It’s TLI and it makes my job quite difficult. How do I represent a brand that’s a mystery to me? What distinguishes one residential cleaning service franchise from another? How is your lawn service franchise unique? Why should someone invest in your franchise vs. another in the same category?

You may be guilty of the same thing. Do you give employees enough information about a task you’re asking them to complete? How about vendors? Do they really understand why and how you use their products so they can provide better service? All of us in business are constantly providing information to various constituencies. The key is avoiding TLI just as much as we all want to avoid TMI. Make sense?

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February 7, 2020 · 3:58 pm

Tajine

This Foodie Friday, let’s investigate tajine. Those of you with some knowledge of middle eastern or northern African food and cooking will recognize that a tajine is both a dish and a cooking vessel. You probably aren’t aware that it makes a great business point as well.

The dish, as one might expect, varies quite a bit depending on the location and culture. Generally speaking, a tajine is a stew that’s cooked slowly. Depending on the culture, it can have meats, fish, regional spices and broth. Some cultures add fruit and nuts. In Tunisia, eggs and cheese are common additions, making the stew more like a frittata.

What most of the cultures have in common is that the dish is cooked in a pot with a pyramid-shaped lid that does most of the work for you and produces consistently moist results, condensing and redirecting steam back into the food. Technically you don’t need a tajine to cook a tajine (see what I did there?) but because the pot is made from porous terra cotta, it gets seasoned and infused with flavors over time. Yes, very much like a great cast-iron skillet. Yes, you could use a slow-cooker which develops a similar cooking environment and yes, some tajine pots are enameled so they don’t really absorb flavor, but no matter which way you go, the business point remains the same.

A tajine is very much a product of a specific environment. The flavors reflect the culture and what the pot does so well is to create a condition that keeps the product inside in an optimal state. I think that’s what great corporate cultures do as well. First, they select “ingredients” – people and processes – that reflect who they are as an organization. Next, they create an environment that allows those ingredients to combine while protecting them from burning or overcooking. It’s a slow, gentle braise.

Think about the best places in which you worked. I’ll bet it was a “braise” environment and not “broiling”. I’ve worked in the latter and the staff tended to be overcooked quite quickly.  It’s like one lovely description of tajine cooking says:

Fill the pot with your layered ingredients before it has fully heated, either at room temperature or when barely warm. This helps to mediate overall temperature and prevent any scorching. There’s no sautéing necessary—simply layer ingredients and add liquid all in one go. A moist and saucy tagine comes from the trapped steam, not pre-cooking.

As you’re creating your corporate tajine, think about both the dish and the pot. Keep the staff from scorching and the environment so it creates optimal conditions for success. It’s probably simpler than you think if you have the right tools!

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