Tag Archives: business thinking

January 16, 2015 · 12:10 pm

Home Cooking

This week our Foodie Friday Fun revolves around home.  In particular around Mom’s home cooking.  Some moms aren’t great cooks.  Some moms (like the one who taught me how to cook – not my own, mind you) could open a restaurant and it would be packed every night.  It really doesn’t matter how good their food is.  What matters is that whatever they produce comes from your home and that experience is imprinted on your senses.

I bring this up because of the thought that was triggered last night while I was watching “The Taste.”  Chef Marcus Samuelsson said “Food can give you a sense of home” and it really resonated.  It immediately brought to mind a couple of dishes that bring me back home no matter where I encounter them.  A great pot of Sunday Gravy, filled with meatballs, sausage, and braciole.  Beef flanken nestled in a dense broth.  They, among others, transport me to a place filled with happy memories.  If the dish is spectacular, so much the better.  Even if it’s just OK I give it extra points.  It’s the memory of comfort that’s important.

I read a quote once that every cuisine has a soul food or a food that makes the people of that ethnic group’s soul sing.  I believe that.  I also believe that it a great thought for any business.  We need to ask ourselves if there is a way to tap into the collective sense of home that our consumers have.  How do we make their souls sing?  How do we elicit happy memories even though our product is new or innovative?  The second level of Maslow’s hierarchy is safety.  How do we bring that feeling to our customers?

It can be done.  There is a humorous ad campaign out now from Ally Bank that taps into this.  Every spot revolves around the typical sort of fears we face each day in the modern world and how you can depend on Ally no matter what.  The spots are generally pretty funny and I think they tap into that notion of the safety home brings.

We need to work on bringing that sense of home to our brands.  Up for the challenge?

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January 14, 2015 · 1:44 pm

The Crap Experience

I’m going to let you in on a little secret today. Many of us spend a lot of time thinking about how we can attract new customers and retain all of our existing ones. That’s as it should be. There is, however, one thing you might not be thinking about. That’s the little secret.

The consumer experience today has been dumbed down. I don’t mean that in the intellectual sense. I mean crap experiences have become the norm. As a result, consumer expectations are pretty low. Let me explain.

Think about traveling via airplane. 30 years ago you walked through the airport. There was a cursory security check but you could carry your coffee through and your shoes stayed on your feet. You had a reserved seat with decent leg room, even in coach. You could stow your bag, you got a hot meal, and the price of these things was part of the fare you paid. Does any of that sound vaguely familiar today?  Nope.  We expect a horror show at security and the fare we pay bears little resemblance to what we’ll spend to make that trip.  In short, air travel sucks and we expect it to.  If the flight lands roughly on time we call it a good flight.  The crap experience is the norm.

Another example?  Maybe you spent $50 on a new video game.  You get an hour in and it crashes or the characters don’t render or you can’t move them because a “wall” has mysteriously appeared on all sides.  Think I’m making this up?  Ask anyone who bought the latest Assassin’s Creed game.  We just wait for the patch.

You can find crap experiences all over.  Hotels, restaurants, online retailers – heck, it’s hard to find one business segment that’s not riddled with them. So while our goal should always be to reach the highest standards possible, the key to success these days may lie in just three words:

Just. Don’t. Suck.

That’s a little step forward that will immediately put you above the norm.  Not sucking means you are running down the road from the crap experiences consumers have been forced to accept. Can you do that?

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January 9, 2015 · 11:43 am

Wine And Winning

Foodie Friday! I don’t know about you but I enjoy a glass of wine with my meals when I dine out. Unfortunately, there is no faster way to run up a restaurant bill than to order wine. I’m pretty familiar with many of the better low-cost wines from around the world and I tend to seek them out when I’m dining out. Usually they cost anywhere from 2 to 3 times what I know I would pay at retail.

This image shows a red wine glass.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This sets up a classic problem. Restaurants make a good amount of profit on selling wine and liquor and I certainly don’t begrudge them that. I would rather, however, pay them a lot for a really great dish that I know I can’t possibly make at home or for spectacular service. Paying $35 for a $12 bottle offends me, frankly.  The restaurant’s priorities are out of sync with mine and that’s never good in any business.  As a result I (and a number of my wine-loving friends) have made it a habit to seek out BYOB restaurants.  We bring our own wine and spend our money on food.  That’s a missed profit opportunity for the establishment, especially since we avoid “corkage” charges religiously.

Lately, quite a few nearby restaurants have done a very smart thing.  On what are their slow nights they offer half-price bottles.  Has this enticed us out on a Wednesday night?  Yes it has.  Which points to how we all need to solve business problems no matter what our business.

In this case the restaurant is selling the wine at a small markup, nothing like the 100%+ they usually charge.  More importantly, they have more covers on slow nights, and their overhead doesn’t change if they restaurant is full or empty.  As a customer I think of it as a big win, and going out Monday or Wednesday is fine with me, especially since it is generally slower, the service is better, and the kitchen usually more attentive.  I might even buy a much better bottle than usual which helps the turn over the wine stock or order an additional dish.  In other words, it’s a big win for everyone.

Isn’t that how every business dilemma need to be resolved?

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