Tag Archives: Food industry

June 7, 2019 · 5:34 pm

Who Owns You?

Foodie Friday! I installed a couple of the food-delivery apps on my smartphone this week. Some of my favorite local places use the delivery services to expand their business and I thought having the ability to order in might be a nice option. Of course, that got me thinking about what exactly the restaurants got besides the additional order (at a lower price when you factor in the service’s cut but no service cost). The answer, as it is with almost everything today, should have been data but as it turns out, not so much.

The reality is that the delivery apps hang on to the data. They “own” the customer, not the restaurant, and that’s a problem, or it should be. Restaurants are giving up the direct connection to their customer by not getting that data and they have no way to combine it with their offline, real-world data gathered when I actually show up to eat as well as with the data they might get from a reservation service such as Open Table.

Ownership of the customer is an enormous issue no matter what business you’re in. For example, your car spits out reams of data about your location, your driving habits, and many other things. How many? A report by Consumer Reports said that “There are more than 200 data points in cars today, with at least 140 viable business uses.” Who owns the data and, therefore, the customer? The dealer who sold you the car? The manufacturer? I, of course, think the right answer is that YOU own the data until you give it to someone for a specific purpose.

Think about how many things around you gather data these days. Your TV, refrigerator, heck, even your toothbrush might be collecting information about you and your habits. Who owns you as a customer? I bought my TCL TV through Best Buy. It has Roku built in. Who “owns” me? What’s being shared?

It’s a question you need to ask as a business person when you partner or work with a third party. I think customer ownership is a fundamental issue and it’s only going to become more important. Of course, as a consumer, you ought to be every bit as concerned but we’ve talked about privacy a lot here so not today (84 posts and counting in the last 11 years!).

I really don’t care much about DoorDash or GrubHub. Without the restaurants they serve, I wouldn’t ever install or use them. I’m not their customer in any real sense – they provide a nice service but it’s the food I’m after, right? So why do they think they have a right to own me? Are you asking that question at all? Maybe you should!

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May 31, 2019 · 12:10 pm

Ghost Kitchens In The Sky

Our subject this Foodie Friday is kitchens, specifically kitchens that service your takeout order. Think about it for a second. You place an order for a meal to go at your favorite dining establishment. In some cases, you go there to pick it up. In many other cases, even years ago, you’d order a pizza or some Chinese food and it would arrive at your front door looking just as it did when you picked it up yourself. You probably didn’t think about if it was actually cooked in the restaurant’s kitchen since it looked and tasted the same as when you ordered at the place. In fact, it almost certainly was cooked by the same hands that were serving the dine-in customers at the same time.

Fast forward to today. With the advent of food delivery services, many more establishments are offering food for delivery. Most sit-down places have experienced a big jump in takeout, so much so that it’s become a significant percentage of their business. I think it also has to do with our general impatience these days. Who can sit still long enough to enjoy a meal cooked to order? So, many places are asking themselves why not set up a kitchen specifically to handle the delivery business rather than expand the restaurant kitchen to handle the additional orders. Ghost kitchens have arrived.

As one article described them, ghost kitchens are delivery-centric cooking spaces without the added hassle of in-person dining that a traditional restaurant brings. Think of them as cooking-focused WeWork spaces. Lower rent, no front of house, no cashiers and no customers tapping their feet waiting for their food are all part of the appeal. As long as the food tastes the same, why would the customer care?

I could write another 1,000 words about ghost kitchens and the pros and cons but the point I want to make today is that they exist because restaurants are rethinking their businesses. If they can grow at better margins and lower costs by doing that rethinking, can’t you? Some pretty big players – Google Ventures among them – are getting involved, and you know it’s just a matter of time before Amazon through Whole Foods starts delivering all those great dishes you can buy at your local store for a take-home or to work meal.

Is it inconceivable to you to share accounting, legal, and other back-office functions with another business that’s non-competitive? A ghost kitchen for your business? How about having your sales staff pick up some lines that complement yours and offer both to customers that might be interested?

If you’re not thinking out of the box, the box might just become a coffin. Instead of a ghost kitchen, it might be a ghost business!

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May 24, 2019 · 2:00 pm

Consistently Human

It’s Foodie Friday and as we head into Memorial Day weekend here in the US, let’s pause a moment to remember all those who made the ultimate sacrifice so that we can enjoy our meals this weekend.

One of the things I’ve written about with respect to restaurants is the value of consistency. One of the best compliments I can pay to a restaurant is in saying I’ve never had a bad meal there. It’s a reflection on consistency – of the raw materials, of the service and, of course, on how the chef has his team operating in producing the same dish to the same standard. In a weird way, many fast-food places are better at doing that than many restaurants even though the cooking staff tends to be younger and less-trained in culinary arts. Even weirder is the notion that some places have gone to robots to do some of the cooking.

One of my favorite hangouts is a restaurant here in town. The food is consistent even if there is sometimes an overcooked burger or a dish that wasn’t plated with enough care. I like that I can see that people were involved. This is what I wrote three years ago about that:

Business needs to be about people.  When I eat, I want to taste the cook’s soul. I like the imperfections and that my pizza is different from how it will be the next time I order it. I enjoy personal service and the quirks of every individual with whom I deal no matter what the business. We need to be responsive to each customer in a human way. It’s why customer service agents reading from a script are just as bad as automated menu trees in my book. Who doesn’t prefer speaking with an unscripted human?

Many of us in business watch the numbers like a hawk for any changes. We might not pay as close attention to the people who make those numbers happen. If you want to make improvements in your numbers you need to understand human behavior – that of your staff and that of your customers. The numbers are a reflection of that. They don’t just happen.

It isn’t machines or numbers we remember this Memorial Day. It’s people. Let’s stay human out there!

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