Tag Archives: Food industry

February 1, 2019 · 10:35 am

The One True Holiday

It’s Foodie Friday and it’s the eve of the annual national holiday called the Super Bowl. It’s America’s only true national holiday in my book. Oh sure – most Americans celebrate Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day and Veteran’s Day and even Thanksgiving, but none of those have the vast majority of the country focused on exactly the same thing at the same time. Only the Super Bowl does that.

Along with the game goes the food. Or, rather, THE FOOD, since inevitably there is a lot of it. Even those years in which I’ve watched the game by myself rather than at a party or a bar, I’ve managed to have copious amounts of generally not very healthy food by my side. Try to find a food site without a Super Bowl menu on it. Try to find a bar or a non-fine dining place that isn’t throwing a party.

Here was my take 8 years ago. Nothing has changed off the field (we won’t go into how the on-field experience has changed):

The Super Bowl is unlike any other sporting event from just about any perspective.  It’s watched by more people and is even covered by media people who wouldn’t know an H-back from Preparation H.  Hundreds of marketers, both authorized and unauthorized, try to tie in with “The Big Game” (for you ambushers) whether they’re selling food, TV’s, or anything else along the durable to non-durable scale.

So what do you do as a marketer? Do you try and fight city hall and run your own campaign not related to The Big Game? Do you pay the NFL’s or the broadcaster’s price tag (if your category is available) and use the marks or even just buy TV time in or around the game? Do you just stay quiet and begin your Valentine’s Day promotion after the game?

Tough question. If you’re in the food business, Super Bowl Sunday is one of the most popular takeout days of the year (1 in 7 Americans order takeout food for the game!). A third of Americans consume some sort of dip. Are you staffed properly if you’re a restaurant? Have you ordered extra dip and sour cream if you’re a market? If you’re not a food business, you need to account for this holiday – especially this holiday – in your marketing and content plans. Unlike any other sports championship, people watch The Super Bowl even when they don’t have a favorite team playing. They actually watch the ads. They generally participate in word of mouth and social media conversations. It is America’s holiday and if you market behind the others, maybe you need, as it says on many pizza boxes, to try the best since you’ve tried the rest. Make sense?

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January 25, 2019 · 4:16 pm

Something To Talk About

I’m going to return to an old theme this Foodie Friday. I’ve written about how happy customers breed more happy customers but I came across a piece of food-related research that reinforced that message. Since I think it’s one of the most critical tenets in any business – food-related or not – I’m sharing it here today.

A recent survey by reservation platform SevenRooms found that more than half of American diners (54 percent) turn to friends and family for restaurant recommendations. About 30 percent consult review sites like Yelp, and 25 percent were influenced by something they saw on TV, according to the survey. About 35 percent of diners said they have eaten at a restaurant because they saw it on social media. Among those platforms, Facebook had the most influence (23 percent), with Instagram (10 percent), YouTube (9 percent) and Twitter (7 percent) far behind.

So word of mouth isn’t dead, and the way that one generates the best word of mouth is to create a memorably wonderful experience for the customer. I don’t believe that the restaurant industry is any different from any other in this regard. Let’s think for a moment about what that great experience really means. I think it means that the business provides an experience that distracts the customer from whatever else is on their minds. It provides a break and enjoyment. It gives the customer something to talk about afterward – something positive. It makes the customer feel that whatever they paid for the service or product they received they received better than fair value. Their expectations were exceeded. It’s the totality of the customer experience. It’s a combination of items offered but also the service quality in which those items are offered.

That’s the sort of stuff that people talk and write about. Have you ever left a business with the feeling that you couldn’t wait to tell someone about it? I have and those become the businesses with which I gladly spend a good deal of time and money. One small example from going out for breakfast this morning. The server greeted me and said, “coffee and a small container of milk for it, right?” She remembered that I can’t stand the little containers of non-diary creamer or half and half that many places – including hers – put out for coffee. A small thing but among the many reasons I keep going back and tell others to do the same.

What business has given you something positive to talk about? I spent a lot of this week telling you about some businesses that managed to do the opposite. It’s much more fun to write and talk about when businesses get it right don’t you think?

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January 18, 2019 · 9:59 am

Fixing The Food

This Foodie Friday, our subject is a bit more somber than usual. It’s a report put out by The Lancet, which is a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal. It is among the world’s oldest, most prestigious, and best known general medical journals, according to Wikipedia. The subject of the report is what healthy diets from sustainable food systems should look like. Unfortunately, where the world is at the moment is neither healthy nor sustainable.

If you’re so inclined, you can read the entire report here. It’s eye-opening. As the introduction says:

Civilization is in crisis. We can no longer feed our population a healthy diet while balancing planetary resources. For the first time in 200000 years of human history, we are severely out of synchronization with the planet and nature. This crisis is accelerating, stretching Earth to its limits, and threatening human and other species’ sustained existence.

Not good right? We can discuss the causes (are the excess carbon emissions generated from red meat production inherent in the process or just in having to move the meat such great distances?) but we really do need to acknowledge that there is a problem and something needs to change. And that’s really the business point for anyone engaged in business.

Not only do markets change but circumstances do as well. I’m sure that it didn’t start out this way and there is a lot of cultural history behind it, but the report says people in North America eat more than six times the recommended amount of red meat, while people in South Asia eat half of what they should. Of course, shipping red meat to South Asia causes carbon emissions as well as provides a product that might not be affordable. What’s the solution? That’s for people way smarter than me.

Another example of changing circumstances. We’ve all seen businesses fail or have to move because of a huge increase in rent. That’s not a changed market and the business might be selling every bit as much as it was before. But short of raising prices, thereby possibly killing sales and destroying a customer base, what’s the solution? Usually, it’s to move and hope your customers move with you.

We can’t ignore things beyond the market. People are hungry – nearly 1 billion people are going hungry while 2 billion people are eating too much. There is demand for food. It’s a healthy market. But ignoring the circumstances that the business of creating it is destroying humans’ long-term prospects is short-sighted, something none of us in business can afford to be, right?

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