Tag Archives: Foodie

February 6, 2015 · 12:03 pm

A Lesson From Big Al

Foodie Friday, and our food fun this week comes from a restaurant in which I’ve never eaten but of which I am a customer. A very happy customer, actually, and my happiness is all due to an excellent lesson in customer care.

Big Al’s BBQ & Catering is located in Raleigh. As Al’s website proclaims:

We aren’t the cheapest Carolina BBQ vendor, but we guarantee freshness and award-winning flavors you can’t find anywhere. Period. Come eat with us, or call in and order out! We’ll pack your plate just fine.

Honestly, I’ve not done that. What I have done is to order merchandise from him. You see, my Dad is also called Big Al and I thought it would be a fun surprise to send him a shirt and a hat bearing the Big Al name and logo.  I placed an online order and entered my parents’ address for shipping.  After a week when I hadn’t received an excited call from Florida I began to wonder about the status of my order.  It was then that I noticed the receipt said “local pickup” meaning they were waiting for me to walk into their store and grab the goods.

I emailed the address from which the receipt came explaining that there had been a mix-up.  Within 20 minutes I had a note back from Al himself explaining that he had tried to text me (I had used a land line on the order) to ask about shirt color and was glad I had sent the note.  Here is where the lesson begins.

A quick exchange of emails to furnish the correct shipping address concluded with Al saying “I’ll get that out to you.”  No long explanation, no haggling over if the error was on my end or on his.  Just “I’ll get that out to you. ”  This morning, I received a text – “Going to ship your Dad’s package this morning priority mail…I am picking up the freight for all your troubles.”

If you take one thing away from the roughly 1,700 screeds I’ve written I hope it’s the rock-solid focus on the customer Al demonstrated.  Heck, I’m some schlub from out-of-state that ordered a shirt and hat.  I’m not going to be coming in weekly for food.  Al treated me as I assume he does everyone – with respect, an assumption that the customer is right, and a willingness to go the extra mile.

If you are ever near Raleigh I hope you’ll hit Big Al’s for a meal.  Order out if you can.  Tell your friends to go. Even if you have other dining plans, do me a favor and swing by and let him know you admire his customer-centric focus.  I sure do. I wonder if he can ship ribs to Connecticut?

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January 23, 2015 · 11:28 am

Mr. Kanso

Foodie Friday, and today we have something a little on the weird side.  It’s a chain of “restaurants” (you’ll see why I’m using quotes in a second) in Japan called Mr. Kanso.  The first one opened in Osaka in 2002 and became so successful that it now has 17 other locations across Japan.  This is a pretty good summary of the business:

Mr. Kanso has no menus, only shelves stacked with hundreds of different types of canned food from across the globe. Customers choose from such delicacies as “Todo niku kare” (sealion curry), canned cocktail sausages, French salad, and whale meat (tut tut, Mr. Kanso) – all served cold in a can and gobbled up with plastic cutlery.

That’s right – diners visit Mr. Kanso and select their food from a shelf.  It’s not heated up, just opened.  As best I can determine, these are not the same cans one can find in a market.  All of them have a Mr. Kanso label so I’m assuming the chain has them made to their specifications.  I don’t get it from a consumer perspective although I guess if the contents of the cans are really yummy it makes a bit more sense.  Honestly, Hokkaido bear curry isn’t really my can of tea but apparently it’s the variety that keeps customers coming back for more.  There is, however an interesting business point here.

Think about it.  No cooking means no kitchen and no cooks.  The start-up costs are substantially lower than those of a regular restaurant.  The food doesn’t spoil, at least not in days or weeks.  The food is reasonably priced – drinks run about $5 and the cans cost between $2 and $20 (I’m not sure what that one contains) and the margins must be excellent.  The cutlery gets thrown away so no dishwashers.  In short, it’s a low investment cost, high margin business.  As long as the appeal is there, and it certainly seems to be, this is exactly the sort of model any of us can emulate.

Honestly, if a Mr. Kanso came to my town I’d probably go check it out.  Reasonably-priced food with an amazing selection has some appeal even if the dining experience has less.  The business appeal, however, is first-rate.  Thoughts?

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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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