Tag Archives: management

June 14, 2019 · 1:05 pm

Finishing In Style

Let’s think, this Foodie Friday, about how dishes are “finished.” No, I don’t mean how you eat every last bit off of your plate. Instead, I mean those last few things you do as a cook when the dish is done but you’re adding what I would call a lagniappe of sorts – a little something extra at the end, almost a gift.

For example. Let’s say you’ve just cooked your guests some perfect steaks. Now you could certainly just let them rest and present them to your hungry diners or you could finish them in style. Maybe you make an herb butter which you allow to melt over the warm steak, adding another layer of richness and flavor. Maybe you provide a container of truffle salt, adding heady umami to the dish.

We’ve all been offered grated cheese to go on our pasta. That’s finishing in style in my book, especially if the cheese offered is correct for the dish itself and not just the same cheese for everyone (and heaven forfend that’s it’s grated ahead of time!).

Finishing in style can be as simple as offering a drop of true balsamic vinegar for aged cheese or even ice cream (don’t knock it until you’ve tried it). What I think it really shows is that the cook is willing to go the extra steps to make a meal memorable.

It’s the same in business. When was the last time you hand-wrote a thank you note to a customer for an order or sent a gift to a new client to welcome them aboard? When I joined my franchising network and finished training, a lovely bonsai tree showed up at my house to congratulate me. Did it make me work any harder? No, but sure showed me that I had exercised great judgment in joining the group that I had. That was finishing in style.

Business today is way too competitive for any of us not to think about the lagniappe – the something extra. How can we finish each transaction – each dish we prepare – in style?

1 Comment

Filed under food, Thinking Aloud

Tagged as , , , , ,

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!

Leave a comment

Filed under food, Helpful Hints, Thinking Aloud

Tagged as , , , , , ,

May 28, 2019 · 3:01 pm

Another FIFA Fail

I read a mind-blowing story over the weekend about how not to treat a customer. Actually, how not to treat THOUSANDS of customers. Then again, considering the organization that was doing the “treating”, in retrospect I shouldn’t have been so shocked as they hit a new low. But still…

The Women’s World Cup begins in a few weeks. FIFA, which many in the world of sports consider to be just a big criminal conspiracy (too many cases to list here) began distributing tickets to customers around the world. The rest would be comical is it wasn’t so sad:

With the tournament in France due to start on 7 June, Fifa announced on Monday that tickets were now available to print at home. This led in some instances to complaints from people who, having assumed they had bought tickets together, discovered this was not the case.

“Dear fans. We have noted some of your comments, re: your tickets,” read a message on the tournament’s official Twitter account. “When you placed your order, a message indicating not all seats would be located next to each other did appear, before confirmation of your purchase. Unfortunately we will not be able to modify your order.

So if you spent years saving up to take your daughter to see the best women in the world play, you might have to let her experience that joy whilst seated several sections away from you and from your wife who may be in a different part of the stadium completely. FIFA’s response: we don’t really care.

A few things. First, this would NEVER happen for a Men’s World Cup. FIFA has a history of telling the women to piss off while paying lip service to their game. They made the women play a World Cup on artificial turf and who can forget the head of FIFA’s suggestion that women boost the game by playing in tighter shorts and makeup. Second, even if they weren’t such sexist pigs, ticket sales make up a smallish percentage of FIFA’s World Cup revenues. TV and sponsorship are the big tickets here and unless and until the broadcasters and sponsors speak up, the dismissive attitude to the real fans won’t change.

FIFA has a history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and they’ve done it again. We’ve been through this many times in this space but no business can afford to tell customers, no matter how small a part of the revenue picture that customer may be, that they don’t matter. People traveling to these games are among FIFA’s best customers. Do you still think they’ll continue to spend money with FIFA after this? Most of us can distinguish between supporting the game via our attention and supporting the people who run it with our cash. Fortunately for them, FIFA has no real competition. Can you say the same?

Leave a comment

Filed under Huh?, sports business

Tagged as , , , ,