Harbingers of the end 666

Wine in plastic bottles, OMG. Jerry Hirsch's article outlines

How about a bottle of the '02 Chateau Plastique?

The ubiquitous 750-milliliter glass wine bottle is starting to get competition from a plastic upstart.

The bottles carry a "use by" date -- plastic doesn't provide quite the same seal as glass -- and as such aren't likely to find their way into the cellars of serious wine enthusiasts.

For those who aren't as picky, however, the wine is likely to cost less. And oenophiles say that for wine that hasn't, er, expired, the taste will be the same.

"The wine doesn't know what package it is in," said W.R. Tish, a wine educator who writes a blog called Wine Skewer. "It tastes the same whether it is in a plastic bottle, a plastic bladder inside a box, or a glass."

Wi-Fi freeloaders

The Chicago Tribune has taken on an issue that has vexed coffee houses since the dawn of the town square. As a business you want your location to have energy and that requires people, however when those people become an expense and even worse a deterrent, what should you do?

Every morning, by the time you squeeze into the long line at the coffee shop, the laptop brigade already has staked out some of the best seats. The early arrivals are still there at lunch. And after lunch. And into the mid-afternoon, nursing a cup of coffee or a bagel and . . . tap-tap-tapping away on their laptops. Taking advantage of the free Wi-Fi. Oblivious to the commotion around them.

Oblivious to . . . you and the notion that you might briefly need a place to sit.

We've wondered, how do restaurants make money on these cyber squatters? Now there's an answer, courtesy of The Wall Street Journal: Many don't. At least, not enough money.

Some restaurateurs in the Big Apple are crabby about this. They say the customers plant themselves in the primo seats of their establishments to freeload off the wireless service. Some patrons appear with a tea bag for a free hot water refill, the paper reports, or "quietly unwrap homemade sandwiches."

Before wi-fi it was books and magazines. Before that it was parchment and scrolls. How long should you allow a person who buys a small coffee to linger at a primo window seat that you are paying $50 a square foot for?

The multi talented Watermelon

Erica Marcus' introduces the varied uses of watermelon

Your color and sweetness remind a lot of folks of tomatoes and, in fact, you marry well with tomatoes - as the market salad here demonstrates. I tried my hand at substituting you for tomatoes in various recipes and produced a Caprese salad and an orecchiette with watermelon that, while attractive, were not terribly good. On the other hand, my recipe for a BLW (bacon-lettuce-watermelon) sandwich is a winner.

Ambiguos pricing:

Today is summer festival critique day, earlier I discussed the how brand clarity must be projected across all channels of customer interaction. This post addresses the whole notion of ambiguous pricing.

If more than one customer requires an explanation on the pricing on your sign, be it at a summer festival or in the restaurant, change it. The lasting memory of a customer transaction will not be happy if a customer thinks they are paying $4.00 for a large blended iced coffee when the price is actually $5.75. Case in point, a vendor had sign in large letters Iced Coffee sm - $3.00, large -$4.00, jumbo $5.75 on the right side of the board. The left side of the board read Smoothies and Blended Iced Coffee and listed the flavors. At the bottom in small print sm- $4.00, large $5.75, jumbo $8.00. Looking at the board I thought, a large blended iced coffee was $4.00 and was all set to order one. The customer in front of me had the same reaction. She ordered a large blended iced coffee thinking it was $4.00. When the clerk ask for $5.75 she pointed to the sign and said "it says $4.00", the clerk explained "that the iced coffee is $4.00, the blended iced coffee is $5.75 and I can put that in a small cup for you." Guess what, the clerk made that customer fell like "Cow Chips". Making customers feel bad about purchasing from you is not a sustainable business model. Yes you got the extra $1.75 in sales, however the future value of that customer is now ZERO, Zilch, Zip, Nada.

The sign was creating confusion which creates bad feelings. No business exists to create bad feelings. Fix your sign. This vendor is also another example of brand minefield issues because of the ambiguos pricing.

The brand minefield of the Summer Festival

Ah summer, the most glorious time of the year. There are summer festivals in nearly every corner of this country. Wow, what a great opportunity to introduce your restaurant to a brand new audience, bond with old friends and just have old fashion summer fun.

Hold on there Bunky, you might be great at running a restaurant however that does not mean you will be great at participating in summer festivals. Your participation in any summer festival or let us expand that, your participation in any channel needs to be coordinated with your brand. I have been attending quite a few of these summer festivals and have witnessed some horrible presentations from really good restaurants. The image you present at these festivals needs some thought. Too often restaurnats just slap up the tent and get at it. Wrong, wrong, wrong. This callous behavior creates a minefield for your brand to disintegrate completely. Not only will your introduction to new audience not be fruitful, but your old friends will start to rethink their high regard for your hospitality skills.

Dayparts in everything

Fascinating chart in the NY Times about how people spend their day.

Lemonade stand as a harbinger

Steven Berglass' 3 point test to determine if you should be an entrepreneur starts with;

Did you build a lemonade stand as a kid?


Trite as it sounds, true self-starters have the tenacity and resilience to keep fighting. A store of aggression helps. As Nietzsche observed: "He who has a why to live can bear almost any how."

Player or Victim

Fred Kofman's "Conscious Business" offers this differentiation:

Players takes total responsibility for everything that happens to them and others

Victims have external factors that explains events in their entirety.

Which are you Player or Victim?

Less Bad

All the business news is less bad, which passes for fantastic in this negative vortex we are passing through. Glenfiddich has come out with 50 year scotch to help us celebrate, as this story from the Guardian relates:

The first smell is of citrus; grapefruit, to be exact. The next is a floral note that those more expert than I identify as rose petals, and finally there is a hint of green tobacco. It has a fresh, clean aroma that is matched by my first sip, which reveals more citrus, traces of soft vanilla, caramel and even a little smoke.

It is easily the finest whisky I have ever tasted, but then it should be. The tiny amount of golden liquid I have been allowed to sample, which barely covers the bottom of a commemorative glass, would probably cost £500 in the unlikely event that I were ever to find it in a bar. If you want to buy a whole bottle of it, it's yours for a mere £10,000.

This whisky in question is The Glenfiddich 50 Year Old

Customer Service is so 20th century

Tom's post defines the next level of differentiation:

But customer service, like product quality, has become a basic, expected deliverable. Without it, you fail. With it, you are only at parity...

...Good customer service can help differentiate you only if it is a gateway to building relationships with customers. Customer relationships differentiate you from the competition in a way that customer service (or products) never can.

Tour de Vita:

Seth's post details on which part of the journey progress is made:

I look forward to the uphill parts, because that's where the work is, the fun is, the improvement is. On the uphills, I have a reasonable shot at a gain over last time. The downhills are already maxed out by the laws of physics and safety.The best time to do great customer service is when a customer is upset.

Branding in reverse

This is fascinating. Steve Johnson's report really opens up a whole new chapter in the Starbucks saga:

A Seattle outlet of the 16,000-store coffee behemoth is being rebranded without visible Starbucks identifiers, as 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea.

It will be hard not to be green:

Walmart is about to supercharge the green revolution. Are you ready because your customers will be asking? Sandra Jones' article

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is taking steps to give the phrase "green" a measurable definition with an initiative to put eco-labels on the hundreds of thousands of products that end up on its store shelves, sources say.

The idea is to give products a simple, standard rating that allows shoppers at a glance to determine how sustainable a product is, akin to a nutritional label on food.

Coffee conversations

Let me try to comprehend this. The people that I am having a conversation with when I drink my coffee are not really there? I am good with that.

Susan Cosier's article examines a study about the link between caffeine and hallucinations

Have you ever heard a song when none was playing, clearly seen someone’s face when no one was there or felt the presence of a person, only to turn around to an empty room? If you’ve consumed a lot of caffeine—the equivalent to seven cups of coffee—you are three times more likely to hear voices than if you had kept your caffeine intake to less than a cup of coffee, according to psychologists at the University of Durham in England. Their recent study shows that overingesting the stimulant slightly increases your risk of experiencing other hallucinations as well.

Caffeine heightens the physiological effects of stress, lead author Simon Jones says. When someone feels anxiety, the body releases the hormone cortisol, and when people drink plenty of caffeine-infused tea, coffee or soda, their body produces more of the hormone when they encounter stressful events. Researchers have proposed that cortisol may trigger or exaggerate psychotic experiences by increasing the amount of the neurotransmitter dopamine flowing into the brain’s limbic areas, evolutionarily ancient regions involved in emotion, memory and behavior.

Active listening is an art

Steven Berglas' article offers this;

The main thing to realize about listening is that it's an active process. For example, to truly absorb what someone is saying, you must be able to paraphrase that person's words. Irrespective of whether the message rings true or not, you still have to grasp the thesis.

Read for fun:

Dawn Foster's article about preventing burnout proposes a strategy that I wholeheartedly endorse.

Reading can be very relaxing, and I usually have at least one non-fiction book to expand my horizons while also reading a fiction book just for fun. ... Take a few minutes every evening to read something you enjoy. The key to making this work is to read something you enjoy so that it feels like a reward, not a punishment.

Smaller portions as a business model.

A twenty year study chronicled in Karen Kaplan's article confirms the following,

The study comes as some validation to the cadre of several hundred true-believing Americans who profess to practice caloric restriction in their daily lives. It was also welcomed by scientists who study the biological mechanisms of aging and longevity.

"It adds to the evidence piling up that caloric restriction, independent of thinness, is a healthy way to stay alive and healthy longer," said Susan Roberts of the Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University, who wasn't involved in the study. "Less diseases in old age has to be something most everyone wants."

The question is simple, "can a sustainable business model be built around smaller portions?" The assertion of the health benefits has been common knowledge for some time. If fact during the study period, the American diet and the restaurant industry has been enamored with the "go large' mentality that is in direct contrast to the findings of the study.

Menu embellishment

Chicago Tribune article encourages restaurateurs to review their flowery prose.

"Grilled to perfection"

What is perfection? Can you boil cabbage to perfection? We want a stove with a "perfection" setting.

"World famous"
Having a German tourist say she liked your chicken salad does not make it world-famous.

The Fourth of July

Courage always in the face of adversity. Thomas Jefferson authored the words and those who signed pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to the great enterprise of birthing a nation.

"We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal"

Happy Fourth of July!