Before I ventured into tech, I cut my teeth professionally in the retail real estate business, and as such, have always had a passion for retail. As somewhat of a foodie, restaurants hold a particularly fond place for me.
What enables some restaurant operators to consistently deliver crave-able dishes and an inspired, memorable experience from location to location, and menu item to menu item in the real world of changing tastes, economic cycles, fatigue/boredom, employee turnover, competition and the like?
How is it that Cheesecake Factory is able after 30 years to consistently deliver high quality, great-tasting food, good portions and warm service while supporting a menu with ~200 items, all the while spread across 30 states and packing crowds in every day/night seven days a week?
The Restaurant as Metaphor
What got me thinking about this topic is two things. One is recent memorable eating experiences at both a casual dining spot, Mixt Greens, and at a more white tablecloth spot, Houston’s.
Mixt Greens is largely a gourmet salad spot for people on the run, but it’s their concept and execution of what they call Eco-Gourmet® that makes them standout.
They proudly adorn their menu board with the framing that the menu was designed by executive chef, Andrew Swallow, and it’s the old axiom of when you put your name on the product, you are holding yourself and your team accountable to a different standard. And here, Mixt Greens delivers.
From fresh, high quality ingredients and imaginative, but not overly exotic, creations to serving your food in china-like plate ware, this place gets it.
They even nail the basics of asking the customer if they want light, medium or heavy on their dressing.
Simple, obvious, but in my experience, most places default to “one size fits all,” and when you ask for lite dressing, the retort is usually to offer on the side. So much for have it your way.
Meanwhile, Houston’s is at once a somewhat pricey steakhouse/grill and a place that is incredibly accommodating for kids.
It’s casual and formal at the same time, and delivers simply the best, most crave-able ribs and the most mouth-watering chili ever.
I have now visited locations of Houston’s in LA, New York, Miami, Atlanta and San Francisco, and at my local SF branch in particular, seen the cycle of managerial changes, new waiters come and go (albeit much less turnover than their peers) over a 10+ year period, and again, remarkable consistency, inspired food creations and warm service week after week, year after year.
A Metaphor for Partnering and Purpose
The second thing that got me thinking about the concept of ‘The Restaurant’ is its metaphorical goodness.
Let me explain. I am happily in one of those cycles where I find myself surrounded by a lot of aspiring (and practicing) entrepreneurs, and a recurring theme in my ‘advise and assist’ process is on the topic of codifying the purpose of the business as specifically and meaningfully as possible, so as to use that definition to choose good partners (be they business partners, strategic partners, investors or customer partners) and make sound operational and prioritization decisions.
After all, when you define the core essence of the idea, the universe that it operates within, its ‘have to haves’ and ‘can’t haves’ a whole heck of a lot of the going forward path starts to become really clear.
Given that, it seems that a good, universally understandable exercise is to (metaphorically speaking) envision your business as a new restaurant opening, and frame up the business you are creating as if it was a restaurant.
For example, what type of restaurant? Is it casual, fast food, white tablecloth, delivery?
What type of food? Do you want to serve Chinese, Italian, Indian, salads, burgers?
Are there any governing principles? All organic, locally sourced, small plates, special salsas, vegetarian?
What about specialties of the house? How about days/hours of service, type and number of locations, assumptions about the restaurant space itself? Is there a dress and grooming code for employees?
The key point is that when you frame your equivalent answers to these types of questions, you start to get a sense of how you think about ingredients, recipes and dining experiences; what impressions you want to leave your customers with and the role of team members in bringing it all together.
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- Pattern Recognition: Accent Your Brand; Just Like Lucca Deli
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- Start in the Middle: a user experience product management methodology
- Brand ME and the Changing Face of Brands
- Innovation, Inevitability and Why R&D is So Hard
