Sanity seems to be making a comeback.
Oh, sure, there’s still the potent counterargument of Sarah Palin’s popularity. But consider the recent developments where reason clearly prevailed, rescuing restaurants and other service businesses from a Twilight Zone episode.
Take today's news from Tennessee, for instance. An employee of a restaurant there has reportedly petitioned the state’s Occupational Health and Safety Administration to do its job of protecting workers. In his case, the danger isn’t an ungrounded piece of electrical equipment or a slippery floor, but guns. The state is one of several that recently bowed to the gun lobby by agreeing to let licensed patrons carry concealed weapons inside alcohol-serving establishments.
Think of how many bar fights you’ve witnessed, or perhaps been pulled into. Now consider how the outcome might’ve been different if one or several of the combatants had been armed.
According to news reports, a server at a bar and grill in Hillsboro Village can anticipate the danger—not only to the persons waging the dispute, but to himself. Bullets aren’t that discriminatory.
He's reportedly filed a complaint with the state OSHA because he believes the presence of guns in a drinking establishment poses an on-the-job hazard.
Attention, those of you who are about to brand me a tool of the liberal conspiracy: Yes, the news reports quoted co-workers of the complainant as saying they feel safer knowing patrons may be carrying. Many many people in the state do like guns, and see no reason why you can't be packing when softball team heads out after the game for some adult rehydration.
But the logic eludes a lot of restaurateurs. Sanity would suggest you keep guns and alcohol separate, even if the bearer is technically forbidden to imbibe. Why mix flame and dynamite?
That’s not the only hopeful development of recent days. Consider the wholesale shift of public companies to private-owners status, a movement that could soon claim Burger King, if the Wall Street Journal’s bombshell report is accurate.
Public ownership has morphed into insanity, with analysts and shareholders squawking like third-world dictators when a company tempers its financial predictions for three or nine months out. They start tying a noose if the management team is so foolhardy as to miss the projections.
It’s ridiculous to think that multi-billion-dollar companies should be managed for three-month returns, when far greater paybacks could be engineered if a longer timeframe was allowed by investors. “Longer” being eons of, say, a year or more. A shift away from a public-ownership model makes sense.
Of course, certain pockets of insanity are proving immune to reason. Consider, for instance, the situation in Brookfield, Mass., where civic leaders decided that the center of town would be marred by the development of drive-thru restaurants. They ramrodded through a ban on the eateries—only to discover they’d inadvertently outlawed drive-thru banks and pharmacies as well. Getting out of your car for a Big Mac might be okay, but for a refill of Viagra? Pffft.
The town amended the law to permit the development of all drive-thrus except restaurants.
Showing posts with label restaurant licensing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label restaurant licensing. Show all posts
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Let's hear it for restaurants' smash fest
There’s a lot to be said for sledgehammers, especially if we’re talking mental health. Or economics. Think about it: Despite a calamitous scene right out of “Batman,” not a single restaurant chain went postal this recession. Oh, sure, there were a few eyebrow-raising moments from Quiznos and Burger King. But sanity, and profitability, more or less prevailed.
And for that, you have to acknowledge the role of the sledgehammer. If you don’t believe me, consider the words of Hudson Riehle, statistician and economist for the National Restaurant Association and definitely a Commissioner Gordon kind of guy. “The recessionary environment is fundamentally rewriting boundaries of market and brand definitions,” he said during a confab held last week by NASDAQ.
The translation for those of us who giggle when we hear “standard deviation”: Frustrated by the drop in business within their usual strongholds, savvy restaurateurs took a sledgehammer to the walls that once defined their segments. They busted out.
Fine-dining chefs opened burger joints. Quick-service burger places focused on coffee and raided the full-service sector for items like ribs, Teriyaki bowls and mac and cheese. Taco Bell crowed that it was now a place for the health-minded, and revealed in recent days that it would develop family style meals like the casseroles now offered by sister concept Pasta Hut—er, Pizza Hut.
It’d be like a pizza chain going into the sandwich business. Which, of course, Domino’s did as a way of cultivating a lunch trade. Beforehand, execs said, many of its outlets didn’t even bother to open until dinnertime.
Kentucky Fried Chicken went the other way. Buckets are what move at dinner, so it added Kentucky Grilled Chicken in hopes of selling more buckets to families.
Some operators needed a sledgehammer dropped on their toes to get hoppin’. A number of McDonald’s franchisees opposed the burger giant’s multi-million-dollar effort to recast itself as beverage specialist. Now, USA president Don Thompson told CNBC, 40% of the customers who buy a coffee drink where stopping at a unit specifically for that reason. It’s incremental business in a big, big way. No wonder the field-level opposition seems to be waning, at least here in the New York market.
The smash-and-charge approach definitely seems to be working. Jamba Juice, a chain whose products once all came in a cup, tested solid food in just six units before deciding to roll the wrap, salad and flatbread array into all of its California stores. The reception was enough to prompt CEO James White to predict the menu could generate as much as 20% of an outlet’s sales.
Yet, Riehle asserted, returns will likely surge as the economy improves. He explained that the diversifiers are winning “credibility” from consumers who might once have seen the brands as a one-trick pony. Now they’re being viewed as brands with a variety of viable options, which promises to expand the concepts’ scope and foster more frequent visits.
“We used to call it ‘the veto vote,’ where someone in a party would say, ‘No, I don’t want to go there because they don’t have whatever,’” Riehle said, no doubt making some bloggers feel old. The diversifiers are smashing that common objection, he suggested.
The industry might also stand to gain handsomely from the biggest boundary smash of all: Licensing, a sleeper part of the business that’s currently surging into a major trend. By moving beyond ready-to-eat food, into products as strange as body cologne (Burger King), pajamas (BK as well), casual wear (BK and Chuck E. Cheese's), and toys (Jamba Juice and McDonald’s), the chains are erecting their own Alaskan pipeline into new revenue sources.
And the key: Once again, the sledgehammer, used this time to smash pre-conceptions and limited forms of thinking about what a brand represents. The new perspective is to view a restaurant-chain brand name as more of a lifestyle badge, which adds considerable topspin to the licensing movement.
But it all comes back to that sledgehammer. So, please, stop drooling over your Blackberry and give heavy construction tools their due. Make this today Sledgehammer Appreciation Day.
And for that, you have to acknowledge the role of the sledgehammer. If you don’t believe me, consider the words of Hudson Riehle, statistician and economist for the National Restaurant Association and definitely a Commissioner Gordon kind of guy. “The recessionary environment is fundamentally rewriting boundaries of market and brand definitions,” he said during a confab held last week by NASDAQ.
The translation for those of us who giggle when we hear “standard deviation”: Frustrated by the drop in business within their usual strongholds, savvy restaurateurs took a sledgehammer to the walls that once defined their segments. They busted out.
Fine-dining chefs opened burger joints. Quick-service burger places focused on coffee and raided the full-service sector for items like ribs, Teriyaki bowls and mac and cheese. Taco Bell crowed that it was now a place for the health-minded, and revealed in recent days that it would develop family style meals like the casseroles now offered by sister concept Pasta Hut—er, Pizza Hut.
It’d be like a pizza chain going into the sandwich business. Which, of course, Domino’s did as a way of cultivating a lunch trade. Beforehand, execs said, many of its outlets didn’t even bother to open until dinnertime.
Kentucky Fried Chicken went the other way. Buckets are what move at dinner, so it added Kentucky Grilled Chicken in hopes of selling more buckets to families.
Some operators needed a sledgehammer dropped on their toes to get hoppin’. A number of McDonald’s franchisees opposed the burger giant’s multi-million-dollar effort to recast itself as beverage specialist. Now, USA president Don Thompson told CNBC, 40% of the customers who buy a coffee drink where stopping at a unit specifically for that reason. It’s incremental business in a big, big way. No wonder the field-level opposition seems to be waning, at least here in the New York market.
The smash-and-charge approach definitely seems to be working. Jamba Juice, a chain whose products once all came in a cup, tested solid food in just six units before deciding to roll the wrap, salad and flatbread array into all of its California stores. The reception was enough to prompt CEO James White to predict the menu could generate as much as 20% of an outlet’s sales.
Yet, Riehle asserted, returns will likely surge as the economy improves. He explained that the diversifiers are winning “credibility” from consumers who might once have seen the brands as a one-trick pony. Now they’re being viewed as brands with a variety of viable options, which promises to expand the concepts’ scope and foster more frequent visits.
“We used to call it ‘the veto vote,’ where someone in a party would say, ‘No, I don’t want to go there because they don’t have whatever,’” Riehle said, no doubt making some bloggers feel old. The diversifiers are smashing that common objection, he suggested.
The industry might also stand to gain handsomely from the biggest boundary smash of all: Licensing, a sleeper part of the business that’s currently surging into a major trend. By moving beyond ready-to-eat food, into products as strange as body cologne (Burger King), pajamas (BK as well), casual wear (BK and Chuck E. Cheese's), and toys (Jamba Juice and McDonald’s), the chains are erecting their own Alaskan pipeline into new revenue sources.
And the key: Once again, the sledgehammer, used this time to smash pre-conceptions and limited forms of thinking about what a brand represents. The new perspective is to view a restaurant-chain brand name as more of a lifestyle badge, which adds considerable topspin to the licensing movement.
But it all comes back to that sledgehammer. So, please, stop drooling over your Blackberry and give heavy construction tools their due. Make this today Sledgehammer Appreciation Day.
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