Five Loaves, Two Fishes and Six Chicken Nuggets Read online

  The minute you go into any foodservice establishment, everybody makes a simple judgement about it way before anything is served. I have seen research that says this is done in the first two seconds. More often than not, it is done subconsciously – you are either positive about the place or negative. Once you have formed such an opinion, it takes some changing. I do not know the formula to describe how individuals make that judgement, or even the variables involved. If I did, I would be scary-rich.

  I do know that you should, as a rule, back your employees up. I do know that the customer is not always right.

  I do know that if you see a huge sign outside a quick-service location offering a price-pointed product promotion, when you get inside you will have difficulty finding it. I do know that because I may have been part of the team that invented it. It’s called bait and switch in another guise.

  I do know that you can pay £80 per head for a meal and feel you have received great value. I also know that you can pay £2.50 and feel you have been ripped off.

  I do know that the explosion of quick-service branded materials and products inside schools is wrong. And, yes, Burger King pioneered it on my watch – mea culpa. And it’s happening in Europe as well as the US.

  If Jim McLemore and Ray Kroc were starting Burger King and McDonald’s today I do not know that they would seek to grow by franchising. What was an obvious and eminently effective way of rapidly growing a capital-intensive brand half a century ago may not be the right way to do it today. While still using OPM (other people’s money), Starbucks has shown that external investors in a company-run system can be a more-than-viable alternative to the franchisee-operator model.

  I met Jim McLemore several times and I do know that, amidst a million faces that have come and gone in my time in business, none has been more friendly or gracious.

  More than fifteen years ago, working for GrandMet, we acquired a pasta-based restaurant brand in Switzerland. Apart from the manager, the restaurant staff were paid either Swiss minimum wages, or a pool of money equivalent to 25% (I think) of the monthly net sales to share – whichever was the highest. The staff were, therefore, understandably motivated to optimise customer spending, to get them to come back again, and to keep staff numbers down. There was a waiting list for jobs at the place. I do not know why this (or something like it) hasn’t caught on – everywhere.

  I do know that Starbucks could improve same-store sales by fixing its food act.

  I do know that quick-service exists in some form or other in every country I have visited. I also know that the US is unique – in that every other country somehow emphasises ingredients. You might still be able to recognise them, or maybe the original colours and flavours come through. Maybe the product shape retains some original ingredient identity. Maybe they just tell you (proudly) about the quality of them. One way or another, they manage it.

  I do know that quick-service success is cyclical. Throughout their history, the big brands have responded to new initiatives, pushed forward for a few years and then found that they needed another ‘goosing’. Drive-throughs, breakfasts, value-menus, kids’ deals, big new products – all these have done the job at milestone points in each brand’s history. I also know that the cycles are getting shorter, that there’s another impetus overdue and that what it is ain’t obvious.

  Quick-service has its vehement critics. Fair enough – millions have died defending the right to free speech, so you can just rant away, guys. But, can you also tell us what the alternative is? Just how will – literally – billions of people, using quick-service in one form or another, get fed every day? If there is an alternative, this is what I really don’t know.

  25. Listen ’til I tell you

  Browsing through statistics recently, as I do frequently on your behalf, I came across a stunner. There are, apparently, 275 million people resident in the US, and only fifteen of them have passports. Of that fifteen, only six have actually been abroad, three of those reluctantly to a family wedding in Denmark. I see it, therefore, as a key role of this chapter to expand the international outlook of the stay-at-homes. Today we hit Ireland.

  My father was born in Limerick, while I was born in England. The latter fact enables me to see right through the drivel that manifests itself through a million Irish myths that have spread themselves none too thinly across the planet. The former means it is a land, and they are a people, that can grab and inspire me.

  From its first examination, Ireland provides a powerful business model for quick-serves. My wife was born in Wales, and I have got to know that country well, along with the land of my father. Now, consider this: Wales and Ireland are about the same size, both have fine hills, verdant valleys, lovely rivers and golden beaches, and both have a powerful cultural heritage, particularly in music and literature. However, whereas Ireland is known (and is usually present in some form) right across the planet, Wales remains one of its best-kept secrets.

  A similar law applies to restaurants. You find that if you compare two that seem to be the same in most things, they emerge as having very different profiles for no obvious reason. Well, it’s not an accident. Here’s how Ireland does it in the national comparison with Wales. There are two elements to the game plan, the first being to seek the sympathy vote. If you want this route to success in the foodservice business, just plead victimisation and/or suppression endlessly and repetitively. Potato famine, poverty, the English – they are the ones that work for Ireland, but you will, of course, have to find your own for your own market.

  The second skill is a bit trickier to master. You have to be able to make up songs about your misery while you are singing them. And you do this at 10.00 p.m. every night, wherever you are. It never fails.

  It takes time, but if you can master both these elements, you can cut your conventional marketing budget by half.

  Zooming in, we will concentrate on wonderful, wonderful Dublin, ignoring the faux Disneylands like Killarney. We will find there are lessons for quick-serves everywhere. First, we find that America does not sell bacon – that hardy annual of many QSR dishes. Oh, America sells something called bacon, but if you pop in a Bewleys (est. 1894) and have a full breakfast, you will find two things – first, that your centre of gravity has dropped about eighteen inches after it and, second, bacon in the rest of the world (generally) and Ireland (specifically) has different DNA from the cremated Post-It notes that are served under its name in the US. Bacon rashers are actually big and thick and tasty.

  Now then, walk up O’Connell Street and go right past that damned Post Office still scarred with the bullet holes of the 1916 Easter Rising. (All that proves is that no one nation has a monopoly on idiocy.) Keep going north, walking about another twenty minutes. You will come to a quiet square of tall, terraced buildings, one of which houses the Literary Museum. Pay your money and lose yourself in there for a couple of hours. Everywhere around you there are marriages – marriages of unbridled minds and a wondrous command of the language. Read Yeats’ poem (at least three times) about 1916. Whatever your politics or religion, if the hairs on the back of your neck do not stand on end, you are dead. Then lighten up by reading an anthology of Miles na Gopaleen’s mid-century columns in the Irish Times, and cry laughing.

  What’s this to do with quick-service? Well, when you emerge from the Museum, blinking in the light, you will have changed. You will have morphed into a temporary unpaid Irishman (no matter your gender). Without radar, your feet will lead you straight to Ryan’s Bar, and further into one of the ‘snugs’ at the back. Here you will have a genuine Dublin quick-service meal – seven pints of Guinness, each about 280 calories. Even if you’ve never had a beer, you’ll adore it. You will also probably start smoking after about half an hour – even if you are a lifetime abstainer. You will find you do not need solid food – there is simply no time, what with all those songs you are writing and singing at the same time.

  Late at night, as luncheon finishes, you will need a nightcap. Down at the bo
ttom of the menu, you will find an item called Gaelic coffee. Try one – it is a unique product, particularly if you are a man. You see, in one tiny glass it contains four of the five food groups essential for us to continue our world domination: fat, alcohol, caffeine and sugar. If you are brave and sprinkle salt on it, it’s complete – and perfect.

  26. Smile, darn ya, smile

  The quick-service business, in its widest sense, is mature. Depending on your definition, it may be centuries old. It is also broad-based in both content and geography. It ranges from basic techniques that haven’t changed since they were conceived to the highest of high-tech processes. In fact, I can only think of two things it lacks: brains (occasionally) and humour (constantly).

  Let’s take the grey-matter dimension. It was, I think, the glorious P. G. Wodehouse who committed some distant uncle of Bertie Wooster into immortality by describing the shortfall between his ears. If his brain had been made of silk (goes the description) it would ‘hardly have sufficed to construct a pair of cami-knickers for a canary’.

  Every now and again this industry of ours comes up with an event or episode that parachutes itself right into that league. There’s one about at the moment – evidenced by the quick-serve giants deciding that the only way out of the current market stagnation is to discount their flagship products. Just brilliant. It is not sustainable, it is impossible to follow if/when it doesn’t work, and fifty years of hard-earned distinctive brand equity is leaking away like a river in flood. The industry has surely learned from its past mistakes – to the extent it looks as though it is managing to repeat them exactly.

  Humour – or, rather, the lack of it – is a more subtle omission. I’ve been a bit daft all my life, but it was a specific restaurant experience that opened my eyes to the potential of humour as a genuine marketing weapon in the foodservice business.

  About a decade ago my wife and I landed by accident in a small trattoria in Miami. It turned out to be its opening night. It was chaos, with everything going wrong that could go wrong. Being European, we have never considered speed an essential element of dinner, so we told the owner to deal with everybody else and we’d just sit and watch the fun. Much (much) later, he brought a bottle of grappa to our table and sat down with us to reflect on his chaotic (but ultimately successful) evening. He asked about our food, and I told him that my osso bucco had been fine, but a bit tough – me being of the belief that such dishes need about a day’s cooking and then are best served on day three. He paused, then stood up and disappeared back into the kitchen. He reappeared a minute later carrying a drill. I almost fell off my chair laughing. What was more interesting was that we became regular customers.

  Has this any relevance for quick-service as against slow-service joints? I think so. During my time on the bridge of the Good Ship Burger King, I found myself in Chicago visiting both franchised and company stores. As ever, the area manager had carefully planned the logistics of the ‘tour’ and, as ever, I set out to uncover the ‘real’ business. As we passed the end of a street, I saw one of our signs about halfway down it – and asked to go back and visit. This was definitely not in the plan. It turned out that the store belonged to a franchisee with whom we were in a position of ‘antlers locked’. My view on all that was, and remains, simple – the customer doesn’t know or want to know who runs the store, but it’s under the brand sign, so we should run at the problem, not away from it. We went in.

  It was breakfast time, and the sight that greeted us was comical. A long line was waiting at the order point. As each customer was served, they were offered a small ball made out of light foam. They were then asked to have a shot at a small hoop fixed on the menu board behind the counter. If you scored, you got your coffee free. There was all sorts of hootin’ and hollerin’ going on. The area manager took all this in and turned white-faced, assuming his career had ended. He began to stride towards the store manager, searching his clothes for something that could serve as a machete. I stopped him and asked him to describe what we were seeing. This he did, and we both paused to reflect when he uttered ‘happy’, ‘customers’ and ‘lots of them’ as part of his description. Quite.

  What were we witnessing? Was it a wholesale abuse of that-which-must-not-be-abused – i.e. the brand specification? Or was it an enlightened attempt to build on a basic successful brand model in an attempt to make it a more personal and memorable customer visit? All I know is that there were more people having a better time in that Burger King than any other we visited.

  There is no doubt that the wonderful technological, wealth-creating and social progress of recent history has been accompanied by a whole new raft of stresses and tensions. More people seem to be more miserable than ever. Millions of these stressed folk use a quick-serve restaurant every day. If the industry took on the challenge – collectively and individually – of making them smile once a day, just think of the potential increased customer frequency and loyalty it would engender.

  The industry might never have to discount mindlessly again.

  27. A woman’s touch

  After a recent visit to South Africa, I was faced with an eleven-hour flight back to Europe. As we took off, I launched myself into Tim Pat Coogan’s 700-page biography of Eamon de Valera, the Machiavellian self-server who cast his long shadow over Irish politics for the bulk of the last century.

  Somewhere over the Atlas Mountains, while the rest of the plane slept, the book coughed up an astonishing fact. Apparently, de Valera was one of only nine people, acknowledged by Einstein, who genuinely understood the Theory of Relativity. As I looked at the other names, the truth dawned on me – of those listed, only myself and George W. Bush were still alive.

  Inspired, I opened another book – and found another list. This one was even more frightening. Apparently, there are also only two people left alive who understand women: me and Jack Nicholson. Now, this one is quite important for quick-serve restaurants in the light of the results of a study published recently on the subject of the effectiveness and efficiency of women as business managers.

  One finding of the study will surprise nobody – which is that women, in total, have not achieved equality of either numbers or compensation in management. The second finding might surprise a few – when they do get appointments, women tend to perform better. According to my book, woman outscored men in eleven out of the fifteen management performance categories measured and equalled them in two of the other four.

  Of course, it is impossible to generalise about men and women. For one thing, the received wisdom that there are only two sexes is baloney – there must be at least five. There are obviously masculine women and feminine men, many quite happily in public life.

  All this confusion tells you that it would be foolish to attempt to draw any conclusions from simplistic stereotyping – so that is precisely what I’m going to do.

  On reflection, the findings of the study support what I have long believed but have never before seen quantified. I also believe it has particular relevance for quick-serves.

  There are two dimensions of ‘management’ in this industry where the difference between a masculine and feminine approach can make a difference. First: when you are managing people, you are essentially negotiating an agreement on how you work together. In effect, you are agreeing a charter on how you will relate to each other in the workplace. Now, it’s been my observation, in over thirty years in business on both sides of the Atlantic, that most males see a negotiation as a game where there has to be a winner and a loser. Women, on the other hand, move more towards the oriental model where a negotiation is only successful if both parties leave the table smiling.

  In a similar vein, the balance between support and control in the management task varies between men and women. Effective and efficient management of people needs the presence of both elements, but getting the balance right is crucial. The masculine approach tends towards making control a priority, whereas the feminine way will seek a better balance of the two. If
in doubt, they will lean towards support.

  Some will say that these two dimensions – avoiding winning and losing, and balancing support and control – are one and the same. They will say it’s all rubbish anyway. They aren’t, and it isn’t.

  I have no idea why these conclusions about the differences in the approach to management might be valid. It may be to do with physiology. It may be to do with traditionally perceived family roles. It may be that we just have to accept there are inexplicable differences between the make-up and approach of the sexes. Frankly the causes do not concern me – and I have neither the desire nor the expertise to go down the road of possible causes. It is my view, however, that differences do exist and are quite widespread. It is also my view that they should be both acknowledged and celebrated.

  Time and time again we are made aware of the difficulties in attracting, retaining and motivating staff. At a time when it has become almost universally accepted that front-line people can be key differentiators in the battle to win and retain customers, we continue to pay ’em the minimum we can get away with and treat ’em like dog-doo. It seems to me that these two different approaches have crucial implications when you are talking about recruiting, motivating and keeping a small team of people who deal with your customers every day.

  The obvious conclusion is that more women should be appointed to management. The less obvious conclusion is that more of us males should (maybe, occasionally) try a feminine approach.

  Excitedly, I look for more ‘understanding’ lists that I could be on. A-ha! Here’s one: a list of people who genuinely understand why Anna Nicole Smith married that ninety-year-old zillionaire. Here we are. Oh, that’s not very helpful – there are six billion names on it.

  28. Marrakech express