Keeping the Main Thing ...


You may hear people talk about "mission statement".  Mission statement is a corporate buzz phrase for making up your mind on "who" your operation will be. Your have heard the old cliche, "do not try to be all things to all people".  Many operators have made the mistake to try to re-arrange their mission statement midstream to build sales (or to recapture lost sales). These same operators always find out after a time that they need to "get back to basics" to be successful.

Friends of ours offered to take my wife and I for breakfast to a local Diner type operation. This place is one of those national chains that you see in most major cities. The chain had developed a national media campaign to brag to the public how they have upgraded their image and now offer an even stronger value. Our reason for selecting that particular restaurant that morning was strictly a location issue. It was on the way to the Dallas Car Show where we were planning to spend the afternoon. When we arrived at the restaurant it was just about full but no waiting line. A greeter,  acting annoyed, rushed and marginally bothered that we needed attention, grabbed some menus. Then under her breath said "follow me" and walked off. My buddy and I (both in the food business) kind of laughed between ourselves on how ridiculous that was but let it go. We followed. She dropped the menus on the table and walked off. We obediently sat. It took 10 minutes for anyone to acknowledge that we were seated, another 10 minutes to get a cup of coffee in front of us and another 40 minutes for us to get our food. After our meal (marginal quality, I might add), we asked for the check and waited another 20 minutes without getting a check. My friend went up to the front to ask someone for our check but all of the employee's (the manager included) scurried past him with the aversion of not looking him in the eye. My friend looked at me and said "Let's go". He finally walked out with the attitude, "if they don't want my money, the H~ with them". On the way to the show we spent most of our time bad mouthing the chain and we all vowed in unison never to make that mistake again. I quietly sat back and thought to myself about the amount of money that chain must have spent for all of that TV and radio blitz. They spent maybe millions to advertise how great they were. If the chain had just allotted a small portion of those advertising dollars to hire and train enough great people to execute the basics... I wonder.

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