"The" Quintessential Restaurant Experience

I was born in San Francisco. My dad gripped cable cars when I was a kid. We lived on a very steep hill in China Town. I am San Francisco to the core, complete with a strong parochial view of anything San Franciscan. Just like Tony Bennett, my heart will always be there.

What sets it apart? San Francisco has things no other city can boast. Cable Cars. Golden Gate Bridge. Lombard Street. Sour dough bread. Alcatraz. It is "the" City by the Bay, not merely "a" city by the bay.

I had a chance recently to share a meal with fellow consultant Tom Pryor and a friend of his who were on assignment in San Francisco. I came to town for a client meeting and Tom invited me to join them at McCormick & Kuleto's on North Point in Ghirardelli Square.

The experience was everything I expected. The view was amazing - I could see Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge from my table. The service superb and the food delightful - just as it would have been in any one of the other great restaurants along the water and in other parts of The City.

And that raises a question:

If you are a top-flight restaurant in any city,
how do you differentiate yourself from
the other great restaurants in the same zip code?

You expect greatness in a world-class restaurant, regardless of the location. But McCormick & Kuleto's did something that set them apart from their elite crowd.

Tom had made reservations the day before our visit and had provided his telephone number when asked to do so. On the morning after our fantastic dining experience Tom received a phone call from the manager asking about his meal and thanking him for choosing McCormick & Kuleto's over all the other choices he had for the evening.

The folks at McCormick & Kuleto's recognize the commoditization of their industry, and they've taken a unique and very simple step to set themselves apart. They aren't satisfied with being "A" great dining experience. They want to be "THE" great dining experience that calls you the next day to thank you for choosing them.

Exercise

1. Get your leadership staff together and make a list of all the things you do well.
2. Then make a list of all the things your competitors do well.
3. Cross out anything on your list that shows up on their list.
4. Now, look at the items still on your list and ask, "Could someone else do these if they tried?"
5. Cross out the items that could be copied.
6. Are you left with anything?
7. Now, brainstorm ideas you could do that no one else does? Be careful. The temptation is to do more of the same only bigger, cheaper, louder, stronger, softer, tastier or with more variety.

Note - McCormick & Kuleto's didn't WOW us with their culinary skills or the size of the portions. They did something unexpected and unrelated to their core product.

Are You Protecting Pebbles

Consider this:

• Emeril Lagasse and I purchase the same ingredients at our local grocery store and people flock like wolves to his table, but not mine.
• John Steinbeck and I have the exact same 26-letter alphabet from which to construct stories and there are entire shelves of his books in the library, but not mine.
• Both football teams walk on the field with an equal amount of time to play; one wins.
• Pianos have 88 keys. Whose would you rather listen to? Norah Jones' or mine?

So what?

The basic ingredients to nearly everything are a collection of common commodities. You can distill anything down to sand & gravel, ones & zeros, time & space. Knowledge itself is ubiquitous. We are living in a post-information age when everyone has access to everything.

Philip Evans and Thomas S. Wurster in Blown to Bits: How the New Economics of Information Transforms Strategy (1999-Harvard Business Press) call this the "deconstruction of [traditional] information" channels. They make the point that having information is not nearly as critical as knowing what to do with it.

I'm one of those people who thrive on knowing new stuff. And I don't mind sneezing what I've learned to anyone who'll listen because the knowledge itself isn't worth much more than a pocketful of pebbles. When I pass along knowledge, I haven't given up anything because the real value - the worthwhile intellectual property - exists in my ability to fashion IDEAS from the knowledge I've obtained.

Knowledge, facts, data, ingredients - are ALL over-rated as something to horde.

Holding on to what you KNOW only gains you an advantage among those who lack the ability to execute new ideas based on the pebbles in their pocket.

Besides, these days the ingredients are there for the taking, so why waste energy locking them up? If you don't share what you know, someone else will - and they'll reap the benefit of building relationships while you're building bunkers to protect something that isn't worth much in the first place.

Exercise:

Step one: Make a list of "ingredients" your organization uses to do what you do. Start with physical things, move to intangibles such as data, talent and time, and finish the list with meta-physical elements such as innovation, relationships and passion.

Step two: Make a similar list for your competitors and then cross out everything that shows up on both lists - or that COULD be on both lists with a little effort or a well-timed staffing change.

Step three: The items you crossed out are the "pebbles." These are things you can easily share without giving away what's really valuable - they are commodities because everyone already owns them.

Step four: Make plans to stop hoarding the ingredients and concentrate on developing the nuggets of real value that remain.

Equity VS Ubiquity

Seth Godin got me to thinking about this issue in a recent post.

Awareness of your product or service isn't the ultimate goal. Knowing WHO you are doesn't count if the potential buyer doesn't know WHAT you can DO for them.

A very wise man once told me that confusion is the mother of indecision.

If they're confused by your message the only choice they can make is to ignore you and go on to someone else. You may have the best product on the market, but if they can't see through the clutter of other crap you're throwing at them - they'll walk.

Top Brands of 2007

What's in a name?

Google beats Microsoft - because people love Google and tolerate Microsoft.

New vocab term - WILF

Stands for "What was I looking for" -

Refers to people who get lost while online and wander aimlessly through the net.

"What did you do this afternoon?"
"Oh, I was bored so I wilfed around."
"Yeah? Find anything cool?"
"Actually yes - this blog from a guy named Jim Seybert."

Found it on MediaLife

Keep 'em talking about you -

Found this on the AAFSmartBrief email this morning







STOP what you're doing right now and ask, "Are people talking about us?"

They better be.

How bad do you stink?

I recently wrote about the difference between "the" and "a" - encouraging organizations and the individuals who populate them to accentutate their uniqueness.

Here's another good example of that concept from Seth Godin.

As you read this, replace references to the fruit with thoughts of your own situation and ask, "Do we smell bad enough?"