When you're growing up as a sports fan, you can't wait to go to games. One of my goals in my youth was to become a Detroit Tigers season ticket holder.
I no longer watch baseball, nor do I attend sporting events of any size with any sort of regularity. The actual experience of attending a sporting event has lost it's appeal, for a number of reasons.
This is a complex issue, so let's walk down a couple of side roads to unpack the issue.
Externalizing the Risks
MLB, the NFL, and the CFL (with the next TSN contract) have largely externalized the risk of not attracting a significant audience. They've done this by finding broadcast partners who are willing to spend enough money for the rights to broadcast their games that the individual franchises, as well as the league, generate enough operating revenue to cover expenses on an annual basis before a game is even played. You'd have to be an idiot owner, live in an exceptionally weak sports market or have a substantial debt service on either your stadium or your team in order not to make a profit on the franchise. Which explains why the only two NFL franchises that are consistent money losers are the Detroit Lions and the Miami Dolphins.
The risk, then of an audience that is too small to generate the same amount of revenue transfers from the member clubs, who would have to attract enough gate revenue to turn a profit, to television networks, who have to sell enough advertising and carrier fees from cable and satellite operators to cover rights fees and production costs.
This gets us to the starting point that, because these leagues have externalized their risks, they can therefore focus, to whatever extent they do or don't choose, on the gravy which, specifically, is getting your butt in the seat. But understand that, for these leagues, getting your butt in the seat is no longer the priority, and will always take a backseat to ensuring the television product continues to generate money for them.
The Statistics
It's worth noting that attendance at MLB and NFL events has declined slowly but consistently since at least 2007. There are a multitude of reasons for this, as clubs, seeing their gravy money start to dissipate, try desperately to hold on to their audience. The NFL, in particular has tried a number of technological innovations, including the lending of televisions to people attending games and the boosting of cell service, to hold fans attention in-stadium. The Jaguars have gone so far as to broadcast NFL Red Zone during games in order to keep their fans entertained.
Personally
For a multitude of reasons, I have little interest in attending NFL games. I live in an NFL market where I have no interest in the home team. I do make enough money where purchasing tickets doesn't constitute an economic hardship. It helps that I have no children, so I'm excluded from the "family of four" argument, personally, though it is absolutely a factor.
With that out of the way, let me list some of the reasons why the NFL game experience is an active disincentive for me to attend a game.
Parking The logistics of getting 70 thousand people in and out of one place in anything resembling a timely manner are nearly impossible. If you're driving to a game, pretty much your only choice in Dallas, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Buffalo or Detroit, not only is parking a significant challenge, but getting out after a game in anything resembling a timely manner is a challenge as well. Your 3.5 hour game is really a close to seven hour ordeal by the time transportation logistics are factored in in some markets.
Now, teams have taken steps to mitigate this. Buffalo and Tennessee, to cite two examples, have off site shuttle buses (which I highly recommend). Cleveland and Houston have light rail infrastructure to their stadiums. (Though Cleveland's Blue Line is not well run on game days overall).
That said, the logistics of getting to and from a game, as opposed to watching the game on television with the zero minute commute, are a disincentive.
Technological Limitations Ever try to use a smartphone at a sporting event? I wish you luck. Whether it's Sprint or Verizon, MLB or NFL, cell service is essentially impossible during the game. This makes it difficult to track other things that are going on during your game, either business or personal, and that disconnection is simply not an option for people in this day and age.
Vending Certainly, club vendors need to generate sufficient revenue to cover the cost of their contracts with the clubs. That said, the cost of food at a game is excessive and serves as a disincentive in comparison to sitting at home and watching the game on a High Definition television.
Red Zone Or, better yet, I can just sit at home and watch the best parts of every NFL game in real time. Why in the world would I watch the Browns/ Dolphins match up when I could watch Red Zone?
Team Ticket Policies I can only speak for dealing with the Browns, so I'll use them as an example of 'the same thing happens every year.'
The Browns only sell Club Seats (well, every seat, really) in a season ticket package. As Club Seats go, they aren't unreasonably priced. However, I'm not a Browns fan, so I have no interest in a season ticket package.
But, you could interest me, perhaps, in a half season package. I'll even spring for an exhibition game.
So I e-mail the Browns prior to the start of the season to inquire if this type of package is available. They say "no" and attempt to sell me a full season package, which, because I'm not a Browns fan, I refuse.
Invariably, the Browns will suck. With three home games remaining, I will get an e-mail from the Browns ticket office offering to sell me individual Club Level seats to each of their remaining home games. Inventory that's already lost, because they didn't have buyers to begin with, that remains unsold because the on the field product is crap.
Compounding matters, in the 1990s, people were stupid enough to buy into the idea of a Personal Seat License. This is the insane idea that you will pay for the privilege of being able to pay for tickets. And people do this. Seriously. And those teams that foisted this scam on people in the 1990s continue to do so, and continue to expect them to pay, today. And further, they expect potential new season ticket holders to participate in the same scam, when there are more than enough after market outlets selling tickets at or below face value that those people who might otherwise make the investment can simple find situational buyers elsewhere.
Fans Finally, let's talk about fans. It only takes one drunk asshole to ruin an entire section, and almost every large scale sporting event has one in every section. And I guess this makes me a grumpy old man, but I just don't have the patience to deal with it any more. My spouse is a visiting team fan in nearly every stadium we travel to, and even when the team she roots for wins, which is almost always, fortunately, the amount of verbal abuse she has to endure before, during and after the game in most places (Buffalo being a notable exception) isn't worth the cost of the ticket to the event.
And you can toss all of the mock bravado responses out that you want, but the fact remains that in any other business in which one is asked to fork over money, enduring harassment during the experience would warrant a refund. Yet, for some reason, we find this type of behavior culturally acceptable, even expected, at sporting events.
And I think, more than almost anything I've mentioned above, it might be dealing with other fans, a small but not insignificant percentage of which are liquored up assholes, is the tipping point that is driving away people from attending sporting events in person. This, specifically, is an NFL problem, a problem about which the league does, or really can do, little. You can't give everyone walking into the stadium a breathalyzer and an asshole personality test. You can create "family sections", but you can't make alcohol sales so stringent that they choke out the stadium vendor's ability to make a profit.
And it's one to which little attention is paid. Stadium security presence is essentially treated as a "text us if you see anyone out of line" type of problem which means that, in most cases, it isn't addressed at all. Tailgating is encouraged. And there's nothing wrong with that except it fosters a very specific subculture of binge drinking reflected best by guys like the Washington Redskins Dead Tree Crew.
In the meantime, attendance will continue to decline, as technology improves the home experience and sports fan interests continue to diversify. What does the future hold? More of the same as fans drip, drip, drip away.
Saturday, September 14, 2013
Monday, July 15, 2013
On the Nature of Work, Part 2
Let's imagine for a second, you've started a business. It is your life's pursuit. You want to provide a service, or build a product that provides a service.
Now let's imagine you succeed.
Before we continue, it's important to identify what success means. Because defining and understanding that idea of success is what leads us here today.
I mentioned last time that, to some people, the journey is the destination. You love widgets. Your whole life is dedicated to building a better widget. You're a pretty good widget maker. You consistently make a modest, growing profit in the widget building business.
When you started Widgets, Inc, you were a single person in your mid/late 20s. You wake up one morning 10 or 15 years later. There's a bit of gray in the hair. You have a spouse and a kid or two. You have an upper middle/lower upper class lifestyle. You manage the relationships with your customers, resellers and suppliers well. You understand the market, and your place in it. Sounds great, right?
Well, here's the problem. The widget industry never sits still. Your competition isn't focused just on building a cheaper widget, they're focused on building bigger widgets that do more things. Other competitors that once built widgets have been acquired, either by MegaWidget Inc or by a company that wants to make cogs and widgets and sell them in a package.
What do you do?
That's the vexing question for hundreds or thousands of what are called "lifestyle businesses" every day. Some people don't want to be huge, they just want to carve out their niche, earn a nice living and either cash out or kick the can down the road to their kids, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that.
There are problems with that. No industry ever stands still. Competitors spring up that build better mousetraps, sales models change, entire industries are rendered obsolete by technological advancements. It's part of the bullshit phrase "creative destruction" (which isn't very creative when you're town is the one being destroyed).
Certainly, you can challenge yourself to build a model that allows you to "stay medium". It's not an easy path, but a lot of companies manage it for awhile. If they make it, they tend to sell out.
Now, let's assume you want to be a player. Let's say you want to risk everything you have in an effort to go for the brass ring. Let's say you too want to make both widgets and cogs. How do you do it? And, more importantly, why do so many companies fail trying to be something they aren't?
There are a lot of reasons for this, but most of them boil down to the fact that people who own what are ostensibly "lifestyle businesses" lack the capacity to fully understand and execute what it takes to transform themselves into something they aren't. Owners look at the management team that got them to where they are and assume that these are the people that can take them to where they want to be.
Alternately, they may seek to augment the existing management team with talent from external companies. This fails more often than it succeeds. Cultures clash, language barriers aren't overcome, new guard vs. old guard fissures develop, everyone becomes territorial, new personnel exposes the shortcomings of existing personnel, no one manages egos effectively and, to some degree, the entire apparatus crashes and burns. Expansion projects collapse, often taking the entire company with them.
One of the takeaways I've learned is this. Before you take a position from an organization that claims it wants to transform itself, ask the interviewer how many senior managers have been let go as a part of the transition. If the answer is "none, we're looking to augment that talent with an infusion from the outside", my suggestion to you is to pass on the position, because 8.5 times out of 10, that transition will fail.
Small companies get medium by adding the right talent. But medium companies get large by turning over the right positions, installing people with proper experience in their place, and doing so without hesitation. And if you, Mr. or Ms. Lifestyle Business Owner, don't have the stomach to do that, do your best to stay medium and carve out your niche. There's no shame in it.
Friday, July 5, 2013
On the Nature of Work, Pt. 1
If there had been much to say in the intervening four months since the last post, I suppose I would have said it, but here we are.
I like to think that I'm good at what I do for a living. It's a niche living in a small but essential industry surrounding software of the B2B variety. But for the past few years, the work has been enjoyable, but the lack of progress has not, and it's that lack of progress that has been brought into focus lately and forced me to confront some things about the nature of work, and myself.
People look upon life in many ways. From my particular perspective, life is more or less a struggle people engage in to reach points in their life where they find happiness and consider themselves a success. Invariably, they focus on particular avenues in which success seems to them to be the most likely. For most people, this means parenthood. People want to have kids, to some extent, because they think they can be good parents, or better than their parents, at least, and produce a positive result of which they can be proud, the crowning achievement of their life's work. Either parenthood or the startup of your own business come with the largest internal locus of control opportunities, and those are the ones people seize most often.
Some of us either have no opportunity or desire to be parents. Or, we try and be parents, recognize we aren't very good at it and just put that on auto pilot, or disappear altogether, and focus on something else. Sometimes, it's a hobby. Sometimes, it's a spouse, but, most often, it's work.
There are social scientists and labor analysts that will tell you that this desire to be good at what we do, rather than seeing work as a means to an end, will fade as workforces become more contingent and Millenials become a larger portion of the labor market. I'm not so sure. I think businesses want that to happen so they can artificially depress wages.
But I digress.
One of the realizations that I've had recently is that I've tied a great deal of identity into my work. In my mid 20s I fell backward into the industry I am in now, working in an environment that was go-go (all late 90s tech environments were go-go). As that particular business, headed by a CEO that couldn't match his belt with his shoes, always a bad sign, was collapsing, I had the good fortune to land on my feet with the predominant player in this particular industry.
After a few years, I became very good at what I did. After a few more years, I was still really good at what I did. After even more years, I was still really good at what I did. I was told it, my results showed it, consistently. My peers respected me. My contemporaries requested me.
But one day, you wake up and realize that all the good work you're doing isn't getting you anywhere within the confines of your employer. That, ultimately, all your hard work and dedication is going to get you is a paycheck. A nice paycheck, but a paycheck. Where is there to go, one must ask, once you top out the career path established for you?
To someone who has invested their identity in their hobbies, their relationships or other external pursuits, this doesn't really matter. The truth is, you just suck it up and focus on other things that fulfill your identity and bring you joy in life. Work becomes a means to an end.
There comes a point, then, where you have to acknowledge that the opportunities you are looking for to grow professionally are simply not going to come from where you are, and make a change. So, I did.
The problem with making a change, however, is not simply a matter of "is the grass greener on the other side." There is no "other side". There are many sides. Some sides are built on shakier ground than others. For a time, the next yard had grass that was very green. There was the fulfillment of being listened to and the latitude to create an organization in the way I had always asked for. Unfortunately, it was built on top of the sinkhole of poor managerial foundation. Did I get recognized for the skill set I brought to this employer? Absolutely. Did I accomplish great things? You bet. Did what I built last? Nope.
The next two stops have proven no better. They have all been filled with nice people. Well intended. Most of whom, with some notable exceptions, were making the best of the skill sets they had and the situations they were in. And they looked at my skill set, and my resume, and said "My God, you're brilliant. We have to have you. We have no idea what to do with you, or who we are, or how we're organized, but we must have you." And by and large, I've had opportunities to expand my skill set and be a backseat leader at both. But the limitations of backseat leadership are evident. You don't grow into a front seat leader when you walk in the door a backseat leader and, over time, other members of the organization grow to resent your attempts at backseat leadership whether they're valid or not. (Part of backseat leadership involves telling front seat leaders that they suck, and they don't appreciate it.)
One of the misnomers that we are taught when we are young is that our society functions, particularly professionally, as a meritocracy. We learn in the classroom, if we're paying attention, that this isn't even close to true. Every classroom has a teacher's pet that gets preferential treatment. Yet we still think that, to some extent, we advance in life based on our merits. That hard, competent work results in a reward beyond a more than adequate paycheck and whatever self satisfaction we're supposed to receive as a job well done.
And even if we know the meritocratic idea isn't really true at the core, we nonetheless think in our own minds that we can beat the system and be the beneficiary of what little meritocratic decency remains in the corporate world.
But the truth, when it hits you, and it will hit you, is quite harsh. Hard work, dedication and competency do matter. Drive matters. Desire matters. But what seems to matter most of all is being in the right place at the right time, and getting the attention of not just the right person, but the right person who, in turn, has the right skill set and the right set of people around him or her to make the business around you thrive.
I happened across the LinkedIn profile of someone with a similar number of years of experience in the field to me. For four years, he had the same job as I did. For the next three years, he managed people one level above me. For two years, he was Vice President, and for two years, he has been the President of the Company. His educational background was the same, essentially, as mine. It is a smaller vendor in the same space within which I operate. Is he smarter and more talented than I am? Probably not. Does he have different strengths and weaknesses than I do? Most likely. Some of those are inherit, some are addressed through opportunity. These are things I see when I examine my contemporaries and peers in the managerial structure at my current position as well.
This is not a woe-is-me tale. I'm not writing to you to tell you I've been screwed over by anyone, because I haven't. There are very few people I've worked with professionally that I dislike. On the whole, I don't have many regrets. I'm still very good at what I do and generally well respected. The core of my work is still kind of fun. I get along with a great set of equal level co-workers. My direct report boss is great. My workplace is stable.
I'd love to hit you with a well cemented conclusion. But I don't really have one. Other than to suggest that many of us are confronted with the idea of what getting somewhere in business really means. For every person that rises to by President of the Company, there are two, or three, or four who are equally talented, either internally or externally, that don't get the job. And where do they go? What do they do? How do they adjust to the realization that, in the eyes of someone else, they aren't good enough to go beyond where they are right now? No matter how good they are at what it is they're doing.
Are we best suited simply doing what we are best at, getting even better at it and serving out our days being the best we can be at something? For some of us, should we just be happy that the journey is the destination, rather than constantly striving for more? Is it just time to face that morning, look around, say to ourselves "this is all there is," and make the best of it?
On July 12th, the movie 20 Feet From Stardom will hit theaters. It is a documentary about life as a backup singer. Perhaps some answers are there.
******
There's a flip side to this discussion, and it's on organizational inertia. It's worth examining, and we'll do so. In fewer than four months from now. I promise.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
The State of Sport
When you sit back and assess who in professional sports you choose to root for, it's worth it to take note of how league dynamics do or don't influence the degree in which you choose to participate as a fan.
When I take stock of my own primary rooting interests, I find that I gravitate toward sports that are not amongst the three major US sports. I enjoy the NFL comprehensively as a product, but not as a fan. When you grow up in the Detroit area, geography and a sustained period of winning turn you into a Red Wings fan, but I avoid MLB and the NBA, unless the Pistons are good.
But as I look back over the previous 40 or so years, it's interesting to me to see how the nature of relationship between fan and sport has evolved (or devolved).
The cynic in me will use Major League Baseball as a prime example of this. Once upon a time, Major League Baseball teams depended upon gate revenues and local television and radio contracts for the bulk of their revenues. Under this system, these teams had to make a concerted effort to connect with their local communities in order to drum up business. Certainly, an imbalance of power existed, but that largely waned as the Yankees made a series of bad personnel decisions in the late 1970s and into the 1980s. MLB always had an imbalance of revenue toward larger markets (though I personally love the what if exercise of Vernon Stouffer selling the Indians to George Steinbrenner) but superior scouting and a solid organization could sustainably impact that imbalance.
As television contract values skyrocketed, gate revenue essentially began to take a backseat to television revenue, so much so that Gate Revenue is essentially ancillary to teams like the Marlins, Yankees, Dodgers and Pirates. This allows these teams to treat their fans with utter disregard. Correspondingly, the absence of a quality product (or a reasonable price of entry to a live event) allows the fanbase to treat the teams with utter disregard.
If the fans are thousandaires, the owners are multi-multi millionaires, and the television networks are multi-billionaires, what we have is a system where multi-multi millionaires are making their money at the teat of multi-billionaires who in turn made their money by coming up with a better mousetrap for sucking money out of the wallets of the thousandaires. It's cleaner and easier that way.
But the thousandaires, you and me, still hold sway. And there is a lot of graveyard whistling that takes place across MLB and the NBA. The MLB has it's fair share of house thousandaires, particularly in the major media markets. But there are some harsh realities that they hide from you. The first is that the NFL Pro Bowl, widely regard as a joke, outdrew Game 1 of the 2012 World Series. Second, the MLB is aging in place. Fox may crow about how well the World Series does 12+, but the 18-49 numbers regularly lose to standard network programming.
I gave myself a team in each league growing up, and one of those teams was the Montreal Expos. Say what you will about the fans in Montreal, but they did what every sports fan in every city should do, and that was stop supporting a shitty product. Did it cost them their team? Sure. But the lesson there, as it is in Pittsburgh, is clear. Put a competitive product on the field, and people will fork over the money. Don't, and they won't. The thousandaires of Montreal won a Pyrrhic victory.
The NBA is a model of the unsustainability of this financial model. Lost in the undercurrent of the Jordan 90s was the fact that Michael Jordan only played for one team. The NBA and the 1990s are a great example of how the face of sports fandom in this country transformed itself. The grip that the big four had on the sports fan was pried loose with a wide variety of other pursuits most notably the X Games. Thousandaires stopped buying the hype of what the NBA was selling no matter how high they turned that hype machine up.
The NBA continues to hype it's stars, while teams can't give tickets away.
David Stern is the consummate graveyard whistler, but even he had a difficult time putting a positive face on having to repossess the New Orleans Hornets (which should have been moved to Oklahoma City post Katrina), as his protege, Gary Bettman tries continually to put a positive spin on the league's farcical presence in Phoenix.
The NHL has tried, rather clumsily in the wake of last offseason's ridiculous free agency, to put a system in place that provides some sort of economic parity back into the economics of the game. But the damage in most of the southern markets and Columbus may not prove to be sustainable.
Only the NFL seems to be willing and able to effectively balance the relationship between a product that is perceived to be competitive enough to warrant the direct investment of the thousandaires while still being attractive enough to the multi-billionaires that pay the bulk of the bills. Even still, as in stadium NFL attendance has fallen since peaking in 2007, this has proven to be problematic.
Having endured all of that, you'd probably like me to get to a point. And it's this. As I was watching tonight's Tim Horton's Brier Curling Championship, it occurs to me that the bulk of my sports time is spent actively pursuing those sports that are built on a smaller economic model. Curling. Cricket. Canadian Football. Minor League Baseball. And I think that that is very much the future of our relationship with sports. That we, as sports fans, are actively rejecting the hollowed out model of sports fandom the multi billionaires try to cram down our throats to make a buck. It explains, on some level NASCAR's popularity as well (though it too has paid the price of trying to cram manufactured stars down the fans throats).We connect most personally with those sports that seem the most human to us, or offer us the most consistently competitive product. And these sports succeed where the NBA and MLB fail. And they will pay the price for it, eventually.
When I take stock of my own primary rooting interests, I find that I gravitate toward sports that are not amongst the three major US sports. I enjoy the NFL comprehensively as a product, but not as a fan. When you grow up in the Detroit area, geography and a sustained period of winning turn you into a Red Wings fan, but I avoid MLB and the NBA, unless the Pistons are good.
But as I look back over the previous 40 or so years, it's interesting to me to see how the nature of relationship between fan and sport has evolved (or devolved).
The cynic in me will use Major League Baseball as a prime example of this. Once upon a time, Major League Baseball teams depended upon gate revenues and local television and radio contracts for the bulk of their revenues. Under this system, these teams had to make a concerted effort to connect with their local communities in order to drum up business. Certainly, an imbalance of power existed, but that largely waned as the Yankees made a series of bad personnel decisions in the late 1970s and into the 1980s. MLB always had an imbalance of revenue toward larger markets (though I personally love the what if exercise of Vernon Stouffer selling the Indians to George Steinbrenner) but superior scouting and a solid organization could sustainably impact that imbalance.
As television contract values skyrocketed, gate revenue essentially began to take a backseat to television revenue, so much so that Gate Revenue is essentially ancillary to teams like the Marlins, Yankees, Dodgers and Pirates. This allows these teams to treat their fans with utter disregard. Correspondingly, the absence of a quality product (or a reasonable price of entry to a live event) allows the fanbase to treat the teams with utter disregard.
If the fans are thousandaires, the owners are multi-multi millionaires, and the television networks are multi-billionaires, what we have is a system where multi-multi millionaires are making their money at the teat of multi-billionaires who in turn made their money by coming up with a better mousetrap for sucking money out of the wallets of the thousandaires. It's cleaner and easier that way.
But the thousandaires, you and me, still hold sway. And there is a lot of graveyard whistling that takes place across MLB and the NBA. The MLB has it's fair share of house thousandaires, particularly in the major media markets. But there are some harsh realities that they hide from you. The first is that the NFL Pro Bowl, widely regard as a joke, outdrew Game 1 of the 2012 World Series. Second, the MLB is aging in place. Fox may crow about how well the World Series does 12+, but the 18-49 numbers regularly lose to standard network programming.
I gave myself a team in each league growing up, and one of those teams was the Montreal Expos. Say what you will about the fans in Montreal, but they did what every sports fan in every city should do, and that was stop supporting a shitty product. Did it cost them their team? Sure. But the lesson there, as it is in Pittsburgh, is clear. Put a competitive product on the field, and people will fork over the money. Don't, and they won't. The thousandaires of Montreal won a Pyrrhic victory.
The NBA is a model of the unsustainability of this financial model. Lost in the undercurrent of the Jordan 90s was the fact that Michael Jordan only played for one team. The NBA and the 1990s are a great example of how the face of sports fandom in this country transformed itself. The grip that the big four had on the sports fan was pried loose with a wide variety of other pursuits most notably the X Games. Thousandaires stopped buying the hype of what the NBA was selling no matter how high they turned that hype machine up.
The NBA continues to hype it's stars, while teams can't give tickets away.
David Stern is the consummate graveyard whistler, but even he had a difficult time putting a positive face on having to repossess the New Orleans Hornets (which should have been moved to Oklahoma City post Katrina), as his protege, Gary Bettman tries continually to put a positive spin on the league's farcical presence in Phoenix.
The NHL has tried, rather clumsily in the wake of last offseason's ridiculous free agency, to put a system in place that provides some sort of economic parity back into the economics of the game. But the damage in most of the southern markets and Columbus may not prove to be sustainable.
Only the NFL seems to be willing and able to effectively balance the relationship between a product that is perceived to be competitive enough to warrant the direct investment of the thousandaires while still being attractive enough to the multi-billionaires that pay the bulk of the bills. Even still, as in stadium NFL attendance has fallen since peaking in 2007, this has proven to be problematic.
Having endured all of that, you'd probably like me to get to a point. And it's this. As I was watching tonight's Tim Horton's Brier Curling Championship, it occurs to me that the bulk of my sports time is spent actively pursuing those sports that are built on a smaller economic model. Curling. Cricket. Canadian Football. Minor League Baseball. And I think that that is very much the future of our relationship with sports. That we, as sports fans, are actively rejecting the hollowed out model of sports fandom the multi billionaires try to cram down our throats to make a buck. It explains, on some level NASCAR's popularity as well (though it too has paid the price of trying to cram manufactured stars down the fans throats).We connect most personally with those sports that seem the most human to us, or offer us the most consistently competitive product. And these sports succeed where the NBA and MLB fail. And they will pay the price for it, eventually.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
The Long Offseason of Our Idealess Content
Starbucks Update
It has been an abnormally good run of Starbucks visits as of late. Although, full credit to the Starbucks at the Target in Steelyard Plaza in Cleveland, OH; They managed to run out of lids for both Medium and Large sized lids on a Friday. That's some quality supply management they have going on there.
The Argos and Skydome
When it first opened, the Skydome was one of North America's premier stadium venues. One of the last multi-purpose arenas built (and I would encourage you to read this on why that wasn't and isn't a bad thing), it's secondary goal was to serve as the destination that would help Torontonians bridge the gap between the downtown core and the waterfront.
That process took another 15 years, but condominium developments, and parkland gradually replaced the gravel tailgating lots and driving ranges that used to permeate the area. At this point, the neighborhood around Skydome actually looks like a pretty neat place to live.
But while it's cool to watch the roof open and close, which it used to do during Argos games, the Dome itself never turned out to be the destination it was intended to be. Certainly the CN Tower is still a tourism magnet, but the McDonalds on the lower concourse staggered and died, and the Hard Rock Cafe that had served as a restaurant anchor closed in 2011.
Apparently, the solution to the problems of the Skydome, the bad sightlines, the lack of attendance, the lack of neighborhood foot traffic and the lack of leasable commercial space,is grass.
No, seriously. Kick the Argos out, put a grass field in, and all of the other problems with the stadium itself will be solved.
Baseball fans are delusional on their best day. Their sport is a distant second to professional football in popularity in the US, second in Canada to hockey and barely out draws professional football on television, and yet Blue Jays fans will assert, with a straight face, that what keeps fans away from Skydome (we don't do corporate name changes here), is the lack of a grass field. And, as one commenter suggests, seats that should be colored green and not blue. As if the Argos are holding the Blue Jays back, for some reason.
Let's set aside the idea that the Skydome has other uses, including convention/trade (it serves as the overflow floor space for the Toronto Auto Show) and concerts. The suggestion is that the Argos would be too tough on a natural grass surface, but those other items wouldn't, is laughable. And oh, by the way, the NFL can still come up and play games on this grass surface whenever they would like. It's just the CFL team that has to go.
The arrogance of this type of thinking is akin to the arrogance of the NFL fanboys, now mostly aging baby boomers, that can't understand why the NFL doesn't come running. As any woman will tell you, you aren't likely to snag a husband when you put out on the first date. Plus, the Skydome is not an NFL caliber facility. Blue Jay fans, convinced that fans would come running if only there was a natural grass surface, and the Argos stand in the way of that, are no different than these fanboys, convinced that the NFL would come running if only those pesky Argos would go away.
It's nonsense, of course. there are a myriad of reasons why the NFL is in no hurry to go into Toronto. And Toronto demonstrably proves it doesn't give two shits about the Argos (or any other sports franchise other than the Leafs) unless they're winners. That never changes, and its never going to, regardless of the playing surface of the field.
******
Having said all of that, if there was a suitable alternate facility, at least as good as Molson Stadium in Montreal (which is a beautiful place to see a football game as well as get a contact buzz from the crowd) in the GTA, I'm all for the Argos moving. The Argos can now consistently draw a crowd size about on par with Montreal, yet the Skydome looks mostly empty, whereas Molson looks and feels like an event.
The issues, as always, are logistical with either the Varsity site (which would need to be expanded) or the York site, which needs to be built and would need to incorporate club and suite seats for revenue generation.
Either way, the Argos, though they are durable, and have improved their presence in the Toronto marketplace considerably since they were rendered afterthought status in the post Doug Flutie years, will have to find a home, take their shots from the arrogance of Blue Jays fans who will have plenty of room to spread out in the mostly empty stands and talk hockey as they admire the grass.
It has been an abnormally good run of Starbucks visits as of late. Although, full credit to the Starbucks at the Target in Steelyard Plaza in Cleveland, OH; They managed to run out of lids for both Medium and Large sized lids on a Friday. That's some quality supply management they have going on there.
The Argos and Skydome
When it first opened, the Skydome was one of North America's premier stadium venues. One of the last multi-purpose arenas built (and I would encourage you to read this on why that wasn't and isn't a bad thing), it's secondary goal was to serve as the destination that would help Torontonians bridge the gap between the downtown core and the waterfront.
That process took another 15 years, but condominium developments, and parkland gradually replaced the gravel tailgating lots and driving ranges that used to permeate the area. At this point, the neighborhood around Skydome actually looks like a pretty neat place to live.
But while it's cool to watch the roof open and close, which it used to do during Argos games, the Dome itself never turned out to be the destination it was intended to be. Certainly the CN Tower is still a tourism magnet, but the McDonalds on the lower concourse staggered and died, and the Hard Rock Cafe that had served as a restaurant anchor closed in 2011.
Apparently, the solution to the problems of the Skydome, the bad sightlines, the lack of attendance, the lack of neighborhood foot traffic and the lack of leasable commercial space,is grass.
No, seriously. Kick the Argos out, put a grass field in, and all of the other problems with the stadium itself will be solved.
Baseball fans are delusional on their best day. Their sport is a distant second to professional football in popularity in the US, second in Canada to hockey and barely out draws professional football on television, and yet Blue Jays fans will assert, with a straight face, that what keeps fans away from Skydome (we don't do corporate name changes here), is the lack of a grass field. And, as one commenter suggests, seats that should be colored green and not blue. As if the Argos are holding the Blue Jays back, for some reason.
Let's set aside the idea that the Skydome has other uses, including convention/trade (it serves as the overflow floor space for the Toronto Auto Show) and concerts. The suggestion is that the Argos would be too tough on a natural grass surface, but those other items wouldn't, is laughable. And oh, by the way, the NFL can still come up and play games on this grass surface whenever they would like. It's just the CFL team that has to go.
The arrogance of this type of thinking is akin to the arrogance of the NFL fanboys, now mostly aging baby boomers, that can't understand why the NFL doesn't come running. As any woman will tell you, you aren't likely to snag a husband when you put out on the first date. Plus, the Skydome is not an NFL caliber facility. Blue Jay fans, convinced that fans would come running if only there was a natural grass surface, and the Argos stand in the way of that, are no different than these fanboys, convinced that the NFL would come running if only those pesky Argos would go away.
It's nonsense, of course. there are a myriad of reasons why the NFL is in no hurry to go into Toronto. And Toronto demonstrably proves it doesn't give two shits about the Argos (or any other sports franchise other than the Leafs) unless they're winners. That never changes, and its never going to, regardless of the playing surface of the field.
******
Having said all of that, if there was a suitable alternate facility, at least as good as Molson Stadium in Montreal (which is a beautiful place to see a football game as well as get a contact buzz from the crowd) in the GTA, I'm all for the Argos moving. The Argos can now consistently draw a crowd size about on par with Montreal, yet the Skydome looks mostly empty, whereas Molson looks and feels like an event.
The issues, as always, are logistical with either the Varsity site (which would need to be expanded) or the York site, which needs to be built and would need to incorporate club and suite seats for revenue generation.
Either way, the Argos, though they are durable, and have improved their presence in the Toronto marketplace considerably since they were rendered afterthought status in the post Doug Flutie years, will have to find a home, take their shots from the arrogance of Blue Jays fans who will have plenty of room to spread out in the mostly empty stands and talk hockey as they admire the grass.
Friday, February 1, 2013
Some Odds and Ends for the Week That Was
It's been an unusually perfect run of Starbucks competence recently. I'd have to do the math, but I think the good to incompetent visit ratio is about 15:2.
Some other odds and ends from the week, leading to a Super Bowl prediction.
Organics/Vegan Shopping
Giant Eagle charges different prices for different NuGo protein bars. The dark chocolate and mint chocolate chip bars are 4/$5, the rest are 5/$5. There appears to be no rhyme or reason to this that anyone could identify, unless those two types of protein bars are vegan friendly and the remainder are not.
Other Random Items
The Columbia Journalism Review has gone live with an online app. This, along with The Walrus and The Atlantic, are the three magazines to which I subscribe, and it officially brings to a close the era of the printed magazine in my life. Of course, it means I'll now have to haul my iPad into the washroom with me, so not all progress is progress.
But it begs the question, when was the last time you bought a CD? And if you're still buying them, when will you stop?
Along the same lines, I had to buy a new DVD/surround sound player for the first time in six years. Not only is it an actual DVD player, but it comes with integrated Vudu and Netflix access. With that in mind, and coupled with movie access on portable devices, cable/satellite On Demand and Redbox, it's not hard to understand why Blockbuster and it's ilk are now virtually extinct. (Though I think that Family Video fills a nice niche and will hold on awhile longer).
Consider that, just a decade ago, you subscribed to a paper newspaper (already then on borrowed time), bought paper books, bought hard CDs and rented movies on a physical medium from a bricks and mortar store. All four of those activites have been replaced by one or more devices with network access.
*****
I personally find this weekend's Super Bowl strangely uninspiring, and I attribute that to my general lack of enthusiasm about the Baltimore Ravens. The offense is a deep pass, all or nothing game and Joe Flacco has all the charisma of Eli Manning painting a room beige. Ray Lewis' act is tiresome, the defense is old overall and it's Baltimore. Stop downtown, have some crabs and head down to Washington DC, someplace considerably more interesting where you're marginally less likely to get killed (says the man who works in Detroit for a living).
The 49ers, on the other hand, are a considerably more interesting team. They're well constructed, they run an innovative (for the NFL, at least) offense and are generally well built. Roster management has been phenominal. San Francisco proper is a lovely town (the suburbs are utterly uninspiring aside from Half Moon Bay, which is gorgeous), and well, here's the deal: Baltimore's defense is a bad matchup for San Francisco's offense. They run well, and Vernon Davis should be able to exploit Baltimore's old linebacking corps. San Francisco 31, Baltimore 21.
*****
It's a bare notebook overall for a bare time of year. Some thoughts next week on the Argos situation in Toronto as I get the chance to do some thinking on the first love of my life, the CFL.
Some other odds and ends from the week, leading to a Super Bowl prediction.
Organics/Vegan Shopping
Giant Eagle charges different prices for different NuGo protein bars. The dark chocolate and mint chocolate chip bars are 4/$5, the rest are 5/$5. There appears to be no rhyme or reason to this that anyone could identify, unless those two types of protein bars are vegan friendly and the remainder are not.
Other Random Items
The Columbia Journalism Review has gone live with an online app. This, along with The Walrus and The Atlantic, are the three magazines to which I subscribe, and it officially brings to a close the era of the printed magazine in my life. Of course, it means I'll now have to haul my iPad into the washroom with me, so not all progress is progress.
But it begs the question, when was the last time you bought a CD? And if you're still buying them, when will you stop?
Along the same lines, I had to buy a new DVD/surround sound player for the first time in six years. Not only is it an actual DVD player, but it comes with integrated Vudu and Netflix access. With that in mind, and coupled with movie access on portable devices, cable/satellite On Demand and Redbox, it's not hard to understand why Blockbuster and it's ilk are now virtually extinct. (Though I think that Family Video fills a nice niche and will hold on awhile longer).
Consider that, just a decade ago, you subscribed to a paper newspaper (already then on borrowed time), bought paper books, bought hard CDs and rented movies on a physical medium from a bricks and mortar store. All four of those activites have been replaced by one or more devices with network access.
*****
I personally find this weekend's Super Bowl strangely uninspiring, and I attribute that to my general lack of enthusiasm about the Baltimore Ravens. The offense is a deep pass, all or nothing game and Joe Flacco has all the charisma of Eli Manning painting a room beige. Ray Lewis' act is tiresome, the defense is old overall and it's Baltimore. Stop downtown, have some crabs and head down to Washington DC, someplace considerably more interesting where you're marginally less likely to get killed (says the man who works in Detroit for a living).
The 49ers, on the other hand, are a considerably more interesting team. They're well constructed, they run an innovative (for the NFL, at least) offense and are generally well built. Roster management has been phenominal. San Francisco proper is a lovely town (the suburbs are utterly uninspiring aside from Half Moon Bay, which is gorgeous), and well, here's the deal: Baltimore's defense is a bad matchup for San Francisco's offense. They run well, and Vernon Davis should be able to exploit Baltimore's old linebacking corps. San Francisco 31, Baltimore 21.
*****
It's a bare notebook overall for a bare time of year. Some thoughts next week on the Argos situation in Toronto as I get the chance to do some thinking on the first love of my life, the CFL.
Monday, January 28, 2013
About Children
I don't like children.
I don't mind admitting this. It's nothing personal, I'm sure your children are lovely and that you're doing a wonderful job of raising them to be model citizens who will excel and buck the odds and build a better life than you have.
But I have to be honest. I don't know how people do it. I am not equipped for parenthood. (I'm well equipped to create a child, just not equipped to raise one). There has never been a day in my life where I've woken up and wanted a 50% mini me running around raising all kinds of hell.
And I am absolutely certain that parenthood is one of life's greatest joys, and I disparage no one for choosing to embark upon it, or having it thrust upon them and adjusting to it. I wish you all the best. You are doing what I am not capable of doing, and good for you.
I mention this because I spent part of one of my weekend days in line at a local metropark amusement ride. To celebrate being thin enough to fit on this ride, I embarked on a ride that as 50% something I didn't like (the feeling of falling) with 50% of something I did like (going ridiculously fast).
Needless to say, waiting in line for this ride entailed waiting in line with children of various ages. Though I do have siblings they are much older than me and, eventually, they moved out. So by and large, I grew up alone. I'm alright with that. Always have been.
I was also usually the smartest, or one of the smartest, kids in my class and, on top of that, learned the basic classroom survival skill of helping teach the kids who were the bullies whatever topic we were being taught during that portion of the day. Even as a kid, I was a teacher. Which my teachers actually appreciated. As such, I didn't face really any bullying.
As I think back on my childhood, I do recall occasionally playing war, but it was never close contact war, it was always fake guns/hunting each other across our sprawling public housing complex type war games. Even at that, it was pretty rare. And while, when standing in line, we would occasionally tease each other, it never progressed to the punching stage. (In fact, I had a couple of 5th grade friends who were terrific pickpockets;to this day I keep my wallet in the front pocket of my pants instead of the rear as a result.)
So I was startled, while standing in line for 45 minutes, at the amount of playful violence that took place amongst the groups of preteen boys that surrounded us in line, in a metropark, in one of my metro area's most affluent suburbs. It was something I noticed as well amongst boys at bus stops on my trips to India, but once you notice the sight of younger kids, not even brothers, necessarily but just friends of varying ages, punching, kicking and generally antagonizing each other to physical limits constantly, it's hard to tune it out.
All of this could be attributed to my oversensitivity to these things and my general dislike of children. But I get the perception that children are a magnitude more violent toward each other than they were a generation ago, and that does not bode well for us as a society. It makes me glad I stick to cats. And keep those cats indoors.
That said, the experience reminded me of this:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MF_4EWSuzQY
I don't mind admitting this. It's nothing personal, I'm sure your children are lovely and that you're doing a wonderful job of raising them to be model citizens who will excel and buck the odds and build a better life than you have.
But I have to be honest. I don't know how people do it. I am not equipped for parenthood. (I'm well equipped to create a child, just not equipped to raise one). There has never been a day in my life where I've woken up and wanted a 50% mini me running around raising all kinds of hell.
And I am absolutely certain that parenthood is one of life's greatest joys, and I disparage no one for choosing to embark upon it, or having it thrust upon them and adjusting to it. I wish you all the best. You are doing what I am not capable of doing, and good for you.
I mention this because I spent part of one of my weekend days in line at a local metropark amusement ride. To celebrate being thin enough to fit on this ride, I embarked on a ride that as 50% something I didn't like (the feeling of falling) with 50% of something I did like (going ridiculously fast).
Needless to say, waiting in line for this ride entailed waiting in line with children of various ages. Though I do have siblings they are much older than me and, eventually, they moved out. So by and large, I grew up alone. I'm alright with that. Always have been.
I was also usually the smartest, or one of the smartest, kids in my class and, on top of that, learned the basic classroom survival skill of helping teach the kids who were the bullies whatever topic we were being taught during that portion of the day. Even as a kid, I was a teacher. Which my teachers actually appreciated. As such, I didn't face really any bullying.
As I think back on my childhood, I do recall occasionally playing war, but it was never close contact war, it was always fake guns/hunting each other across our sprawling public housing complex type war games. Even at that, it was pretty rare. And while, when standing in line, we would occasionally tease each other, it never progressed to the punching stage. (In fact, I had a couple of 5th grade friends who were terrific pickpockets;to this day I keep my wallet in the front pocket of my pants instead of the rear as a result.)
So I was startled, while standing in line for 45 minutes, at the amount of playful violence that took place amongst the groups of preteen boys that surrounded us in line, in a metropark, in one of my metro area's most affluent suburbs. It was something I noticed as well amongst boys at bus stops on my trips to India, but once you notice the sight of younger kids, not even brothers, necessarily but just friends of varying ages, punching, kicking and generally antagonizing each other to physical limits constantly, it's hard to tune it out.
All of this could be attributed to my oversensitivity to these things and my general dislike of children. But I get the perception that children are a magnitude more violent toward each other than they were a generation ago, and that does not bode well for us as a society. It makes me glad I stick to cats. And keep those cats indoors.
That said, the experience reminded me of this:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MF_4EWSuzQY
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
When You Lie Down With Dogs, Don't Cry About the Fleas
If you're a football fan, you are no doubt fully aware of ProFootballTalk and it's primary writer, Mike Florio.
Let me start out by saying I have nothing against Mike Florio. He has been able to parlay a site that traffics in rumors, innuendo, blog length observations and the occasional breaking story into a successful media enterprise, and for that I applaud him. In general, if you can provide a unique spin to some form of media and make money at it, particularly as an independent business person, I'm all for it, even if I disagree with your point of view. Heck, I hit the site every day.
That transcends sport and into politics. I have never agreed with a single thing Rush Limbaugh has had to say but, like Father Charles Coughlin before him, I acknowledge he is a great entertainer who has hit upon a formula to generate a massive amount of revenue for himself, his bosses and the affiliated stations, so more power to him for making the best of a free enterprise opportunity.
But back to Florio. One of the most prominent features of ProFootballTalk was, and is, the arrest meter. The prominence of this feature, and it's central role in the early rise of his site to prominence, encouraged the development of a robust online commentariat that took delight in reinforcing stereotypes of primarily African American athletes as criminals and thugs.
Because these types of stories attracted page hits, and those page hits attracted comments which, in turn, attracted more page hits, these stories flourished. When these stories flourish, the comments flourish. And, once you attract that type of commentariat, and use it to rise to prominence and generate revenue, they become entrenched and don't go away.
So I was surprised to wake up last Sunday morning to the following Tweet from the @Profootballtalk account:
Nothing shakes my faith in humanity more than reading (and deleting) some of the reader comments in response to a Rooney Rule article.
Now, the type of commentariat with this type of opinion is not unique to ProFootballTalk. Hit the website of your local newspaper and you'll find it filled with bigots and idiots of all stripes. Tying in Facebook IDs to comments has helped curb this somewhat, but plenty of people who are bigots, racists, religions nuts and climate deniers are more than willing to put their name to their opinions, and sleep well at night being bigots, racists, religious nuts and climate deniers, some of my family members among them.
All of which is their right, and I don't really have a problem with that, any more than I have a problem with calling those people out for it.
What I have little patience for are what I call Captain Renault acts. In this case, a person whose stock and trade involved easily exploitative stories involving minority athletes, whether they be centered around arrests, rumors of teammate conflict or finger wagging on athlete behavior, a person whose site rose to prominence at least partially due to distributing this type of information, wakes up one morning shocked, shocked! to find that his website's commentariat is racially insensitive (in addition to being anti-union, but that's another story entirely). That these people didn't just disappear once NBC bought the site from him and he turned into a television personality.
And I'm sure Florio would make the case that he never actually actively encouraged any of that discussion. But tacitly he and his site benefited from it financially. And while there's plausible deniability about site content, there is no plausible deniability from the conscience that sent that tweet.
Part and parcel of being a webmaster that distributes content is addressing the user community that views your content to begin with. You can turn comments off completely which, it's theorized, will severely limit traffic (though that never seemed to hinder Fire Joe Morgan). You can have a robust comment monitoring community that filters out and bans the idiots.
But if you profit off their backs, you forfeit the right to profit off of their existence and then express your distaste over their behavior. It's time Mike Florio did the same.
Let me start out by saying I have nothing against Mike Florio. He has been able to parlay a site that traffics in rumors, innuendo, blog length observations and the occasional breaking story into a successful media enterprise, and for that I applaud him. In general, if you can provide a unique spin to some form of media and make money at it, particularly as an independent business person, I'm all for it, even if I disagree with your point of view. Heck, I hit the site every day.
That transcends sport and into politics. I have never agreed with a single thing Rush Limbaugh has had to say but, like Father Charles Coughlin before him, I acknowledge he is a great entertainer who has hit upon a formula to generate a massive amount of revenue for himself, his bosses and the affiliated stations, so more power to him for making the best of a free enterprise opportunity.
But back to Florio. One of the most prominent features of ProFootballTalk was, and is, the arrest meter. The prominence of this feature, and it's central role in the early rise of his site to prominence, encouraged the development of a robust online commentariat that took delight in reinforcing stereotypes of primarily African American athletes as criminals and thugs.
Because these types of stories attracted page hits, and those page hits attracted comments which, in turn, attracted more page hits, these stories flourished. When these stories flourish, the comments flourish. And, once you attract that type of commentariat, and use it to rise to prominence and generate revenue, they become entrenched and don't go away.
So I was surprised to wake up last Sunday morning to the following Tweet from the @Profootballtalk account:
Nothing shakes my faith in humanity more than reading (and deleting) some of the reader comments in response to a Rooney Rule article.
Now, the type of commentariat with this type of opinion is not unique to ProFootballTalk. Hit the website of your local newspaper and you'll find it filled with bigots and idiots of all stripes. Tying in Facebook IDs to comments has helped curb this somewhat, but plenty of people who are bigots, racists, religions nuts and climate deniers are more than willing to put their name to their opinions, and sleep well at night being bigots, racists, religious nuts and climate deniers, some of my family members among them.
All of which is their right, and I don't really have a problem with that, any more than I have a problem with calling those people out for it.
What I have little patience for are what I call Captain Renault acts. In this case, a person whose stock and trade involved easily exploitative stories involving minority athletes, whether they be centered around arrests, rumors of teammate conflict or finger wagging on athlete behavior, a person whose site rose to prominence at least partially due to distributing this type of information, wakes up one morning shocked, shocked! to find that his website's commentariat is racially insensitive (in addition to being anti-union, but that's another story entirely). That these people didn't just disappear once NBC bought the site from him and he turned into a television personality.
And I'm sure Florio would make the case that he never actually actively encouraged any of that discussion. But tacitly he and his site benefited from it financially. And while there's plausible deniability about site content, there is no plausible deniability from the conscience that sent that tweet.
Part and parcel of being a webmaster that distributes content is addressing the user community that views your content to begin with. You can turn comments off completely which, it's theorized, will severely limit traffic (though that never seemed to hinder Fire Joe Morgan). You can have a robust comment monitoring community that filters out and bans the idiots.
But if you profit off their backs, you forfeit the right to profit off of their existence and then express your distaste over their behavior. It's time Mike Florio did the same.
Shopping for Organics
One of my goals this year is/was to convert to roughly 75% Veganism. I've personally found red meat quite easy to give up, I had been eating only chicken, turkey and seafood post surgery because my stomach couldn't handle it anyway, and in doing some research, I found that I could essentially convert my diet to a non-animal consuming one, save for seafood, fairly easily.
If your intent is to do the same, let me make a couple of suggestions, From a protein shakes and bars standpoint, your options are somewhat limited, unless you enjoy mixing your own protein drinks, which I don't. I'd recommend Calnutrition's Svelte protein drinks over Orgain, they are considerably less expensive and better (less worse) tasting. NuGo has a line of Vegan friendly protein bars that taste great (particularly the chocolate mint flavor).
As it turns out, gastrointestinally this conversion didn't work well for me. I get the sense that I'm flat out allergic to something in the Svelte, as it left me in a pretty bad state. And when part of your living involves making long presentations to groups of clients, trying to accommodate my body's behavior was not sustainable. So back to the Atkins shakes we go.
That said, I'm still able to eliminate my on land meat consumption fairly easily. There are a number of tofu based non meat and non cheese flavored products that are quite good, in particular LightLife Smart Deli bologna flavored slices. Good stuff in a sandwich.
Having had roughly a month to shop for Vegan friendly groceries, I've been able to do a bit of a comparison amongst the various local and national chains, and here's a somewhat anecdotal data dump.
Also, Berry flavored all natural G2 Gatorade is terrific. The best flavor of any Gatorade out there. Great stuff.
Meijer I love Meijer, but they're basically worthless. A cursory stocking of Soy Milk, some organic coffee, sugar based soda in the International aisle and that's basically it.
Earth Fare Local to Cleveland and Phoenix, EarthFare prides itself on having nothing in the store made with High Fructose Corn Syrup. Their selection of non animal based milks is quite good. The Vegan base deli section is packed into one underwhelming cooler tucked behind the front entrance in the veggie section and is difficult to find. Also, and this drives me crazy, no honey roasted peanuts. Seriously. Their selection of Vegan protein bars is very small. I shouldn't be as underwhelmed by their selection overall as I am. They make a decent effort.
Trader Joe's Good for all natural honey roasted peanuts, and they seem to have a better grasp of fruit to go, but that's about it. A significant disappointment.
Whole Foods If you can put up with the CEO being a bit of a nut, and the prices being higher than average, you can find pretty much everything you need here. It would be nice if their real estate group would acknowledge that the western suburbs of Cleveland and Detroit existed and opened locations accordingly, but what can you do?
Giant Eagle Giant Eagle makes an effort to stock Organics, but when they remodeled my area store, they made a switch that was maddening. Older floor planned Giant Eagles had Organics in one easy to find section, near the produce. Unfortunately, someone got the bright idea to spread the organics throughout the store, making it nearly impossible to browse for and find Organic products in one place, without having to hop from section to section and hope a particular product is in stock.
For people who shop only for Organics or products that are Vegan friendly, this is a time wasting killer. Not only do I face the uncertainty of whether or not you carry products that meet my dietary needs, but I have to hopscotch through your entire store to find them. As a result, Giant Eagle loses the bulk of my shopping business. To their credit, they carry the largest selection of NuGo Vegan friendly protein bars.
Kroger Kroger, on the other hand, understands this and maintains an Organics section, inclusive of a cooler, right next to the produce section. They also do this with King Super, Fred Meyer and Tom Thumb stores (which are part of their corporate footprint). It isn't a robust selection, necessary, but for a large chain it's respectable and, with the exception of the Gatorade, which is kept in the same section as the non Organic Gatorade, everything they have is in one easy to find place. They even have an organic (but not Vegan) house brand.
If your intent is to do the same, let me make a couple of suggestions, From a protein shakes and bars standpoint, your options are somewhat limited, unless you enjoy mixing your own protein drinks, which I don't. I'd recommend Calnutrition's Svelte protein drinks over Orgain, they are considerably less expensive and better (less worse) tasting. NuGo has a line of Vegan friendly protein bars that taste great (particularly the chocolate mint flavor).
As it turns out, gastrointestinally this conversion didn't work well for me. I get the sense that I'm flat out allergic to something in the Svelte, as it left me in a pretty bad state. And when part of your living involves making long presentations to groups of clients, trying to accommodate my body's behavior was not sustainable. So back to the Atkins shakes we go.
That said, I'm still able to eliminate my on land meat consumption fairly easily. There are a number of tofu based non meat and non cheese flavored products that are quite good, in particular LightLife Smart Deli bologna flavored slices. Good stuff in a sandwich.
Having had roughly a month to shop for Vegan friendly groceries, I've been able to do a bit of a comparison amongst the various local and national chains, and here's a somewhat anecdotal data dump.
Also, Berry flavored all natural G2 Gatorade is terrific. The best flavor of any Gatorade out there. Great stuff.
Meijer I love Meijer, but they're basically worthless. A cursory stocking of Soy Milk, some organic coffee, sugar based soda in the International aisle and that's basically it.
Earth Fare Local to Cleveland and Phoenix, EarthFare prides itself on having nothing in the store made with High Fructose Corn Syrup. Their selection of non animal based milks is quite good. The Vegan base deli section is packed into one underwhelming cooler tucked behind the front entrance in the veggie section and is difficult to find. Also, and this drives me crazy, no honey roasted peanuts. Seriously. Their selection of Vegan protein bars is very small. I shouldn't be as underwhelmed by their selection overall as I am. They make a decent effort.
Trader Joe's Good for all natural honey roasted peanuts, and they seem to have a better grasp of fruit to go, but that's about it. A significant disappointment.
Whole Foods If you can put up with the CEO being a bit of a nut, and the prices being higher than average, you can find pretty much everything you need here. It would be nice if their real estate group would acknowledge that the western suburbs of Cleveland and Detroit existed and opened locations accordingly, but what can you do?
Giant Eagle Giant Eagle makes an effort to stock Organics, but when they remodeled my area store, they made a switch that was maddening. Older floor planned Giant Eagles had Organics in one easy to find section, near the produce. Unfortunately, someone got the bright idea to spread the organics throughout the store, making it nearly impossible to browse for and find Organic products in one place, without having to hop from section to section and hope a particular product is in stock.
For people who shop only for Organics or products that are Vegan friendly, this is a time wasting killer. Not only do I face the uncertainty of whether or not you carry products that meet my dietary needs, but I have to hopscotch through your entire store to find them. As a result, Giant Eagle loses the bulk of my shopping business. To their credit, they carry the largest selection of NuGo Vegan friendly protein bars.
Kroger Kroger, on the other hand, understands this and maintains an Organics section, inclusive of a cooler, right next to the produce section. They also do this with King Super, Fred Meyer and Tom Thumb stores (which are part of their corporate footprint). It isn't a robust selection, necessary, but for a large chain it's respectable and, with the exception of the Gatorade, which is kept in the same section as the non Organic Gatorade, everything they have is in one easy to find place. They even have an organic (but not Vegan) house brand.
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Weeky Football Thoughts
I'll have some thoughts on shopping for Organics next week, I promise, but let's throw some football things out there.
Marc Trestman to the Bears
As someone who is a CFL fan, though not of Montreal, and who follows it with a rooting interest, here's my $.02 on Trestman.
My span of observing the NFL more or less dovetails with his NFL career. While I think he did a great job with tutoring QBs, I was never a fan of his offensive play calling overall. Looking back, particularly on his work in San Francisco and in Detroit, the fog of time may make my opinion of his NFL work appear worse than it actually was, but as a game manager I didn't think much of his play calling.
From an offensive game design standpoint, however, his work in Montreal did impress me. He took full advantage of the rules differences and very quickly designed an offense that did a terrific job of using the motion rules, did a terrific job of disguising pass patterns pre-snap, making it difficult for defenses to anticipate patterns pre-snap, and made great use of smaller, more versatile running backs both in the pass and the run game. Smarter CFL offensive coordinators were able to look at what he was doing and evolve one of the two standard CFL offenses to incorporate some of what he brought to the game.
A cynic can look at his CFL career and say the following: He had superior talent, including a Hall of Fame Quarterback, in a weak division, so an average coach should have accomplished what he accomplished in Montreal. And you could argue that there is something to that.
He is not a rah rah guy. Never was, and in the wrong situation that could have worked against him. (Cleveland comes to mind.) He was a bad fit for those circumstances with a young roster where Jim Popp wasn't coming with him to rebuild a program under a patient owner (Carolina comes to mind as a place where both would have worked well - they both live in North Carolina in the offseason.)
But I think Chicago can work. It is a veteran group where he can get the most out of Cutler, Jeffery, Marshall and particularly Forte (who I think will have a terrific fantasy season). He also has the good sense, apparently, to leave the defensive coaching staff alone to do their job. Considering the Bears offensive line consists of Roberto Garza and four guys with capes who yell ole at the snap of the ball, I think Aaron Kromer was a good get. Between the two, they should be able to make the most of what the Bears have on offense.
It's what they have on defense that I think will ultimately be the achillies heel. Age is catching up to that defense, and it's that age that may keep the Bears from improving on Lovie's last season in Chicago. The difference between a 10-6 2012 and a 10-6 2013 season is likely to be more significant than people who will likely criticize Trestman after it by saying "they're no better" realize.
In the end, I think Trestman was probably the best hire for the Bears at this point in time. I see him as a bridge coach, someone who can prop up a roster by getting the most out of the offense while the front office attempts to rebuild the roster. They aren't going to win a Super Bowl with him. But they weren't going to win a Super Bowl with Lovie (who I would have loved to see in Buffalo) and Trestman can stem the downward trajectory long enough so that the coach that follows him can take the foundation he lays to a more competitive level.
Championship Sunday
The last three football games of the year are upon us, let the sadness begin, I suppose.
San Francisco @ Atlanta(+4) - I don't love the Falcons, I really don't. They can't stop the run effectively up the middle, and offensively the game planning in the second half of the season has gone south. That said, their defensive ends and secondary exhibit considerably better discipline than most other NFC teams, and I think that makes the difference here. Even better, I don't have to pick them to win. Atlanta(+4), Over 47
Baltimore @ New England (-10), 50 - I'm not a fan of Baltimore's wing and a prayer offense, which I think comes up short here. Can we take a moment to mention how awesome Ray Lewis' facemask is? I hope more players adopt that. I don't think Baltimore wins this game, but I'm not confident enough to lay the points Baltimore (+10) Over 50
Other Items
It's been an incredibly good run of Starbucks lately. Although I will say that the Starbucks in the McNamara Terminal at Detroit Metro Airport specializes in having five people behind the counter who are quite adept at letting one customer stand there and wait for five minutes while doing nothing other than catching up on the news of the day. That said, when I ordered my usual drink and asked for extra Sugar Free Vanilla, extra apparently mean 13 pumps of Sugar Free Vanilla instead of 7 which, for my sweet tooth, was phenomenal. I won't lie. Three Starbucks in the Denver area, three perfect drinks.
Marc Trestman to the Bears
As someone who is a CFL fan, though not of Montreal, and who follows it with a rooting interest, here's my $.02 on Trestman.
My span of observing the NFL more or less dovetails with his NFL career. While I think he did a great job with tutoring QBs, I was never a fan of his offensive play calling overall. Looking back, particularly on his work in San Francisco and in Detroit, the fog of time may make my opinion of his NFL work appear worse than it actually was, but as a game manager I didn't think much of his play calling.
From an offensive game design standpoint, however, his work in Montreal did impress me. He took full advantage of the rules differences and very quickly designed an offense that did a terrific job of using the motion rules, did a terrific job of disguising pass patterns pre-snap, making it difficult for defenses to anticipate patterns pre-snap, and made great use of smaller, more versatile running backs both in the pass and the run game. Smarter CFL offensive coordinators were able to look at what he was doing and evolve one of the two standard CFL offenses to incorporate some of what he brought to the game.
A cynic can look at his CFL career and say the following: He had superior talent, including a Hall of Fame Quarterback, in a weak division, so an average coach should have accomplished what he accomplished in Montreal. And you could argue that there is something to that.
He is not a rah rah guy. Never was, and in the wrong situation that could have worked against him. (Cleveland comes to mind.) He was a bad fit for those circumstances with a young roster where Jim Popp wasn't coming with him to rebuild a program under a patient owner (Carolina comes to mind as a place where both would have worked well - they both live in North Carolina in the offseason.)
But I think Chicago can work. It is a veteran group where he can get the most out of Cutler, Jeffery, Marshall and particularly Forte (who I think will have a terrific fantasy season). He also has the good sense, apparently, to leave the defensive coaching staff alone to do their job. Considering the Bears offensive line consists of Roberto Garza and four guys with capes who yell ole at the snap of the ball, I think Aaron Kromer was a good get. Between the two, they should be able to make the most of what the Bears have on offense.
It's what they have on defense that I think will ultimately be the achillies heel. Age is catching up to that defense, and it's that age that may keep the Bears from improving on Lovie's last season in Chicago. The difference between a 10-6 2012 and a 10-6 2013 season is likely to be more significant than people who will likely criticize Trestman after it by saying "they're no better" realize.
In the end, I think Trestman was probably the best hire for the Bears at this point in time. I see him as a bridge coach, someone who can prop up a roster by getting the most out of the offense while the front office attempts to rebuild the roster. They aren't going to win a Super Bowl with him. But they weren't going to win a Super Bowl with Lovie (who I would have loved to see in Buffalo) and Trestman can stem the downward trajectory long enough so that the coach that follows him can take the foundation he lays to a more competitive level.
Championship Sunday
The last three football games of the year are upon us, let the sadness begin, I suppose.
San Francisco @ Atlanta(+4) - I don't love the Falcons, I really don't. They can't stop the run effectively up the middle, and offensively the game planning in the second half of the season has gone south. That said, their defensive ends and secondary exhibit considerably better discipline than most other NFC teams, and I think that makes the difference here. Even better, I don't have to pick them to win. Atlanta(+4), Over 47
Baltimore @ New England (-10), 50 - I'm not a fan of Baltimore's wing and a prayer offense, which I think comes up short here. Can we take a moment to mention how awesome Ray Lewis' facemask is? I hope more players adopt that. I don't think Baltimore wins this game, but I'm not confident enough to lay the points Baltimore (+10) Over 50
Other Items
It's been an incredibly good run of Starbucks lately. Although I will say that the Starbucks in the McNamara Terminal at Detroit Metro Airport specializes in having five people behind the counter who are quite adept at letting one customer stand there and wait for five minutes while doing nothing other than catching up on the news of the day. That said, when I ordered my usual drink and asked for extra Sugar Free Vanilla, extra apparently mean 13 pumps of Sugar Free Vanilla instead of 7 which, for my sweet tooth, was phenomenal. I won't lie. Three Starbucks in the Denver area, three perfect drinks.
Saturday, January 12, 2013
The Best American Football Weekend of the Year
With apologies for the long layoff. This 70 hour work week I've had to put in getting ready for a presentation in Denver is a real time suck.
More thoughts on some other items later, particularly the joys and difficulties in shopping for organic foods, but let's get to football.
3-1 last week. Not bad.
Baltimore (+10) @ Denver - If it wasn't evident last week, I don't think much of Baltimore. The usual descriptions apply, they're old and their offense could politely be described as inconsistent.
That said, while the Broncos have proven themselves to be a very good team this seson, understand that their division is weak and injuries have caused some significant holes on defense. I think they have enough to win, but only a fool gives 10 points in a playoff game. Baltimore (+10).
Green Bay @ San Francisco (-3) - Now this is the game you want to see. Unquestionably the 49ers have a great defense. And the Packers do a masterful job of spreading the field and getting receivers open. You can make a case for both teams here. You can argue the Packers have no run game and an offensive line in a state of transition that should be eaten up by the 49ers defense. You can argue that the 49ers run game should be able to play ground control and keep the 49ers defense off the field. Conversely, you can say that the Justin Smith injury seriously hampers the 49ers defense and that a solid Packer defense can cause problems for Colin Kaepernick. It's a tough call and the -3 is basically a home field spread. Thought it is on the road, the Packers are healthy and the 49ers are not. This could go either way but Green Bay (+3)
Seattle @ Atlanta (-2.5) - The Falcons are a perennial one and done playoff team that has ended up this way because they've lacked a pass rush. And if Chris Clemons were healthy, instead of done for the year, I'd take the Seahawks here. But his injury, and the fact the Falcons are fully healthy, and at home, should be enough to get coach Mike Smith his first playoff win. Atlanta(-2.5)
Houston @ New England (-9) -This was an incredibly unpleasant game for the Texans the last time they went up to Foxboro. While JJ Watt, who was completely shut out by the Patriots offensive line in that first matchup, has rebounded to have a stellar season, I've seen little to nothing from the Texans offense, which is poorly schemed, to tell me they can keep up with the Patriots. (New England -9)
More thoughts on some other items later, particularly the joys and difficulties in shopping for organic foods, but let's get to football.
3-1 last week. Not bad.
Baltimore (+10) @ Denver - If it wasn't evident last week, I don't think much of Baltimore. The usual descriptions apply, they're old and their offense could politely be described as inconsistent.
That said, while the Broncos have proven themselves to be a very good team this seson, understand that their division is weak and injuries have caused some significant holes on defense. I think they have enough to win, but only a fool gives 10 points in a playoff game. Baltimore (+10).
Green Bay @ San Francisco (-3) - Now this is the game you want to see. Unquestionably the 49ers have a great defense. And the Packers do a masterful job of spreading the field and getting receivers open. You can make a case for both teams here. You can argue the Packers have no run game and an offensive line in a state of transition that should be eaten up by the 49ers defense. You can argue that the 49ers run game should be able to play ground control and keep the 49ers defense off the field. Conversely, you can say that the Justin Smith injury seriously hampers the 49ers defense and that a solid Packer defense can cause problems for Colin Kaepernick. It's a tough call and the -3 is basically a home field spread. Thought it is on the road, the Packers are healthy and the 49ers are not. This could go either way but Green Bay (+3)
Seattle @ Atlanta (-2.5) - The Falcons are a perennial one and done playoff team that has ended up this way because they've lacked a pass rush. And if Chris Clemons were healthy, instead of done for the year, I'd take the Seahawks here. But his injury, and the fact the Falcons are fully healthy, and at home, should be enough to get coach Mike Smith his first playoff win. Atlanta(-2.5)
Houston @ New England (-9) -This was an incredibly unpleasant game for the Texans the last time they went up to Foxboro. While JJ Watt, who was completely shut out by the Patriots offensive line in that first matchup, has rebounded to have a stellar season, I've seen little to nothing from the Texans offense, which is poorly schemed, to tell me they can keep up with the Patriots. (New England -9)
Friday, January 4, 2013
Weekend Wild Card Round Picks
Alright, let's take a minute away from blogging about buying stuff to talk about the national past time.
Cincinnati @Houston (-4.5) - If they can keep their coaching staff intact, an I think they can, the Cincinnati Bengals have a great future. With Baltimore and Pittsburgh aging, and Cleveland being Cleveland, a Bengals team with three good receivers, a solid tight end, a respectable run blocking offensive line and an average to above average QB along with a solid defense and one of the best defensive lines in the league should ascend to the top of the AFC North as soon as next year.
But that's next year. The Houston Texans underwhelm me, overall. I don't like the passing schemes at all and Arian Foster seems to succeed despite his offensive line. And while JJ Watt is a terrific Defensive End, the defense itself is hurting. Still, this is a playoff game, and home teams tend to win these at close to a 70% clip. So consider this an unenthusiastic endorsement of Houston(-4.5).
Minnesota @ Green Bay (-7.5) - Yes, Adrian Peterson had a great season, and yes, Jared Allen is a terrific Defensive End and Minnesota's secondary has had a terrific year. But the Vikings don't have much else to offer on either side of the ball, and the Packers are healthy. Easiest pick of the week. Green Bay (-7.5).
Indianapolis @ Baltimore (-7) Call it the Mayflower revenge game. Considering how thin the Colts defense is, and how turnover prone the Colts offense is, if this were the Ravens team of old, you would expect Baltimore to win comfortably. However, this is an old Ravens team with a poorly designed offensive scheme whose architect was fired midseason, and rightfully so. The problem is, you can't redesign an offense on the fly, and Joe Flacco is not the type of QB that can make reads for a modern multiple NFL offense. It's possible that Ray Lewis' win one for the gipper act can get the Ravens through one round. But I'm not betting on it. Indianapolis (+7)
Seattle (-3) @ Washington RG III and Alfred Morris have had great seasons, as has Pierre Garcon once he finally got healthy. The real problem here is on the defensive side of the ball, where Washington is beat up and old. Kudos to Jim Haslett for making the most of what he has, but this isn't a defense that is going to carry the Redskins very far. Seattle (-3)
Cincinnati @Houston (-4.5) - If they can keep their coaching staff intact, an I think they can, the Cincinnati Bengals have a great future. With Baltimore and Pittsburgh aging, and Cleveland being Cleveland, a Bengals team with three good receivers, a solid tight end, a respectable run blocking offensive line and an average to above average QB along with a solid defense and one of the best defensive lines in the league should ascend to the top of the AFC North as soon as next year.
But that's next year. The Houston Texans underwhelm me, overall. I don't like the passing schemes at all and Arian Foster seems to succeed despite his offensive line. And while JJ Watt is a terrific Defensive End, the defense itself is hurting. Still, this is a playoff game, and home teams tend to win these at close to a 70% clip. So consider this an unenthusiastic endorsement of Houston(-4.5).
Minnesota @ Green Bay (-7.5) - Yes, Adrian Peterson had a great season, and yes, Jared Allen is a terrific Defensive End and Minnesota's secondary has had a terrific year. But the Vikings don't have much else to offer on either side of the ball, and the Packers are healthy. Easiest pick of the week. Green Bay (-7.5).
Indianapolis @ Baltimore (-7) Call it the Mayflower revenge game. Considering how thin the Colts defense is, and how turnover prone the Colts offense is, if this were the Ravens team of old, you would expect Baltimore to win comfortably. However, this is an old Ravens team with a poorly designed offensive scheme whose architect was fired midseason, and rightfully so. The problem is, you can't redesign an offense on the fly, and Joe Flacco is not the type of QB that can make reads for a modern multiple NFL offense. It's possible that Ray Lewis' win one for the gipper act can get the Ravens through one round. But I'm not betting on it. Indianapolis (+7)
Seattle (-3) @ Washington RG III and Alfred Morris have had great seasons, as has Pierre Garcon once he finally got healthy. The real problem here is on the defensive side of the ball, where Washington is beat up and old. Kudos to Jim Haslett for making the most of what he has, but this isn't a defense that is going to carry the Redskins very far. Seattle (-3)
How Bricks and Mortar Retailers Lose Online Impulse Buys
We are now 15 or so years into the Internet retail revolution, which is transforming itself into the mobile revolution, and it still amazes me how tone deaf some companies can be about their web and mobile presence.
My single largest pet peeve is this. In the year 2013, you have no excuse as a bricks and mortar retailer for not having your store level inventory online. Certainly people, whenever possible, will take the opportunity to order items for delivery, either from a bricks and mortar company's website, or from an online only enterprise. But a percentage of your "online" business can come from those customers who know you have bricks and mortar locations, know you offer a product, and would purchase the product if you would only let them know whether or not an area location has that product in stock.
This shouldn't be rocket science. However, you would be surprised how many retailers, including GNC, Vitamin Shoppe, and larger SKU chains like Meijer, Sears and Target, still don't understand this.
Web and mobile traffic should serve multiple masters. Yes, you want people to purchase products online. However there still exists the possibility that you can drive traffic to your bricks and mortar locations and capitalize on the see/want/buy/pickup market.
"But Dan, how large can that audience be?"
That's a fine question. So let me turn around and ask you a question. What products will you absolutely not purchase without trying them in a store environment first? Off the top of my head, my list is: shoes, glasses, a television, a car, a toupee, furniture and almost anything I would ingest for the first time.
But beyond this list, we all have things we impulse buy. And if the things we think we want impulsively are available to us, and this can be confirmed for us, our odds of actually buying it improve considerably. Which means we can then walk into your bricks and mortar location where your customer service people can, hypothetically, sell us more stuff.
And even when stores actually do have their inventory online, it doesn't guarantee a logical purchasing process, as the following two examples will illustrate.
I once wanted to purchase a printer at Circuit City. This printer, online, was advertised for $68. I could purchase it online and pick it up at the store. For various reasons most likely associated with naivete, I assumed this was also the in store price, or that Circuit City would price match their own online price. I arrived at Circuit City, where I had confirmed the printer was in stock, to find that I was incorrect on this. If I wanted it in the store, I had to pay $79.
Not wanting to pay the extra $11, I instead walked over to the computer section, ordered and purchased the printer online from the store, then walked over to the service counter with my confirmation number and picked up the item.
Along the same lines, I went in search of a book, specifically the Forks Over Knives cookbook. While I can purchase this item from Amazon, or pick it up on eBay, I have a list of things to do today, and figured I would see how much the book costs at Barnes and Noble. If I want to order it online and have it delivered, it's $11.86. If I want to purchase it and pick it up in the store, it's $19.95. This pricing structure is asinine. Let's assume that there are three types of product purchasing experiences:
1) I can buy something from Barnes and Noble online.
2) I can decide to buy something from Barnes and Noble online, but want to pick it up at a Bricks and Mortar location.
3) I can wander in to a Barnes and Noble location, find an item on the shelf and purchase that item.
Scenario #3 is the most expensive for the retailer. It requires them to have a physical location and a staff, along with all of the expenses contained therein. In theory, I as a customer am also paying for the experience of shopping at this retailer; the bookstore experience.
Scenario #1 is the least expensive for the retailer for reasons that should be obvious to you.
But Scenario #2 is not as expensive as Scenario #3, and should not be priced the same. I have done the legwork as the consumer. You as the retailer don't have to have a customer service representative sell me anything. That person has to spend the equivalent of one FTE/however many in store book pickup orders, pulling that piece of inventory off of the shelf and placing it on hold. And even if that is the only one of that item in the store, and even if there is an opportunity cost incurred by taking that item off the shelf, the aggregate amount of that expense still isn't enough to justify charging the same price for the item as in Scenario #3.
So Barnes and Noble will lose a sale to Amazon, which offers it cheaper, and their bricks and mortar location will lose foot traffic, and a chance to sell additional items, impulse or otherwise, to a customer that won't walk in the door.
Along the same lines, at this point it is unacceptable for any fast of fresh fast food chain to not have a mobile app that allows customers to order food directly from a smartphone. Chipotle does a wonderful job with this (heck, the ability to order Chipotle from my phone was one of the reasons I purchased an iPhone originally), Qdoba...I'm still waiting. The same goes for pizza. No one wants to be the person who actually calls and orders the pizza (one of the great social mysteries of contemporary American society), so Papa Johns got around this by being the most aggressive in getting web and mobile ordering launched. Donatos? Still waiting. (Actually, I'm not waiting. I no longer eat pizza. Or Chipotle. Or Qdoba. But those are other stories entirely.)
But honestly. We are 15 years into the Internet/Mobile revolution, and you'll read stories about the hand wringing that goes with the rapid decline of bricks and mortar retailers. And while there are reasons for this, price and the absence of sales tax in most states not the least among them, perhaps the most essential component is that bricks and mortar retailers still don't understand how to adequately address the buying habits of their customers, and don't understand the importance of inventory visibility. They have yet to master the art of using web and mobile applications to drive foot traffic to their locations; foot traffic that is instead driven to online retailers as a result.
My single largest pet peeve is this. In the year 2013, you have no excuse as a bricks and mortar retailer for not having your store level inventory online. Certainly people, whenever possible, will take the opportunity to order items for delivery, either from a bricks and mortar company's website, or from an online only enterprise. But a percentage of your "online" business can come from those customers who know you have bricks and mortar locations, know you offer a product, and would purchase the product if you would only let them know whether or not an area location has that product in stock.
This shouldn't be rocket science. However, you would be surprised how many retailers, including GNC, Vitamin Shoppe, and larger SKU chains like Meijer, Sears and Target, still don't understand this.
Web and mobile traffic should serve multiple masters. Yes, you want people to purchase products online. However there still exists the possibility that you can drive traffic to your bricks and mortar locations and capitalize on the see/want/buy/pickup market.
"But Dan, how large can that audience be?"
That's a fine question. So let me turn around and ask you a question. What products will you absolutely not purchase without trying them in a store environment first? Off the top of my head, my list is: shoes, glasses, a television, a car, a toupee, furniture and almost anything I would ingest for the first time.
But beyond this list, we all have things we impulse buy. And if the things we think we want impulsively are available to us, and this can be confirmed for us, our odds of actually buying it improve considerably. Which means we can then walk into your bricks and mortar location where your customer service people can, hypothetically, sell us more stuff.
And even when stores actually do have their inventory online, it doesn't guarantee a logical purchasing process, as the following two examples will illustrate.
I once wanted to purchase a printer at Circuit City. This printer, online, was advertised for $68. I could purchase it online and pick it up at the store. For various reasons most likely associated with naivete, I assumed this was also the in store price, or that Circuit City would price match their own online price. I arrived at Circuit City, where I had confirmed the printer was in stock, to find that I was incorrect on this. If I wanted it in the store, I had to pay $79.
Not wanting to pay the extra $11, I instead walked over to the computer section, ordered and purchased the printer online from the store, then walked over to the service counter with my confirmation number and picked up the item.
Along the same lines, I went in search of a book, specifically the Forks Over Knives cookbook. While I can purchase this item from Amazon, or pick it up on eBay, I have a list of things to do today, and figured I would see how much the book costs at Barnes and Noble. If I want to order it online and have it delivered, it's $11.86. If I want to purchase it and pick it up in the store, it's $19.95. This pricing structure is asinine. Let's assume that there are three types of product purchasing experiences:
1) I can buy something from Barnes and Noble online.
2) I can decide to buy something from Barnes and Noble online, but want to pick it up at a Bricks and Mortar location.
3) I can wander in to a Barnes and Noble location, find an item on the shelf and purchase that item.
Scenario #3 is the most expensive for the retailer. It requires them to have a physical location and a staff, along with all of the expenses contained therein. In theory, I as a customer am also paying for the experience of shopping at this retailer; the bookstore experience.
Scenario #1 is the least expensive for the retailer for reasons that should be obvious to you.
But Scenario #2 is not as expensive as Scenario #3, and should not be priced the same. I have done the legwork as the consumer. You as the retailer don't have to have a customer service representative sell me anything. That person has to spend the equivalent of one FTE/however many in store book pickup orders, pulling that piece of inventory off of the shelf and placing it on hold. And even if that is the only one of that item in the store, and even if there is an opportunity cost incurred by taking that item off the shelf, the aggregate amount of that expense still isn't enough to justify charging the same price for the item as in Scenario #3.
So Barnes and Noble will lose a sale to Amazon, which offers it cheaper, and their bricks and mortar location will lose foot traffic, and a chance to sell additional items, impulse or otherwise, to a customer that won't walk in the door.
Along the same lines, at this point it is unacceptable for any fast of fresh fast food chain to not have a mobile app that allows customers to order food directly from a smartphone. Chipotle does a wonderful job with this (heck, the ability to order Chipotle from my phone was one of the reasons I purchased an iPhone originally), Qdoba...I'm still waiting. The same goes for pizza. No one wants to be the person who actually calls and orders the pizza (one of the great social mysteries of contemporary American society), so Papa Johns got around this by being the most aggressive in getting web and mobile ordering launched. Donatos? Still waiting. (Actually, I'm not waiting. I no longer eat pizza. Or Chipotle. Or Qdoba. But those are other stories entirely.)
But honestly. We are 15 years into the Internet/Mobile revolution, and you'll read stories about the hand wringing that goes with the rapid decline of bricks and mortar retailers. And while there are reasons for this, price and the absence of sales tax in most states not the least among them, perhaps the most essential component is that bricks and mortar retailers still don't understand how to adequately address the buying habits of their customers, and don't understand the importance of inventory visibility. They have yet to master the art of using web and mobile applications to drive foot traffic to their locations; foot traffic that is instead driven to online retailers as a result.
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
To the Infiniti Dealer and Beyond
When you were younger, what brand did you aspire to own when you "made it"? By made it, I mean, when you finally got a decent job, attained an advanced degree of independence and felt at least slightly financially secure, what brand/item etc.did you want, that signified luxury?
Post 2000, this has become an increasingly difficult question to answer. As the middle class constricted at the beginning of the 21st century, luxury goods purveyors had to adapt to continue to grow, and they did that by down-scaling their brands, some more tactfully than others. Coach purses, for example, can now be found at outlet stores. BMW introduced the 1 Series. Luxury for the masses became the theme as we wrung every last ounce of credit out of everything we "owned" before the housing market collapsed.
But I digress.
For me, the one and only brand was Infiniti. If you're old enough, you remember the commercials with Dave Brubeck's Take 5 playing in the background, with Jonathan Pryce* driving around Los Angeles in black and white (here is another ad from that campaign, set in Prague). I saw this and I was hooked.
So being a dirt poor schlub trying to hack my way on the fringes of the radio industry, this was a brand that I aspired to own. And then, after rummaging through every brand GM had to offer except Cadillac and reaching my wits end, I ran the numbers and found I finally made enough to afford one (Used. New cars are for suckers).
With this pleasant discovery, I set out to find a reasonable used Infiniti. I, much to my surprise, found not one but two at an Infiniti dealer. (Airport Infiniti in Brook Park, OH if you're keeping score at home, or on the road.) The price was right, the mileage was good, the car was great. What could possibly go wrong?
I think it's important to take a moment, before we continue, and discuss brands and expectations. Let me ask you, rhetorically, if you expect your experience in buying a car to be significantly different if you're buying a Kia versus a BMW? Or a Mitsubishi versus a Land Rover? The easy, cynical answer is "they're car dealers, they're all crooks", but the truth here once again goes back to brand, and perception of the brand. If we're being reasonable, the expectation is that a potential buyer should have a better experience at an Infiniti/Lexus/Acura/BMW/Mercedes dealer than that of a "down market" vehicle.
Let's make another admission here before we continue. We all have egalitarian goals in life, and we like to think that we benefit from this type of system. This is false. On some level, the person you expect to sell you something should fit into your image of the brand of product you're purchasing. The women selling clothes at Lane Bryant should be plus sized. The guys behind the counter at GNC should workout. Best Buy workers should be geeks with clumsy social skills, except for the guys in car audio, who should look like they were just released from jail that morning.
So when I arrived at my Infiniti dealer of choice, and walked onto the lot, out trudged the type of car salesman one would expect to see at a KIA dealership. Late 50s, morbidly obese, tie stained from lunch. I immediately think little of Harold, and it becomes evident very quickly that Harold doesn't think all that much of me.
With little resistance or effort, I ask to test drive the model I had come to see. He tosses me the key fob. I, in turn, toss the keys to my trade in (a Pontiac G6 hard top convertible, whose catalytic converters were beginning to die at the 100,000 mile mark).
I test drive the Infiniti. It is awesome. I feel like a million bucks. I feel like the way Jonathan Pryce told me I'd feel. I am so happy, I'm not even going to haggle on the price of the car.
Harold** had a sale. Easiest mark of the day. All that awaited me was a reasonable purchasing/financing experience that should be fairly smooth, because the Infiniti brand promises me a superior experience, and we're out of here in time for lunch.
But this is far too much to ask of Harold. I arrive back from my test drive to find out the car I'm test driving has been "put on hold for a customer who called in a $1,000 deposit on it." But I was welcome to test drive another used model without all wheel drive (an automatic non starter in an area that gets as much snow as mine), and blue instead of black.
Or, better yet, I could lease a new car! Infiniti would love to take my trade and lease me a car for 36 months and 12,000 miles for slightly more than my used purchase would have been on a car that, alas, is no longer available. In fact, rather than giving me the keys back to my trade in, I had the privilege of Harold trying to sell me three different leases, including a 60 month 100,000 lease that didn't even exist. I put 2,600 miles on a car, on average, per month. So the idea of a lease with this lifestyle is comical. And when that didn't work, he tried to sell me a new car.
Needless to say, what should have been a morning's worth of purchase of a brand I had admired turned into a total shit show. After an hour of being held "key hostage", my keys were returned to me (without a trade in offer), and I walked.
Miraculously, that "person" who put a "deposit" on the car I was test driving that Saturday changed their mind on Monday. I know this because Harold called me four times that Monday, and twice per day for the next nine days afterward to attempt to sell me the car I would have willingly purchased on Saturday. Needless to say, I didn't return his call.
Nor did I look to another Infiniti dealer for the Infiniti I did purchase. In fact, I've been to an Infiniti dealer exactly once, for a warranty replacement of the wood trim on the Infiniti I do own. I ended up purchasing my Infiniti from Carmax. No haggling, no bullshit. It's a business model I do endorse, because they live up to their brand. You are asked to incur a degree of risk if the car you're after isn't at the location at which you're shopping in the form of a transfer fee, but beyond that, I can't recommend them enough. The haggling process of buying a car from a dealer is unnecessary, and Infiniti, as a brand, proved to me by their actions that they can't be trusted to live up to the standards their advertising purports to set. So they've lost my direct purchasing business.
But the car. Gas mileage aside, the car, a G35x itself is a wonderful driving experience. Everything I'd hoped for. In 80k I've had to replace two front wheel bearings. There are nights when I leave work, I pop in Paul Desmond's Take Ten and I feel like the million dollars that advertising promised I would. It's a shame the buying experience was so horrible.
*Jonathan Pryce so loved the Infiniti he drove during the filming of the commercials, that as a condition of his agreeing to do the ads, Nissan kept one garaged in Los Angeles for him to drive for three years after the ad campaign ended.
**As a post script to this story, some months later I ended up on the same flight to Denver as Harold. We made eye contact once, and he waddled away from me in the airport lobby as quickly as he could.
Post 2000, this has become an increasingly difficult question to answer. As the middle class constricted at the beginning of the 21st century, luxury goods purveyors had to adapt to continue to grow, and they did that by down-scaling their brands, some more tactfully than others. Coach purses, for example, can now be found at outlet stores. BMW introduced the 1 Series. Luxury for the masses became the theme as we wrung every last ounce of credit out of everything we "owned" before the housing market collapsed.
But I digress.
For me, the one and only brand was Infiniti. If you're old enough, you remember the commercials with Dave Brubeck's Take 5 playing in the background, with Jonathan Pryce* driving around Los Angeles in black and white (here is another ad from that campaign, set in Prague). I saw this and I was hooked.
So being a dirt poor schlub trying to hack my way on the fringes of the radio industry, this was a brand that I aspired to own. And then, after rummaging through every brand GM had to offer except Cadillac and reaching my wits end, I ran the numbers and found I finally made enough to afford one (Used. New cars are for suckers).
With this pleasant discovery, I set out to find a reasonable used Infiniti. I, much to my surprise, found not one but two at an Infiniti dealer. (Airport Infiniti in Brook Park, OH if you're keeping score at home, or on the road.) The price was right, the mileage was good, the car was great. What could possibly go wrong?
I think it's important to take a moment, before we continue, and discuss brands and expectations. Let me ask you, rhetorically, if you expect your experience in buying a car to be significantly different if you're buying a Kia versus a BMW? Or a Mitsubishi versus a Land Rover? The easy, cynical answer is "they're car dealers, they're all crooks", but the truth here once again goes back to brand, and perception of the brand. If we're being reasonable, the expectation is that a potential buyer should have a better experience at an Infiniti/Lexus/Acura/BMW/Mercedes dealer than that of a "down market" vehicle.
Let's make another admission here before we continue. We all have egalitarian goals in life, and we like to think that we benefit from this type of system. This is false. On some level, the person you expect to sell you something should fit into your image of the brand of product you're purchasing. The women selling clothes at Lane Bryant should be plus sized. The guys behind the counter at GNC should workout. Best Buy workers should be geeks with clumsy social skills, except for the guys in car audio, who should look like they were just released from jail that morning.
So when I arrived at my Infiniti dealer of choice, and walked onto the lot, out trudged the type of car salesman one would expect to see at a KIA dealership. Late 50s, morbidly obese, tie stained from lunch. I immediately think little of Harold, and it becomes evident very quickly that Harold doesn't think all that much of me.
With little resistance or effort, I ask to test drive the model I had come to see. He tosses me the key fob. I, in turn, toss the keys to my trade in (a Pontiac G6 hard top convertible, whose catalytic converters were beginning to die at the 100,000 mile mark).
I test drive the Infiniti. It is awesome. I feel like a million bucks. I feel like the way Jonathan Pryce told me I'd feel. I am so happy, I'm not even going to haggle on the price of the car.
Harold** had a sale. Easiest mark of the day. All that awaited me was a reasonable purchasing/financing experience that should be fairly smooth, because the Infiniti brand promises me a superior experience, and we're out of here in time for lunch.
But this is far too much to ask of Harold. I arrive back from my test drive to find out the car I'm test driving has been "put on hold for a customer who called in a $1,000 deposit on it." But I was welcome to test drive another used model without all wheel drive (an automatic non starter in an area that gets as much snow as mine), and blue instead of black.
Or, better yet, I could lease a new car! Infiniti would love to take my trade and lease me a car for 36 months and 12,000 miles for slightly more than my used purchase would have been on a car that, alas, is no longer available. In fact, rather than giving me the keys back to my trade in, I had the privilege of Harold trying to sell me three different leases, including a 60 month 100,000 lease that didn't even exist. I put 2,600 miles on a car, on average, per month. So the idea of a lease with this lifestyle is comical. And when that didn't work, he tried to sell me a new car.
Needless to say, what should have been a morning's worth of purchase of a brand I had admired turned into a total shit show. After an hour of being held "key hostage", my keys were returned to me (without a trade in offer), and I walked.
Miraculously, that "person" who put a "deposit" on the car I was test driving that Saturday changed their mind on Monday. I know this because Harold called me four times that Monday, and twice per day for the next nine days afterward to attempt to sell me the car I would have willingly purchased on Saturday. Needless to say, I didn't return his call.
Nor did I look to another Infiniti dealer for the Infiniti I did purchase. In fact, I've been to an Infiniti dealer exactly once, for a warranty replacement of the wood trim on the Infiniti I do own. I ended up purchasing my Infiniti from Carmax. No haggling, no bullshit. It's a business model I do endorse, because they live up to their brand. You are asked to incur a degree of risk if the car you're after isn't at the location at which you're shopping in the form of a transfer fee, but beyond that, I can't recommend them enough. The haggling process of buying a car from a dealer is unnecessary, and Infiniti, as a brand, proved to me by their actions that they can't be trusted to live up to the standards their advertising purports to set. So they've lost my direct purchasing business.
But the car. Gas mileage aside, the car, a G35x itself is a wonderful driving experience. Everything I'd hoped for. In 80k I've had to replace two front wheel bearings. There are nights when I leave work, I pop in Paul Desmond's Take Ten and I feel like the million dollars that advertising promised I would. It's a shame the buying experience was so horrible.
*Jonathan Pryce so loved the Infiniti he drove during the filming of the commercials, that as a condition of his agreeing to do the ads, Nissan kept one garaged in Los Angeles for him to drive for three years after the ad campaign ended.
**As a post script to this story, some months later I ended up on the same flight to Denver as Harold. We made eye contact once, and he waddled away from me in the airport lobby as quickly as he could.
The #StarbucksFail Project and the Meaning of Brand
This seems to be as good of a day as any to kick start a blog.
Like a lot of you, one of the few chain eating establishments I enjoy and frequent is Starbucks. Only the rub is, I don't really drink coffee. Actually, I don't even like coffee. I go to a Starbucks for a different type of drink.
That drink is called different things depending on the Starbucks you walk into. This is the first problem. In some, it's a Vanilla Creme. In others, it's a Vanilla Steamer. At the core, what I order is a two ingredient drink. Those ingredients are soy milk and sugar free vanilla flavoring. That's it. That's the list.
You would think that a two ingredient drink would be something a coffee shop could deliver pretty consistently. You would be wrong. Horribly wrong. In fact, I would wager that the various Starbucks I walk into screw up this drink at least 30% of the time.
The first problem is, very few people ask for this drink, so it isn't even technically on the menu. It is apparently on page 20 of the POS system screen. The next problem, and this boggles my mind, is that the majority of the Starbucks' in my area, particularly the one closest to my house, don't understand the concept of ordering a drink "skinny". This means no sugar. So not infrequently, my skinny drink, with soy milk and sugar free vanilla, is topped off with a gigantic pile of whipped cream. The end result is, when I travel the rest of the country, I feel compelled to specify no whip, prompting a look of 'you ordered it skinny, you idiot, of course I'm not putting whipped cream on it.' from a competent barista.
The other thing to consider about this drink, specifically, is this. You have customers who are lactose intolerant and you have customers that, for health reasons, can't really ingest real sugar. I happen to be neither, I just prefer my drinks that way, but other customers may be either, or both, so screwing that portion of the order up can have some significant short term health effects.
Don't necessarily consider this just a long rant from a jilted customer looking for sympathy. And don't waste my time with a blame the op response. Just hit the back button on your browser.
The point is this. Every exchange we have as people who choose to purchase a product comes with implied conditions. I provide to you, the business offering a product under conditions you allow me to specify, with agreed upon currency and you, the business, provide me with the product I request and/or agree to and a passable purchasing experience. I, as a consumer, never have the option to take something from a retail establishment, open my wallet and say "oops! looks like I left the house with pesos today. The 20,000 note is going to have to do as payment!" You, as the business that supplies what I am requesting or agree upon, are responsible for supplying the service and or product in the manner requested. This isn't rocket science, it's basic retail.
Let's take the basic, two ingredient drink as an example. The Target in Parma, OH (Target #792) has a Starbucks. The first attempt at ordering this drink (after a ten minute wait) resulted in a drink with coffee, 2% half and half and some semblance of vanilla flavoring.
The remake of this drink resulted in whole milk, sugar flavoring and whipped cream.
The third attempt resulted in a refund. Because they just discovered they were out of soy milk.
Driving two blocks to a stand alone Starbucks resulted in the correct drink. Upon explaining what happened to the barista, who found the story entertaining or at least humored me to get me out of there, he reminded me that those locations "aren't corporate owned."
But here's the thing. I don't care. And neither do your customers. You are responsible for your brand. And if you choose to franchise your brand, you are still held to the expectations you set with your brand and your product offerings. And every incident like this tarnishes your brand.
Which would be all well and good, if it were an isolated incident with Starbucks. But it isn't. In my case, and bear in mind I travel at least occasionally for a living, it happens 30% of the time. In fact, this the second #Starbucksfail in 24 hours.
This was how Ohio Turnpike rest area drivers were greeted in the New Year. Bear in mind, these locations are open on Christmas and Thanksgiving. Having driven my usual route along the turnpike that day, no notice was posted anywhere that these locations, which normally do not close (and for which I'm quite thankful, actually) would be closing.
Now I know this is more on the Turnpike and HMS Host than on Starbucks itself. But again, it tarnishes the brand and it's image, and leaves a negative reflection on that image. It reflects poorly on the Turnpike itself and on Starbucks specifically. You expect consistency. Be open when you are normally open, or give people some notice in advance that you will be closed. Have on hand what your menu says you have or change your menu. These are the fundamentals of what consumers ask.
I'm not a whiny holier than thou person that likes to take shots at a giant company. (Believe me, there's another rant coming about my experiences buying a car that reflects just as poorly as a brand upon which I personally love). I'm not looking for sympathy. I'm just trying to illustrate a macro lesson here. Even the largest companies with the most popular brands, if they cannot deliver consistent service and product quality, will fail eventually because of it, regardless of the size of the chain. And if you don't believe me, why don't you think about it over dinner tonight at Damon's. Or Big Boy. Or Mountain Jack's. Or Cooker. Or Chi Chi's. Then sleep on it at Howard Johnson's. Maybe hop in the Oldsmobile in the morning and drive over to Montgomery Ward to do some shopping.
So, at least in part, I'm going to track noteworthy customer experiences from Starbucks (and other businesses) with this blog. It's also searchable on Twitter with the hashtag #starbucksfail. I'll list out some noteworthy experiences periodically here as well. The criteria for a successful visit versus a failure but at this point I believe it will break down to:
Successful Visit -The order was prepared correctly and service was adequate on the first request.
Failure - The drink was prepared incorrectly or an incorrect offer was made. Skinny means skinny.
Meh- - We all have these types of visits to eating establishments where what was made was what we ordered, but for various reasons it just didn't work out as planned. In the case of Starbucks, this would be a drink that was made correctly but ended up being flavorless because it was steamed to 7400 degrees Fahrenheit.
Current 2013 Tally: Failures (2), Successful Visit (1) Meh (0)
Failures
Ohio Turnpike Rest Area Eastbound 140 1/1/13 (Closed without notice)
Target Parma #792 (Three drink remake failures)
Like a lot of you, one of the few chain eating establishments I enjoy and frequent is Starbucks. Only the rub is, I don't really drink coffee. Actually, I don't even like coffee. I go to a Starbucks for a different type of drink.
That drink is called different things depending on the Starbucks you walk into. This is the first problem. In some, it's a Vanilla Creme. In others, it's a Vanilla Steamer. At the core, what I order is a two ingredient drink. Those ingredients are soy milk and sugar free vanilla flavoring. That's it. That's the list.
You would think that a two ingredient drink would be something a coffee shop could deliver pretty consistently. You would be wrong. Horribly wrong. In fact, I would wager that the various Starbucks I walk into screw up this drink at least 30% of the time.
The first problem is, very few people ask for this drink, so it isn't even technically on the menu. It is apparently on page 20 of the POS system screen. The next problem, and this boggles my mind, is that the majority of the Starbucks' in my area, particularly the one closest to my house, don't understand the concept of ordering a drink "skinny". This means no sugar. So not infrequently, my skinny drink, with soy milk and sugar free vanilla, is topped off with a gigantic pile of whipped cream. The end result is, when I travel the rest of the country, I feel compelled to specify no whip, prompting a look of 'you ordered it skinny, you idiot, of course I'm not putting whipped cream on it.' from a competent barista.
The other thing to consider about this drink, specifically, is this. You have customers who are lactose intolerant and you have customers that, for health reasons, can't really ingest real sugar. I happen to be neither, I just prefer my drinks that way, but other customers may be either, or both, so screwing that portion of the order up can have some significant short term health effects.
Don't necessarily consider this just a long rant from a jilted customer looking for sympathy. And don't waste my time with a blame the op response. Just hit the back button on your browser.
The point is this. Every exchange we have as people who choose to purchase a product comes with implied conditions. I provide to you, the business offering a product under conditions you allow me to specify, with agreed upon currency and you, the business, provide me with the product I request and/or agree to and a passable purchasing experience. I, as a consumer, never have the option to take something from a retail establishment, open my wallet and say "oops! looks like I left the house with pesos today. The 20,000 note is going to have to do as payment!" You, as the business that supplies what I am requesting or agree upon, are responsible for supplying the service and or product in the manner requested. This isn't rocket science, it's basic retail.
Let's take the basic, two ingredient drink as an example. The Target in Parma, OH (Target #792) has a Starbucks. The first attempt at ordering this drink (after a ten minute wait) resulted in a drink with coffee, 2% half and half and some semblance of vanilla flavoring.
The remake of this drink resulted in whole milk, sugar flavoring and whipped cream.
The third attempt resulted in a refund. Because they just discovered they were out of soy milk.
Driving two blocks to a stand alone Starbucks resulted in the correct drink. Upon explaining what happened to the barista, who found the story entertaining or at least humored me to get me out of there, he reminded me that those locations "aren't corporate owned."
But here's the thing. I don't care. And neither do your customers. You are responsible for your brand. And if you choose to franchise your brand, you are still held to the expectations you set with your brand and your product offerings. And every incident like this tarnishes your brand.
Which would be all well and good, if it were an isolated incident with Starbucks. But it isn't. In my case, and bear in mind I travel at least occasionally for a living, it happens 30% of the time. In fact, this the second #Starbucksfail in 24 hours.
This was how Ohio Turnpike rest area drivers were greeted in the New Year. Bear in mind, these locations are open on Christmas and Thanksgiving. Having driven my usual route along the turnpike that day, no notice was posted anywhere that these locations, which normally do not close (and for which I'm quite thankful, actually) would be closing.
Now I know this is more on the Turnpike and HMS Host than on Starbucks itself. But again, it tarnishes the brand and it's image, and leaves a negative reflection on that image. It reflects poorly on the Turnpike itself and on Starbucks specifically. You expect consistency. Be open when you are normally open, or give people some notice in advance that you will be closed. Have on hand what your menu says you have or change your menu. These are the fundamentals of what consumers ask.
I'm not a whiny holier than thou person that likes to take shots at a giant company. (Believe me, there's another rant coming about my experiences buying a car that reflects just as poorly as a brand upon which I personally love). I'm not looking for sympathy. I'm just trying to illustrate a macro lesson here. Even the largest companies with the most popular brands, if they cannot deliver consistent service and product quality, will fail eventually because of it, regardless of the size of the chain. And if you don't believe me, why don't you think about it over dinner tonight at Damon's. Or Big Boy. Or Mountain Jack's. Or Cooker. Or Chi Chi's. Then sleep on it at Howard Johnson's. Maybe hop in the Oldsmobile in the morning and drive over to Montgomery Ward to do some shopping.
So, at least in part, I'm going to track noteworthy customer experiences from Starbucks (and other businesses) with this blog. It's also searchable on Twitter with the hashtag #starbucksfail. I'll list out some noteworthy experiences periodically here as well. The criteria for a successful visit versus a failure but at this point I believe it will break down to:
Successful Visit -The order was prepared correctly and service was adequate on the first request.
Failure - The drink was prepared incorrectly or an incorrect offer was made. Skinny means skinny.
Meh- - We all have these types of visits to eating establishments where what was made was what we ordered, but for various reasons it just didn't work out as planned. In the case of Starbucks, this would be a drink that was made correctly but ended up being flavorless because it was steamed to 7400 degrees Fahrenheit.
Current 2013 Tally: Failures (2), Successful Visit (1) Meh (0)
Failures
Ohio Turnpike Rest Area Eastbound 140 1/1/13 (Closed without notice)
Target Parma #792 (Three drink remake failures)
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