After experiencing this, I couldn’t wait to launch the idea in America. At the back of my mind, I saw this as the New Quick-Serve Thing we’ve all been waiting for. I would modestly make a few million and then exit stage right – and leave you all to get on with it. Then the snag hit me, and I’m afraid it’s insuperable. The idea is stillborn for the USA. You see, there are only three actual butchers’ shops left in America – and they are all in China Towns.
Old Europe. New America. Vive la difference.
32. My hit list
I’m in a really bad mood, and it’s probably because I’ve been ill. Being ill to a male over fifty is entirely different in both content and process to what it was thirty years before. In those days, you would shrug off major health threats and traumas as if you were brushing away some mildly irritating insect that had perched on your arm. In my case, I would frequently complete soccer matches minus several limbs and pints of blood, rather like that famous knight in the Monty Python movie. ’Twas as nothing. I would spit at things like the doctor’s diagnosis of influenza and head off out into cold, wet, winter nights barefoot and dressed only in a T-shirt.
Today, it has changed. A slight ache or runny nose, and I will take to my bed, often for weeks. I will need potions and tablets by the thousand – and frequently the people at Lemsip have to run an extra shift at their production facilities to keep up.
So, a recent tummy upset floored me. It is only now, when I am just fit enough to take a lightly boiled egg and toast soldiers, that I have diagnosed the source of the problem. I was in a quick-serve recently, and somebody made me a sandwich while wearing plastic gloves. This can’t be right, and it must be a major (as yet unidentified) health risk, up there along with SARS, bird flu and MRSA. For all my life I have made sandwiches using my naked hands. When my mum made them for me, so did she, and when my wife has, ditto. Hands are provided for such tasks and, yes, they should be clean before they are so used. If God had meant us to wear plastic gloves when stuffing filling into a bread receptacle, he would have either given us plastic hands to start with or stuck something like a Swiss Army knife on the end of each arm. Plastic gloves are for doctors, for specific male examinations involving a finger and an orifice. They can have no role in or near sandwiches.
Plastic gloves for sandwich making are high on a list of things I am going to ban when I become President of the US or Prime Minister of the UK – I haven’t decided yet. In addition, and while I am in this bad mood, let me tell you about some other quick-serve things that tick me off and whose days are numbered after I get the keys to the Oval Office or Number 10:
Those stupid little sealed packages that contain the essential accessories to quick-serve food – ketchup, salt, pepper etc. These represent the only way you can get any taste or flavour in many offerings and should arrive at the table in a recognisable bottle or cruet set. They should not require a wrestling match and the chipping of your teeth.
When I first came to the US, for a long time I thought the biggest quick-serve brand was a concept called ‘now hiring’. This sign was outside virtually every quick-serve in the US, and that hasn’t changed much. You put up this sign, usually with a couple letters missing if it’s on a pole, and it tells me all I need to know about you and your restaurant. I go someplace else – where they know how important good staff are, and where they can find and keep them.
If you open for lunch at, say, 11.00 a.m., and you have a salad bar, you can be pretty sure your salad bar will look neat and appetising when you open. By 11.10 a.m., it will look like downtown Baghdad.
While I’m whining, can I bring up the subject of tomatoes? Not their availability, or even their physical appearance – but what happened to their flavour? I’ve spent a long time in and around quick-service, but I’ve never found the (obviously huge) factory where quick-serve tomatoes are painted scarlet and all natural flavour is scientifically removed from them. A quick-serve tomato bears no taste resemblance to the real thing, and I am reluctantly drawn to the conclusion that they must all be strip-mined in Peru somewhere.
My final act before I am impeached will be to order the removal of all automated hand-driers in men’s washrooms throughout the quick-service nation. These are a major health hazard and must go. Here’s how it works: your (average) male quick-serve customer, on visiting the bathroom and having completed the activities that drew him there in the first place, will, contrary to female received wisdom, wash his hands. He will then put his hands under the electric drier and start to rub them together under the ensuing flow of hot air. Said flow of hot air will complete the job – if he has two or three days to remain in place under it. He hasn’t, of course, so after two or three minutes he abandons his position and exits the bathroom, finishing drying his hands on his jeans. His jeans were last washed two or three months ago. (Note: all this has to be seen in contrast to the French approach to these things – where they wash their hands before going to the toilet. Oh, sorry – have I put you off your baguette?)
So, I’ve a lot to do when I take over – but I do feel a lot better having shared my problems with you. My strength is undoubtedly returning and my temperature is down. Shortly, I may even be able to blow the froth off my medicine.
33. McD’s and the perfect storm
It is an incorrect assumption, made by most Americans, that all we English live in huge castles and are waited on hand and foot by a livery of butlers and footmen. The truth is a long way away from that. Take my own case, for example: my rather understated home – notice I deliberately stay away from the contentious castle idea – has but fourteen hundred rooms, and the moat is barely 300 metres across at the bridging point. As for a livery of fiefs and servants, I make do with a handful for the essentials – cufflink storage, dandruff management and the like. I make do with an under butler to iron my copy of The Times everyday before propping it up on the breakfast tray.
It was the newspaper that jolted me to life yesterday. Yet another hundred column inches were dedicated to the doom and gloom surrounding McDonald’s, and the probability that somebody may soon have to switch off the life-support machine. As the only living journalist (and I use the last word in its loosest sense) not to have passed comment on the subject, I thought it was time for me to wade in.
In the movie Perfect Storm, a unique set of negative weather conditions come together, and the ensuing freak storm kills George Clooney and his boat. Many are making the argument that something similar is brewing for McD’s. Remembering that McDonald’s primary market is to entrepreneurs (who buy franchises and/or invest in partnerships), you can quickly reel off a quorum of freaky-sounding negatives.
Through its history, the hamburger QSR sector has relied on a momentum-giving goosing every decade or so – a structural development in the offering (e.g. breakfast, drive-through, chicken, value menus, kids’ programmes). There hasn’t been one for ten to fifteen years.
For most of its international life, being an American icon brand has put wind in McD’s sails. Not any more. Kids in Japan now worship David Beckham, not Michael Jordan. In the Muslim world it’s probably wind-against for the foreseeable future.
The shadow of adverse legal activity has landed firmly on the industry, with predatory consumer lawyers and class-actions on behalf of a fat sedentary nation now on the radar screen.
In many parts of the world the brand has mature distribution – and further investment can only be defensive and/or cannibalistic.
So, do we prepare the obituaries in advance? Is it all over bar the shouting? Is that a fat lady I hear singing?
What baloney.
Sure, McDonald’s have issues, problems and challenges – and they might be on an unprecedented scale – but they also have unrivalled brand-equity, resources and proven skills to bring to bear. What they face is what brand management is all about – it’s wildly different in its stages of genesis, adolescence and maturity. They do not need a single revolution, but neither can they do it by just evolution �
�� they need a bit of both. Here are my thoughts.
They do need a goosing, a ‘big idea’. They missed the last one (Starbucks). I don’t have a solution – and if I did I’d sell it for a squillion dollars. All I know about these things is that they are obvious to the world at large only after the event.
They need some long-term evolutionary programmes – things they need to start now, with ten- to fifteen-year goals. Over time they need to be less American and more worldly; they need to slowly wean their millions of daily customers off big portions; they need more choice but fewer menu items (it can be done); they need to listen more to populations worried about their health; and they need to slow down the inside/café offering while speeding up the drive-through.
The business world – and the McDonald’s world within it – needs to evolve to lower return expectations. In many/most parts of the world, low rates of inflation and interest are now the norm, and consistent double-digit percentage rates of return for franchisors, franchisees, stock-holders, vendors and employees – all coming from the same revenue dollar – become anti-gravitational. Greed is the enemy of balance, and balance is what’s needed.
They need to (slowly) reverse the ‘Discretion is the enemy of standards’ mantra for the front-line troops.
McD’s will disagree with all of the above, of course, and have their own better plans. Whatever. The point is, they should not only survive, but still thrive.
If you all think I’m too optimistic, I should let out a secret – I am a closet fan of McDonald’s. You see, in the early 1990s, when we were trying to bring Burger King out of a coma, McD’s fired a missile at us, hoping to make our efforts stillborn – they launched the McRib. We rushed out to buy one, fearing the worst. With solemn faces, the guys brought one to my table. With suitable gravitas we opened the box. It looked like something that had fallen off an old Russian space station. And you know what – it tasted like something that had fallen off an old Russian space station. They were so kind to me.
Hey, they were kind to me. I can only wish them well.
34. The enemy is inside the gates
The Austin Powers movie called The Spy Who Shagged Me had two effects on me. It amused me, as it did millions of others. It also gave me an enormous shock – or, at least, the title did.
For years, as a Brit living in America, I got away with murder in moments of stress and/or high temper. There were, you see, a few British swear words that were virtually unknown in the US – and you could let fly in company that would otherwise have been seriously offended, and raise no more than a quizzical eyebrow. ‘Shag’ was one of them, and I remember thinking at the movie’s launch that if they ever put that word in lights on the front of cinemas in the UK, my mum would start attacking people with her umbrella.
Spy movies and novels usually have another characteristic that appeals to me. When the plot finally unravels on the next-to-last page, it usually reveals that the real villain has been sitting right next to the President all along – and that he has been a lifetime friend. The enemy has actually been inside the gates. As I read (daily, it seems) about the war the quick-service industry seems to be fighting, I wonder if our real enemies might turn out to be trusted friends who are actually working for the other side.
I have my suspicions about two of our centurions. They have been with us for a long time, and done stalwart service, but they have been acting a bit suspicious recently. Like Jack Ryan, I’m beginning to have my doubts. Let me share them with you.
The first one is the value engineer. This is somebody who has been on our side for decades but did his really great work in the ’90s. This is the person who can provide any given effect or specification by another method or by using another material – which is always significantly cheaper. Where you used to use wood, he can source recycled tofu to give the same effect. Steel? Pah! He spits at steel. He has come across a new synthetic alloy made from used fertiliser and old cola cans, and nobody can tell the difference. Mayonnaise? Why on earth would you use the real thing when he has found a substitute product that studies have shown cannot be distinguished from the real thing by a focus group of would-be consumers who have been temporarily blinded for the occasion? It is based on bat dung that can be imported for a penny a ton from somewhere in China.
All these alternatives are cheaper by far, and the customer, he insists, will never know the difference.
He is wrong, dear reader. The consumer does know and can tell. And the consumer has seen real value eroded from our industry’s offerings on an unprecedented scale in the past fifteen years. The value engineer is part of the problem, not the solution. He is not a friend; he is an enemy.
There’s another enemy within our gates – somebody who has been with us from the start, and who we dearly love. He’s called gross margin man. Most quick-serves (essentially) add value by doing something to a series of products that are bought in and then retailed to a customer in a defined environment. The price you charge for such added value is the point on the graph where the industry attempts to match supply and demand, and is complex to calculate. There are an almost infinite number of ways you can do it, but to this author’s mind there’s only one way you can’t. The latter, however, just happens to be the received wisdom and prevailing practice in much of the industry – which is to take the bought-in price of each of the products that come in the back door of the restaurant and apply a required margin percentage to each one.
To many in our industry, the individual product gross margin is sacrosanct. It is the one figure that cannot be changed – whatever the circumstances. If sales are soft, there are numerous tactics that can be employed to combat the problem: cut the staffing levels, don’t clean the place so often, avoid those irksome maintenance charges, push back the repaint for a year or two, delay investment in that new payroll or till or inventory management system, cut the local advertising, etc., etc. – any or all of those should do it – but don’t question the gross margin percentage on individual products. Hey, we got 75% in 1975, and that’s what the system was built on. Some things can’t be questioned; can’t be changed.
This guy might just be a bigger threat than value engineer man. My advice would be to be safe. This is a spy movie, right? It’s a thriller – PG-15 sort of thing, right? Well, I’d take them outside on to the White House lawn and kill them both, albeit with a silencer.
There may be others – folk actually inside our establishment working against us. I’ve got my suspicions about guaranteed return man and pay minimum wage at all times man. You may have your own ideas, but we must fight back quietly for a while, because if they begin to get suspicious that their cover has been blown, our lives will be in danger.
If my magazine column is missing next month, you should fear the worst. But you should carry on the fight.
35. First impressions
When you reach a certain age – notably mine – you can allow yourself the luxury of looking backwards and regretting: the chances you missed, people you upset, things you wish you had done differently. You can even admit to little personal failings – aspects of your character that, if you had your time again and the benefit of hindsight, you would try to change. In my case, there is one (Only one? – Ed.) that has blighted my tramp through life’s minefield – I have always been over-governed by first impressions.
My wife has been far more flexible. At our first meeting, at a dance at Liverpool University Students Union in the mid-sixties, she decided there and then that I was either (a) okay or (b) a complete plonker. Approaching forty years later she still hasn’t firmed up her view.
I am terrible at this with people. Within seconds of a first meeting – whether it be as unimportant as the lightest social occasion or as important as interviewing somebody for something that might change their life – I make a value judgement about them, and it takes dynamite to blow me away from that position in the future.
It’s the same for me with everything, from countries to music, from b
ooks to clothes. In February 1963, I was in the Oasis nightclub in Manchester, England. An unknown rock band were setting up their equipment, but I was far more interested in the girls present. Then somebody called John Lennon hit the first notes of Twist and Shout and took the roof off the nightclub. Shortly afterwards, he and his three colleagues were to take the roof off the world. That first impression changed my life.
There are those that think the famous book opening ‘Call me Ishmael’ is the greatest literary first impression ever. Drivel. Consider this opening sentence from the immortal P. G. Wodehouse:
‘At the open window of the great library of Blandings Castle, drooping like a wet sock, as was his habit when he had nothing to prop his spine against, the Earl of Emsworth, that amiable and boneheaded peer, stood gazing out over his domain.’
When you read that, you are hooked. You know what’s ahead will be worth its weight in gold.
It’s the same with restaurants, including quick-serves.
When you walk through the door of any restaurant, all your senses are on red alert. You are open to any assault of smell, sight, sound, touch, or feel. It is likely that, in the first minutes (maybe seconds) of any visit, one or two of your appropriate senses will register such an assault and it will shape your views about the place. Those views might be positive or negative. They might be nutritional or corrosive, and they might not just last for this visit, but shape a lifetime’s attitude. They might not just relate to that single location but might also shape a view about other locations if they exist under the same banner. A whole brand positioning might be affected – all in a few seconds.
Five Loaves, Two Fishes and Six Chicken Nuggets Page 10
