Five Loaves, Two Fishes and Six Chicken Nuggets

by Barry Gibbons

  The problem lies not with the brand specification or operations manual but with the location management, which takes a good brand and uses its discretionary abilities to create a negative first impression. In a perfect world, location management would take a good brand as a base and then use its discretionary abilities to add touches that are designed to impress in the crucial first few seconds. When you next walk into your restaurant(s), see how they make out on the first Chuck Berry Rule. Do you grab your customers with the equivalent of a powerful first line?

  There’s a second Chuck Berry Rule, but it’s one he might not be so happy about. Almost every first- and second-generation big name rock star quotes Chuck Berry as a seminal influence. He was acknowledged as a master of his craft, but the records show that he only ever had one Number One hit in the United States. In his golden period, he reeled off dozens of what were to become classics, but none of them sold massively.

  Then, many years later, he got a hit with a puerile piece of double-entendre rubbish called My Ding-a-ling. For a guy with his song-writing talent, it must have taken about thirty beers, two minutes of time and a really bad temper to write such drivel. No other rock stars went near making a cover version. But guess what – it went to the top of the charts. As the man once said, nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the public.

  This gives rise to the second Chuck Berry Rule for Quick-Service – it’s not about making you feel good as a provider of goods and services; it’s about getting lots of people to buy them.

  You can invent the finest menu item in the world, made with the highest integrity organic ingredients and with a taste that sends you (personally) to heaven. You can market it with the finest words. You can tell people it’s good for them. But you must remember that the public knows what it wants, and it may well not be to your own personal taste. They will continue to buy and eat the menu equivalent of My Ding-a-ling. You might want to check your next new menu item for its Ding-a-ling qualities.

  There they are then, the two Chuck Berry Rules for Quick-Service, and I find that, partly by accident, I have invented a whole new genre of academia. As we speak, I am beginning work on the Ozzy Osbourne Rules for Drive-Through.

  57. Lament for the frying pan

  People normally leave the comfort of their homes and travel for a reason. Earlier this year, for example, thousands of ordinary, civilised and domesticated folk left their homes in search of remote locations where there was no TV. The reason? A strong rumour that Pink Floyd was getting together again for the Live8 concerts (enough to send anyone heading for the hills).

  I, too, set off on a journey, and the thought of those sad, old men boring a whole new generation was only part of the reason. I went on a personal journey to pay homage to one of the most endangered species on Earth – the frying pan.

  Our frying pan was an important part of my growing-up process. Please understand that I’m not talking about a modern day frying pan – dishwasher-safe, non-stick and of a size adequate for a two-egg omelette with the yolks removed. I’m talking about a Frying Pan – big enough to double as a bathtub and made of iron that blackened over time. These Frying Pans were the reason your God invented cholesterol-busting Lipitor.

  My lifetime favourite belonged to the wife of my sales manager, a Second World War Bomber Command veteran, who reported to me in my first management position. He would have his sales team meetings at his home, and his wife, officially categorised as a Battleaxe Mark I, would feed the whole sales team using only this majestic piece of equipment. In would go a lump of animal fat and, in no time at all, out would come eggs, sausages, black pudding, bacon, tomatoes, mushrooms and fried breads by the metric ton. My mouth is watering at the memory.

  Today, fried breakfasts and the necessary utensil have all but disappeared from the landscape. Both were an everyday part of my school years, and I ended them as skinny as a rake and fit as a fiddle. This was largely because I considered any part of the day spent sitting and/or standing still a complete waste of time.

  The Health Police have, of course, now banned almost anything fried. Something called ‘Modern Life’ has also plunged a dagger into the heart of the idea of a family sitting together around a table in the morning eating something prepared from scratch. My views on these developments are twofold. First, anyone who microwaves an egg and/or bacon should be shot. Second, the demise of the frying pan is exactly correlated with the increase in the average size of the population.

  There is a last stand, though, and it is taking place in Ireland. To most Americans (i.e., those outside Boston, Chicago and New York), Ireland is a mysterious island, somewhere vaguely near England, noted for black beer, miserable songs, Riverdance and something called ‘The Troubles’. Let me expand. There are two Irelands, which is basically the cause of ‘The Troubles’. The island is divided into two. Since the 1920s, the Republic of Ireland has been an independent country, while a chunk of the north, called Ulster, has remained under British rule. As this is about frying pans, you do not need to know more – other than that this divide has caused bloodshed in the past, but hopefully a charter has been agreed for those on either side to sort out their grievances via the ballot box. The divide is important to this story because it is in the north that the last stand is taking place and that’s where I went to find something called the Ulster Fry (pronounced locally as Olster Fray).

  I heartily recommend this odyssey. Land yourself in Belfast, and head for the coast of County Antrim. Take your time. Follow the magnificent coastline right round through County Derry, making your overnight stops at bed-and-breakfast places. You will gaze at wondrous cliffs and beaches (including the famous Giant’s Causeway), and you will meet some absolutely delightful people. We used Alastair Sawday’s Special Places to Stay in Ireland and met (among others) a New Jersey widow who bought a ruined old house thirteen years ago and converted it into a thriving bed-and-breakfast business and a French author who came to write a book fifteen years ago and bought an old mountain-top farmhouse and who has done the same thing. We met countless locals, and we started every day with an Olster Fray.

  I set out to find the best. The competition was fierce, but there has to be a winner. Bob Isles has a B&B in Whitepark Bay, on the Antrim coast – a few miles from the world’s oldest distillery at Bushmills. It’s in the book. His Olster Fray was both a culinary triumph and a work of art. I did not see the pan he cooked it in, and I don’t want to. In my mind, it had to be the same as the one wielded by my old sales manager’s wife, and if it wasn’t, I don’t want to know. His signature touch was to include a small triangle of potato bread, lightly fried in a bit of local butter. Halfway through her first mouthful, my wife proposed marriage to him.

  To my mind, there is a huge quick-service opportunity here. As we fight back against the Health Police and Modern Life, we need places to meet and eat. I am proposing a worldwide chain of Olster Frays, with kitchens equipped only with three-foot diameter iron frying pans. The only drinks available will be Bushmills whiskey and buttermilk, or a combination thereof.

  Next to the cooking range will be two pieces of additional, essential equipment – a fire extinguisher and a defibrillator.

  58. Unaccustomed as I am …

  Not too long ago, armed only with a bit of luck and some nifty footwork, you could steer your way through a whole quick-service business lifetime without having to stand up in front of an audience.

  Not so today. Almost every quick-service organisation of any size is operating with fewer people, more technology, over wider distances, with flatter reporting structures and (always) with bigger issues. Communicating, externally and internally – via spinning, explaining, informing, motivating, briefing, debating or selling – is an everyday part of business life. There is no escape, either, if you seek the refuge of a small business – there’s no point in owning and running the best deli in the neighbourhood unless you can stand up in front of banks and/or investors and get them to back you for a second
location and then more.

  Hey, it’s not just about business. On the social front, the demands have become equally unrelenting. Births, deaths and marriages now come with 200-page operating manuals, with clear-cut delegated speaking responsibilities. Many such events are now accompanied by the appalling idea of an ‘open microphone’, and don’t you just squirm when Uncle Harry puts his tumbler of Jameson down and staggers towards the podium? The good news is that you are thinking of getting up next.

  Professional public speaking has been a part of my life for a dozen years. I have spoken in nearly as many countries as Condoleezza Rice. I have addressed live audiences ranging in number from an intimate six in Dublin to a raucous 15,000 in Los Angeles. All these experiences have resulted in two beliefs. The first should surprise no one – the general standard of speaking in public is lousy. The second might surprise many – you can improve your public speaking skills significantly and quickly.

  Using my own experiences, I started listing my ideas on what works well and, importantly, what doesn’t. So, if you’ve got to address a regional managers’ conference next week, or you’ve got a date with the bank to go through your business plan and your sphincter is clicking away like a Geiger counter at the thought, here are four things you could learn from my hard-earned experience:

  1. Treat any lectern as an enemy. Most speakers are directed towards a lectern of some kind, and many treat it as a friend. They cope with early-speech nerves by gripping the sides with both hands. As a result, many an audience has been entertained by the sight (and magnified sound) of a lectern shaking. There’s more bad news: This gripping action also solves the infrequent speaker’s perpetual dilemma – what do you do with your hands and arms? Now, guess what – you can deliver a whole speech without any body or any arm gestures to entertain, emphasise or liven it up. Trust me, this is not the way to an audience’s heart. Get out from behind the lectern.

  2. Use notes as a prompt, not a script. Don’t take sheets of paper up with you; you’ll constantly be losing your place, and the temptation will be to read chunks of it. If you do this, you instantly become a Johnny-One-Note, and your eyes point downwards instead of towards your listeners. I couldn’t invent two more effective ways to lose an audience’s attention. Your notes should be brutally short words or phrases that trigger the next bit of your speech – which you should then be able to give without further reference, or you shouldn’t be doing it. These notes should be in big letters on a piece of card you can hold in one hand (e.g. postcard size). If you need more than one, secure them in the top left corner.

  3. Learn to hate slides. If you have a lot of information to impart or points to make, you might feel the need to use a lot of slides. You should fight the urge and minimise their use. In my experience, if a slide is on a screen, the speaker might as well not be there. If you have to use some, I suggest you cover the ground in your speech and then stop and summarise the key points on a slide, telling the audience what you are doing. While the slide is up, say nothing – then take it down and carry on, with a dark or blank screen behind you. When you are making slides, remember the T-shirt rule: you can get as much effective information on a slide as you can on the front of a T-shirt. Hand out copies of the complicated stuff afterwards.

  4. Remember you have two jobs to do. You might think your role is to inform and/or motivate and/or sell something to an audience. That might be, but you have another, equally important, job, which is to entertain. You will achieve the goals of your speech far more effectively if the audience has enjoyed it. They will remember much more of it if it has been a positive experience for them. For most occasions and for the vast majority of speakers – i.e. those who can’t sing or do card tricks or acrobatics – the best way to entertain is to use some humour. Done carefully and with respect – and with a bit of it pointed at yourself – it’s a wonderful catalyst.

  If you don’t believe me, just think of a couple of much publicised US televised presidential campaign debates. The young can focus on Bill Clinton and Bob Dole in 1996 while the more seasoned readers can remember Kennedy against Nixon in the early 1960s. I doubt anybody can remember the contents of either debate, but two of the four guys hooked up with their audience, and two didn’t. Result? Game, set, match and presidencies to Clinton and Kennedy. You might not have as much as a US Presidency to gain in your own speaking challenges, but it’s an interesting idea that you could outperform both losers by just following a few basics.

  If you want an example of how not to do it, just study Gordon Brown, the bookies’ favourite to be the UK’s next Prime Minister. Look at him gripping a lectern, shuffling wads of paper and giving the appearance that he is chewing a lemon while he is talking down to you.

  Just remember some basic dos and don’ts and you are on your way. There’s the stage. Off you go. Don’t trip over those wires.

  59. REM and customer service

  And now, the end is near and I’m finishing up in deep trouble. This despite all the wonderful e-mails I have had over the years, particularly from a bunch of Burger King franchisees who meet regularly to light candles and sacrifice the occasional goat in my memory.

  The causes of my current troubles are twofold. A few chapters back, I included a piece I wrote about my ‘spiritual home’ in a small hotel on a beach in Crete. What I omitted, of course, was the address. I did this so nobody else would find it. On reflection, this seemed to be such selfish behaviour on my part that I have decided to share the secret. The details are at the end.

  The second source of my pain was from the same place. When we arrived on the island this year, the family greeted us with their usual warmth – with the exception of the youngest daughter, Maria. I had made the mistake of giving them a copy of what I’d written, which went down very well with all the family, except her. She proceeded to hit me with a souvlaki (chunks of tender pork with herbs on a rather sharp skewer). Apparently, in the piece, I had complimented everybody in the place, notably her Mama and older sisters, on their wonderful skills in running everything – and missed her out completely. How could I do this (thump) when she was not only (thump) the best waitress in Crete (thump) but also the prettiest in the whole of the Mediterranean? Thump.

  Maria is all of that, and I would add that she has a smile that could light up Denver. But none of those are reasons why she is featured here. She is here because she has another particular skill that is hard to define but so, so important in the quick-service industry.

  I have found a name for it – and it is that of a famous rock band and a state experienced during sleep. Both are called REM, short for rapid eye movement.

  I mean no disrespect to the band, or those sleeping paradoxically, when I steal this title for something I was aware of for years without being able to define it, let alone name it. I have spent a large part of my adult life in the food and drink service industry, and for years I had been aware there was something different about some managers, and some members of staff, that manifested itself when you spoke to them. They would hold a conversation with you without missing a beat, but their eyes seemed to have a life of their own. They never stopped moving – always checking, searching, analysing. Suddenly, the conversation would stop, and they would pounce – and a problem that was about to be born and have a boisterous little life was solved before it saw the light of day.

  I called it the REM syndrome, and it has all sorts of versions. I once visited one of Rich Melman’s Chicago restaurants with him, and as we went through the door into the main dining room, he paused. He took it all in. After about thirty seconds (count them; it’s a long time), he stooped and picked up a tiny bit of paper from under the meet/greet/seat desk and – trust me – those thirty seconds and the pick-up gave a massive signal to all management, staff and customers present. If I need to explain what it was, I’m not sure you should be in this the food service business.

  Maria has a different version of it. Outside Mama’s place there are about thirty tables and probab
ly a hundred covers. Quite frequently, Maria waits on all those tables on her own. In fairness to her American equivalents, she has two factors going for her that would not be present in the US – namely, that people in Mediterranean Europe are never in a mad rush over a meal and that they also tend to prefer cooked food at more ambient temperature – but it is still a phenomenal workload. She manages it, night after night through the summer, armed with that smile and an advanced, untreatable, inoperable case of REM.

  Can you teach REM? Can you train your management and staff in it? You can, but it requires some off-road thinking. For starters, it’s not really to do with eyes; it’s much more to do with a mindset. It’s not what you see; it’s how you think. Folk love to try to categorise humans, and I’m no different. To me, there is a big difference between those who react and those who try to be proactive. That is not a value judgement; it is just stressing a difference. Folk who react to stuff quickly and positively have great strengths – and sometimes get all the press cover. But those who anticipate also have great strengths (i.e. those who are constantly on the alert and see problems just before they surface). If you have one in your camp, you are lucky. Mama is very lucky. Maria is an interplanetary champion.

  I hope I can now go back again without being skewered. If you want to pop in, head for Chania in Crete, ask for Nea Hora beach, and Mama’s is right at the end. It’s called Frini, and chances are my wife and I will be at the table near the hosepipe. I’ll be the one with the raki and the piece of cake.

  Right, I’m off. Jealous of the success of my fellow authors, particularly the one who wrote the Harry Potter books, I see a movie opportunity for this book – with many potential sequels. I see Brad Pitt playing a (slightly) younger version of my good self.