Zestful Blog Post #210
A few years ago, a neighborhood friend invited me to lunch at a tiny
Cuban restaurant nearby. The food was fabulous, and reasonably priced too. The
place could have done with a good scrubbing, but no matter: Every table was
full and customers were waiting to get in. My friend introduced me to the
owner, who talked about how incredibly busy he’d been, ever since a ‘guy’ with
a popular TV show did a segment on his place.
I learned that before the ‘guy,’ business had been terrible.
The owner opened a second location across town with hopes of improving his cash
flow. But that failed, and he was facing having to close the original location
too. His staff and friends got together and convinced the TV guy to check this
place out. Guy came, he saw, he ate.
The morning after the show aired, the owner decided he’d better
get to the restaurant extra early to do more prep work in case it got busy when
he opened. When he arrived, a long line of customers had already formed, and
the restaurant wasn’t going to open for two hours yet. And ever since then, the
place had been super busy, and this was a couple of years down the line. Great
Cuban dishes, great staff.
But then the owner got slapped with a health code violation.
Roaches and dirt, yeah. It seems he didn’t take it very seriously. The next
inspection, he got closed down. Customers mourned. According to my sources, the
owner refused to do what the health department required, so they kept him closed.
Then, sadly, the owner died unexpectedly.
The owner of another Cuban restaurant in town bought the
place, cleaned it out (he told me it took his team two weeks to do a thorough
job), renovated it, and opened under his own name. The food is just as
marvelous. But guess what? Hardly anybody goes there. You can always get a (nice
clean) table.
The pounding power of publicity. A very simple lesson for
anybody who wants to sell anything. Followed by a very simple lesson in common sense:
Mop up or else.
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Comments,’ or ‘2 Comments,’ or whatever. [Photo by ES.]
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In the era of Donald Trump, if the health department hadn't bothered the restaurant owner, he'd be a millionaire by now. But I think his business would have failed because, in spite of the publicity, people would have soon gotten sick and it would have closed him down anyway. We still have to write something with content of value. Ivanka Trump has a new book out, aside from a few supporters and the library system, who would buy her book? Publicity for a book with no real facts or content only goes so far.
ReplyDeletePatricia, brilliant insight. We still have to write something of value. I have seen fairly low-quality crap (and even dishonest material) sell well if the promo is done right, but who wants to write low-quality crap and try to shovel it at readers? I agree that we can and should offer our readers good stuff, temptingly served!
DeleteI guess we all have "blind spots" where we won't or can't accept the fact of our limitations. The restaurateur's blind spot was cleanliness in the kitchen and he was unwilling/unable to get help with that task. And his brilliance was creating delicious Cuban food. A morsel to ponder...
ReplyDeleteI think you're right, Pam. Thanks for stopping in!
DeleteThe best lesson you can have from this as a business owner is that you must understand your customers and their requirement and you can found lot more like this from :-
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