Just a short blog this week. I was staying over at my daughters the other weekend and as a Sunday treat, we all like to go out to one of the quirky cafes near where she lives. We go to this really nice little independent cafe which can only seat about 20 people (so it’s not exactly massive) and I like to have the full English breakfast.
But here’s the problem, every time we’ve been they have always run out of something. This week it was two things, brown toast and orange juice. Now the brown toast wasn’t a problem as they replaced it with really nice white toast but the Orange juice was. My daughter still does not drink tea or coffee despite being 25, so she likes her Orange juice and the lack of it was a problem for her.
Now you might say well most cafes run out of supplies at sometime or another which is very true, but we were there first thing in the morning so why weren’t they fully stocked up? They’re planning on being open all day after all. So there’s a lack of planning that’s clearly apparent with this small business.
They could have solved the lack of Orange juice problem quite simply as there was a local supermarket just 75 yards along the road which was open and they could have just popped along and grabbed a carton of Juice for 90 pence for a litre. They were charging £2.00 for a 250ml glass on the menu. Meaning that 90p investment could have returned them £8. Instead, they got nothing as my daughter settled for a glass of water. I pretty sure that during the day they would have sold quite a few glasses of Orange Juice (if they’d had any). They were quite simply missing out on profit unnecessarily. So there was a lack of willingness to do the unnecessary, and it’s doing the unnecessary that generates customer loyalty.
Here are the business learnings we can all take from my encounter with this local business:-
- Having something to sell is prerequisite to deriving profit. If you plan to sell it you should be able to supply it.
- Planning is not something that only large businesses should do, your customer’s satisfaction depends upon you being able to satisfy their needs. So plan to be able to do so and if something unexpected comes up have an element of contingency in the plans (like popping to the supermarket).
- Customer satisfaction is worthless, whereas customer loyalty is priceless. I’m not sure that we’ll go there next time as there are at least 3 other cafes in walking distance, even though the breakfast was nice enough (but not great enough).
Now you may think I’m being a little hard on this small business and perhaps I am, but I’m 100% positive that the market will be a lot harder than me if they don’t start to get these simple little things right. And we all know that getting the little things right is a prerequisite to getting the larger things right.
The thing is, they’re probably not aware of these classic business mistakes that they’re making. If they’d signed up to my virtual business coaching (kick starter) they’d have had the opportunity to watch the first session, which covers the biggest mistakes most businesses are making, and at just £197 would give them a fantastic return on their investment.
Twelve intensive half-day meetings.
