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I just got back from having lunch at In and Out, a SoCal burger chain that is incredibly good, at least by fast food standards. Because they insist on making everything fresh, the food actually has flavor content. Wow, what a concept: fries that taste like potatoes! Crispy lettuce! Non-cardboard-tasting buns. Fuddrucker's may have the market cornered on good beef, but In and Out provides a much better overall experience, and at regular fast food prices.
Given that In and Out is enormously busy and profitable, their approach seems worth investigating for possible best practices. What I see, however, runs counter to conventional fast food wisdom.
First, they pay their employees at least 10 dollars an hour (many of them make more) and they offer them full benefits. Months go by and I still see the same faces behind the counter, meaning that turnover is relatively low. I'm sure this makes the restaurant more efficient and also elevates the quality of the food prepared.
Second, they make only two things: burgers and fries. No spicy chicken sandwich; no onion rings; no apple pies. Just really good burgers and fries. So good that people are willing to wait in line during lunch for 10 minutes to order and longer at night at the drivethrough when the queue routinely extends beyond 15 cars.
Third, they focus on the actual quality of their product, not just on market perception or share. Instead of advertising that their food is the best, they just make it the best and it sells itself. After living in SoCal for over a year, I've seen only one or two In and Out ads - compared to perhaps hundreds of McBurgerWendy's ads. Yet, In and Out consistently has more customers than any of its competitors. Word of mouth works wonders when you make a quality product.
I'm sure there are other elements to In and Out's success worth examining; but, I've got a staff meeting in five minutes and leave now to prepare for it.
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This evening, I embarked on an experiment. I visited several local stores in search of the CD's that Josh recommended to the thEd. Well, as the old adage goes: The chances of finding anything are much greater than finding one specific thing. Which is to say, I didn't find a single one of the Josh Top-5, but I did come home with a couple of interesting filmmaking magazines.
Stores are nice for browsing in a way that a web browser - pardon that - can't quite yet match. It's really great to be able to put your hands around a book, go off to a corner, and read for an hour in order to form a thoroughly informed buying decision. Amazon, in contrast, offers reviews and a couple of useless blurbs/excepts. Cdnow offers 30-second soundbites that often miss the entire gist of a song or symphonic movement. Granted, that's better than what a lot of stores offer, but some places have listening stations that allow you to listen to whole CD's for several minutes - a clear improvement over the best online offerings. Unless, that is, you frequent the underworld of MP3's (which I don't, for bandwidth reasons).
Ah, but I never got what I wanted from my run around the city, did I? I'm going to have to order said CD's online, probably from a patchwork quilt of sources offering current and deleted catalog titles. Since I know exactly what I want, it'll be a snap. That's the beauty of the internet: if you know already what it is you want, nothing beats it for breadth and depth of selection. Between AbeBooks and Amazon, you'd have to be crazy to go to a Borders in search of a specific title. But, if you don't already know what you want, then the vast flood of choices online is likely to paralyze with little recourse for edification. The internet is good for buying; stores are good for educating. In some strange ironic twist, something inspired by Academia has traded places with a product of Evil Capitalism.
I love going to my local Borders and using it as a library. Actually, I have no choice. My local city-operated branch closes at 5 pm, except on Thursdays, when it's open until - gasp - 8pm! I'm usually at work until 6 or 7, so if I want to browse and expose myself to new music, books, or periodicals, I have to do it commercially. Often, I won't even buy things at all, just make repeat visits to fully digest a large volume. For awhile, I was reading Borders' copy of The Penguin Guide to Jazz, an excellent self-education that combines an encyclopedic information base with listening recommendations. Then, I switched to Pauline Kael's 2-inch-thick tome containing all the New Yorker reviews she ever wrote. Well, until it sold. I came in last week and it was gone. Damn. Hopefully, it's on backorder and will reappear. Otherwise, I'll have to buy a copy. From Amazon, probably.
Anyway, It's getting late and I must go. I have to place a cdnow order before I shut down and turn out the lights. Sorry, we're now closed - please call again.
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