Comments on: “Feed me!”

By: Jbow

Jbow — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 04:24:26 +0000

@Jay – I’m not saying everything a company does has to have a linear relationship to the bottom line, just A relationship.

If I started giving free cars to all my customers, my relationships with them would be great…. for the 2 months I could stay in business.

Innovations are a dime a dozen, innovations that end up actually improving the bottom line are much rarer. This may be one of those, I just think it requires a lot more trial/error/examination to know.

By: Jbow

Jbow — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 03:20:28 +0000

@Amanda – Point taken. It wasn’t so much that I thought it would take much longer, it’s that it didn’t seem to be taken into consideration. Lots of ideas seem great on the surface but don’t stand up to scrutiny.

By: Jay

Jay — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 17:27:48 +0000

Really old skool thinking on your part JBow. Not everything a company does has to have a linear relationship to the bottom line. This is about building a relationship with customers, something that a spreadsheet does not do. It’s this kind of thinking that stifles innovation.

By: Marina

Marina — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 20:56:01 +0000

I wish more restaurants would do this! And as for not adding to their bottom line – I can think of a way it can. By eliminating the need for large parties to figure out who owes what, people will pay their bills faster and the restaurant would get faster turnover on the table. I’ve been in numerous situations where it took a party of 10-15 people about an hour to pay the bill! The restaurant could have definitely made more money by having that table available for another group.

By: Amanda

Amanda — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 21:27:46 +0000

Actually, servers should be doing this anyway. I used to wait tables – servers often do not bring out the food, and when we dod, it’s hard to remember who ordered what. When orders are input, they’re in order from left hip, around the table, to right hip. If customers don’t inform us until the end that the check is split, we have to go back to the machine & slide things around anyway. This system Ted’s uses is awesome & shouldn’t take any more than maybe 30 seconds extra, if that.

By: Sean

Sean — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 16:43:00 +0000

That seat “trick” is not special to Ted’s or any one chain of restaurant; most restaurant micros use a similar system that can separate seats for you. It’s all a matter your server using it properly.

By: Craig Mische

Craig Mische — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 14:40:20 +0000

An excellent reminder for me to read with a new year about to begin.

By: charhoehn@gmail.com

charhoehn@gmail.com — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 18:50:44 +0000

I know, the metaphor isn’t great.

By: Chris Clark

Chris Clark — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 18:50:07 +0000

I agree. I also think it’s much better for long term success.

However, I think one of the very important points that was missed regarding the Ted’s example is the fact that there is no maintenance required with this system.

There was likely some low level engineering that had to be done to set up the system, however after that it’s on autopilot.

I think spoon feeding is great, so long as it can implemented without a high maintenance structure. Creating features like this, also allows your business to grow because the focus can be on implementing new requests rather than hand holding customers.

By: lurker

lurker — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 15:27:12 +0000

Baby bird analogy not quite right as the baby is not being lazy and the mother only feeds it long enough for it to grow and learn how to feed itself.
Baby birds work really hard to survive. They are not like potential customers at all.
Customers don’t want to learn anything or to have to learn anything. They want it spoon fed, easy and pleasurable. And they should as they have the money….right?