Restaurant and Food Service Blog

Starbucks Coffee

On a recent visit to my local Starbucks, I did not get my coffee right away. They were all out of my favorite, Sumatra. Normally, I would shrug it off and wait for the next batch, I paid attention to the Batista and how he was going to handle the matter. Being a former partner, I knew how it was handled in the past. The customer would be given a coupon for a free cup on the next visit. Not this time.

In fact, the barista did not even apologize for not having the coffee. I then noticed that as the coffee was brewing, the barista would slowly fill a cup. As most coffee snobs know, you need the whole batch to run or you are going to get a cup of crap.

What this gets back to is customer service and setting customer expectations. What the barista forgot was to really understand the problem and know how the manage the situation and acknowledge the problem. Unfortunately, he did not do that.

Although an isolated incident, this is not the first time that I have had my drink make wrong at Starbucks. But how hard is it to make a really good drip coffee?

Lobster roll at Legal Seafoods

I just got back from a trip to Boston and the first thing I needed was a good lunch. I was hungry and when in Boston you need to go for seafood. Legal Seafoods was just across from my hotel. As I was enjoying my lobster roll and Sam Adams, it made me think more about the regionality of food and the carbon footprint that we are creating.

With so much of our food being trucked and shipped across the country, I can find strawberries just about any time of year at my local megamart. Sometimes they are very good and most times they are aweful. It is to the point where my kids expect to have any fruits during the course of the year. They simply don’t understand the seasonality of foods or comprehend it.

But there is also a regionality of food that we in the US seem to not have like in the past. Smokey Bones had a blueprint to produce barbecue joints across the country. On some levels, it seems to make some sense as the menu offers a wide array of different barbecues. But overall, the reason why Smokey Bones never really took off like many anticipated was that barbecue is provincal. In the Carolinas, where I live, there is a debate on even how Eastern Carolina barbecue is to me cut, chopped or shredded. And the barbecue can change from county to county.

The lobster roll and Sam Adams for lunch was awesome. I am not sure if it was because I was really hungry. But I think because it was fresh. My waiter was pushing a special that day which was a fish from New Zeland. I am glad that I stuck with the lobster roll instead.

Howard Schultz, Starbucks CEO,  seeks to dispel excess myth in a rectent MarketWatch article. But in light of the whole AIG $1 million bonuses that were just paid out to the top executives, you may wonder if Schultz may want it both ways.

For years, Starbucks touted itself as a premium cup of coffee and was unabashed in the fact that it was more expensive then other coffees, but it was worth the extra money. The image of the white coffee cup with the green logo symbolized a higher end, premium product. It was much like the Tiffany’s of coffee. But a product that came at a price.

There will always be cynics to products that strive to be the best if its class.

In an article from Yahoo! Business News - Fast Food Giants Urged to Value [the] Meal- a watchdog, Corporate Accountability International, has decided to demand the fast food industry to take more responsibility to whom it markets to. Corporate Accountability names McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s/Arby’s, and Yum! Brands (KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell) as the biggest violators. It goes further to suggest that these companies should “stop aggressively marketing to children, blocking labeling laws, and interfering in public healthy policy.”

Below is a brief excerpt from their formal statement:

Corporate Accountability International issued demands in a letter to CEOs and is launching a national public education and action campaign called Value [the] Meal. The campaign aims to stem the global tide of diet-related disease, in which fast food giants are playing a central role.

“McDonald’s and others reduced the meaning of “value” to how little we pay at the register, ignoring the significant cost to our children’s long-term health and environment,” said Executive Director Kelle Louaillier. “It is about time the fast food industry took responsibility for its role in making our children sick, acting to truly Value [the] Meal, not just to increase sales of ‘value meals.”

I know that there has been a lot of fodder to slam the in restaurant industry especailly with the publication of Fast Food Nation. But there have also been some companies that have been making positive changes or even have been offering healthy alternatives. Take Subway for instance. I don’t think that Jarrod really lost all that weight by eating Subway sandwiches, but it is a better fast food alternative.

I don’t think that the problem is entirely the restaurant industry’s fault. Americans are now leading more sedintary lifestyles and there is less of an importance of eating at home. I know that I am one who will feed my kids dinner out a bag from time to time as I get them from school to after school activities. With two working professionals in the house and three kids, we sometimes have to make decisions based on time and convenience.

Even Papa John’s founder, John Schattner, has made a sort of warning about even eatting his own pizzas.

Where do you fall on the issue?

“Restaurants offer escape from economic woes” from the Nation’s Restaurant News.  According to Bob Derrington, a securities analyst at Morgan Keegan & Co, he sees a silver lining for the terrible economic downturn. In addition The Nation’s Restaurant News reported that many trends in QSR and casual dining are showing positive growth indications from the last quarter. Maybe not is all so bad after all.

Regardless what analysts may be predicting, there are a huge number of top executives and professionals out on the market or really great ones who are taking a serious look at what the market is like. I still suspect that will a Dow that is taking a beating and looking like it may hit 6000, we still have a long haul to go before any of this is going to get better