| « The Limits of Learning from Google The Slang Mistake by guest blogger J Robert Parkinson » |
The owner is Greek, the restaurant is Italian. And it serves the best Chicago-style stuffed pizza in the Chicago area.
That’s saying something, given that there’s a pizza joint on the four corners of every major intersection. This restaurant is not a franchise. Not a carry-out-only place. And while it serves other Italian food - I don’t know that for sure, since I’ve eaten only the pizza.
To beat the rush weekend evenings, we order in. That is, my wife or I call about 40 minutes ahead and place our order. We arrive with our three kids, two of which head to a playroom with video games and other toys.
We put our name in with the host, who most often is the grumpy, squatty gray-haired owner-grandma. She barely looks up when you walk up to the podium that she peers over to take your name. We remind her that we’ve already ordered. I don’t think she smiles. She plays no favorites.
The service is slow, the waiters and waitresses are never around when you want another drink. You wait for your check. You wait for the box to take home the leftover pizza. It’s the place to go if you want to test your patience.
In short the restaurant violates pretty much every marketing principle of the last quarter century.
Yet, I suspect that the owners fit the profile of the rich folks in the best-selling book, The Millionaire Next Door. The restaurant mints gold, the pizza is gold.
So I wonder what there is to take away from their success, and the only thing I can think of is this: Great pizza trumps great service. That is, if your product is really, really good, then your service can be average.
That doesn’t sound right to me, but I’m stumped.
Thoughts?
August 16th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Hi Dave: Good post. I am so curious - where do you live (i.e. was this place in Chicago), and what is the name of the place? I would like to use your post on my dining blog - because I really like the question you posed. Let me know if you are open to that. Thanks, Laura Hansen
August 19th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Dave, I would suggest it is the victory of best product over best price and–especially–best solution. A mystic has developed about the process and perhaps the atmosphere of the restaurant. The service is something people probably love to hate. George
August 19th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
It’s the secret behind the success of Ed Debevic’s!
Maybe it’s just one of those things like the Soup Nazi on Seinfeld … the nastiness of the service is part of the mystique of the place.
This also explains much of the attraction of John McCain as a salty old sea dog candidate for president. Sure, he cusses like a sailor and offers his wife up for a topless beauty pageant at Sturgis. And as he said, “I haven’t won Mr. Congeniality in the Senate”. But this is part of his shtick, and the cantankerous unyielding jerk reputation helps people to trust that he won’t just tell them what they want to hear.
August 19th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Daniel Winkler makes knives. He made the knives used in the movie, “The Last of the Mohicans”. Daniel lives in North Crolina and while I suspect when he began making knives, he needed to be pretty responsive to customers if he expected to make a living doing what he loves. Notoriety and a really quality product that appealed to reenactors of the Revolutionary War, helped build his business. Orvis annually features and offers a limited quantity of an exclusive model that normally sell for well over $1000 each. I own five Daniel Winkler knives that I comissioned him to make for me over the past 10 years. Each has easily doubled in value, and while today, I may need to wait nearly a year if I want #6, it would be worth the wait for one reason–the same reason people will put up with almost anything to have this pizza. It’s called quality, and it is becoming a rare commodity, especially when the product is made from the heart and the maker will never, ever settle for anything less than perfection every time. If you put passion and perfection in your product, people will wait as long as it takes, and put up with almost anything to get one.
August 19th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
I think while overall people want good customer service in most industries, their are exceptions. I believe people will settle for average to poor service if they feel they are getting a great product or value. If the Pizza or any other product is that good/special and they cant get it anywhere else than people will keep going back.
August 19th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Dave, another good post (but I’m missing Chicago pizza so much, reading it is like pulling a band-aid off a wound). It seems you can only get away with bad service when you have something to offer that no one else can match. For nonprofits (my area of expertise), it’s hard to survive with poor customer service - there are too many others willing to take my donation.
I received a letter about 6 weeks ago from a charity that I had made a $25 donation to. They wrote that they were “mortified” that their bank had made an error and double-processed some checks. They gave me a number to call if I was one of the unlucky victims. When I got my bank statement, yep, I won the “bank incompetency lotto.” So, I called the number, and a woman answered who personified “mortified.” She was friendly, so apologetic, cared about me and the trouble I had to go to just to call her. She was so sincere, I wanted to invite her to lunch. I was so impressed, I told her to keep the extra $25 and mail me a receipt. That non-profit should give that woman a huge raise - she is a treasure they probably don’t know they have.
For great pizza, we’ll tolerate bad service. But for anything that can be replicated by another option nearby, why should we? We can always find someone with faster shipping, lower costs, or a just plain easier-to-read website or catalog.
Maybe it’s being over 50 - but my tolerance for incompetence is slip-sliding away. Except where Chicago pizza is concerned.
Pamela
August 19th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Dave–I know we are both Seth Godin fans and Godin always preaches about making something remarkable. If the pizza is remarkable I think people will forgive bad service. For my money the underlying “remarkable-ness” is the key. For instance, take a look at L.L. Bean and Patagonia. LL. Bean is marketed as if my dad were at the helm (no marketer he) and Patagonia has the coolest web site, markets the idea that they are eco-friendly, and really market their brand. Yet, they are both successful sellers of clothing, mostly by catalogue or online. I think that is because they both make remarkable clothes that they are willing to stand by. The relative strength or weakness of their marketing would not enhance a bad idea nor does it kill a very good idea. I think Godin has it right when he says you should spend your time and money building something worth talking about.
August 20th, 2008 at 9:51 am
Dave, we frequent the pizza joint you refer to and have had the exact same experience - that’s why we usually pick up our pizza and leave
Still, we are loyal customers even though there are dozens of other pizza places that are less expensive, faster and closer. When we are after great pizza we’ll tolerate average service - just like the rest of their customer base.
I suspect they don’t think much about the quality of their service - they don’t have to. They benefit from decades of brand awareness within a community that spreads the promise of their product like a virus every time they invite folks over for a party and serve their pizza for them.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Dave,
Situated in the middle of our little residential area is a pizza joint. An amazing little pizza joint. One day I ordered pizza for my family. While standing in the waiting area for my order, a young guy whom I assumed to be an employee of the restaurant walked through the front door and through the restaurant, which was filled with diners, with a box filled with a dozen, or so, little boxes labeled in bright red with the word RID-X. I got a chuckle out of this lack of discretion. At that moment, the lady at the counter appeared with my pizzas. I thought she gave me the what’s-so-funny look. So I said, “One of your employees just walked through the front door and through the middle of the restaurant with a box filled with a dozen, or so, little boxes labeled in bright red with the word RID-X.” She immediately got upset and made several defensive comments, “We don’t have rats, we have an extermination service, we don’t have any employees coming into work at this time, shifts don’t start until 8, etc.” I was kind of laughing and assured her that it was no big deal to me. I just thought she would appreciate knowing that, “some guy just walked through the middle of the restaurant with a box filled with stuff called RID-X!” I honestly thought it was kind of funny, like something they would do on Candid Camera.
I drove the 7 blocks back to my home. By the time I walked in the door with our pizza, my husband had missed a call and had just enough time to listen to the telephone message left by the owner of the restaurant. My husband’s face was white. “What did you just do?”
It appears that the owner of the restaurant was livid and left a scathing, screaming, obscenity laced, threatening message for the b***h who accused him of having rats in his restaurant.
My husband decided it would be best that I did not listen to the message. He thought about calling the guy back but decided that would be ugly and we weren’t sure which authorities we should contact to report really, really bad manners and business prowess.
So we did the next best thing. We googled RID-X. It seems that RID-X is a chemical treatment for septic systems.
It has nothing to do with rodents.
Denise Burks
http://www.successinthesuburbs.com (coming soon!)
September 9th, 2008 at 11:50 am
My Lesson Learned:
If you love your pizza, keep your lips together unless opening for said pizza.