Selling Eating

3-D printed hamburgers: evidence that the research team works through lunch a lot.

April 17, 2013 By Charlie Hopper Leave a Comment

The day may come when it’s not weird to think of a restaurant printing out a burger and fries on its 3-D printer.

An article in Dezeen Magazine (passed along by friend-of-the-blog Lindsay) makes the promise—but then sort of dodges it. It’s kind of funny because the interviewer is really interested in the concept, but the designer just keeps saying there’s nobody backing it so there’s no way to know when it will be a reality.

Still, it’s pretty fascinating to contemplate.

More interesting than this video I found where basically they take a 3-D printer and convert it into a cake decorator:

Burgers are a lot more interesting. Look for the brand marriage of Kinko’s and McDonald’s one of these days along an interstate or strip mall near your subdivision.

Once the 3-D printer can make two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, onion, pickles and a sesame seed bun, it’s just a matter of time till these are on every corner. I typed that 1970s McDonald’s ad copy from memory, incidentally. I should probably be horrified or at least embarrassed.

Once the 3-D printer can manufacture two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onion and a sesame seed bun, it’s just a matter of time till these are on every corner. I typed that 1970s McDonald’s ad copy from memory, incidentally. I should probably be horrified. Or at least embarrassed.

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Filed Under: Exploring In Real Time Together, Links To Stories, News

Must Catering Be A Brandless Zone?

April 16, 2013 By Charlie Hopper Leave a Comment

One of our restaurant clients has a major differentiation, which all of their advertising swirls around: they don’t just warm up their subs—they grill everything they put on there. It’s an important difference, which we’ve helped them leverage very successfully. EXCEPT FOR CATERING, when they serve up cold cuts cold.

Some of the laughingest nights I can remember I have spent at big tables in the cozy spaces of various Buca di Beppos, a concept which has created an experience that actually stokes social interaction and light-heartedness. EXCEPT FOR CATERING, where they can try to export the fun but it’s just not the same.

How I interpret the enormous san serif all caps “WE CATER” on this rolling brand expression: “Please please please call us for catering PLEASE OH PLEASE.”

Over and over again, when one talks to restaurant management, one can sense they’re happy to talk about whatever but what they REALLY want to talk about is catering. Yet it’s not central to any of their brand concepts.

What a moneymaker. What a great business to be in. What a conundrum.

All the work has gone in to figuring out how operations can deliver the brand in the restaurant. Work has gone into the food, and possibly into figuring out the menu items that travel best and the best way to deliver them (Buca brings tablecloths—a nice touch).

But what about the brand promise? Can it go in the sack? Does it survive being transported in a styrofoam box?

In this age of food trucks, it seems possible.

But I can’t think of a brand that’s successfully managed to cater in a way that really exploits their brand promise. Can you? (If so, to the comment section with you.) Many are trying, like Einstein here in this Nation’s Restaurant News article. It may be that restaurants that specialize in carbs are set up best for the catering challenge— I’ve witnessed a successful Olive Garden catering moment with a bunch of non-judgemental soccer player families shoveling it in: not exactly the fake Tuscan family get-together they try to evoke, but close enough, maybe. One of my co-workers speaks fondly of the Fazoli’s that was catered at his son’s cross country events.

To be honest, I don’t think the in-store experience of Fazoli’s is all that crucial, in the way that Buca’s is. I would it eat it here or there—say, I would eat it anywhere.

That’s as opposed to Red Lobster, which explicitly says on their website:

Red Lobster does not offer catering services, but we’re always happy to help you plan a special event in our restaurant. Contact your local Red Lobster for more information.”

You can imagine why. Lobsterfest set up on the long tables in the church basement for the youth group meeting would not feature too many manicured lemon squeezes.

Whither catering? How does the marketing department deal with the overall move to put the branding in a van and schlep it to the Marriott meeting room for the soccer tournament kids?

My antennae are up, but so far I haven’t picked up any strong singles.

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Filed Under: Exploring In Real Time Together, Opinion

The Art of the Tease: KFC is trying.

April 12, 2013 By Charlie Hopper 2 Comments

Single-mindedness, check.

Clarity, check.

Demographically hip casual middlebrow dude, check.

Restrained, down-played, good-natured humor, check, I guess.

Racially diverse cast, check.

Enormously solid brand iconography throughout (effortlessly achieved by use of clean-looking, modern, standalone storefront with a positively giant logo), enormous check.

Effective distribution through social media channels (this showed up sponsored on my Facebook yesterday and lured me into watching it), check.

So what’s missing?

I think three things.

One is, mystery.

So many companies fail (and I am sympathetic to their dark nights of crisis on this point) to maintain mystery properly. They know most of their customers are disengaged and easily distracted and they worry that their primary message will not be delivered. That’s fair. They know that tons and tons of money is going to be spent. That’s true. Their job and reputation and ability to pay for braces when their kids get a little older is all on the line. That’s America.

But the game of marketing is simple: if I’m not actively seeking information about your company, I will only pay attention until I figure out what you’re saying (almost always concluding that it’s safe for me to dismiss the information as soon as I understand it).

Playing out the mystery is an art—teasing me just long enough to keep me engaged, not so long that I become frustrated. It’s hard to do. Taco Bell did a great job of it with their initial Locos Tacos launch. I made fun of them (see photo from my Tumblr, The Boss Told Me To Change The Sign), but it worked. I didn’t know what to expect.

[sort of a sponsored link] You might enjoy my Tumblr, which I call “The Boss Told Me To Change The Sign,” and I heartily invite you to email me contributions to it: http://thebosstoldmetochangethesign.tumblr.com/

This leads me to my second issue.

The payoff. Locos Tacos was a huge, once-every-few-years-in-the-history-of-QSR kind of payoff, so it’s a little unfair to compare KFC or anyone else to them.

But why wouldn’t this boneless original recipe product already exist? I’m more confused than anything. You had the boneless chicken already, I assume (I confess I don’t go to KFC all that often, but I assume I can get a chicken finger or two if my kid wants one) (or two). KFC of all companies has access to the recipe.

My main question after this bit of tease is, Why did it take so long?

Maybe I don’t understand it. I’m reacting as a true consumer here, not a restaurant marketer: hate to be cornered into the confession, KFC, but I don’t love you enough to know that you don’t already do this.

Which then leads me to tack on my third missing thing, which is a peeve that all advertisers end up guilty of at some point: DON’T BASE THE SO-CALLED HUMOR OF THE ADVERTISING ON HOW MUCH I LOVE LOVE LOVE YOU. It’s just lazy.

Dear Marketing Team, I know you’re simply negotiating a compromise with the C-titled people up the marketing chain whose C-suite bathrooms have marble countertops. You needed to get them to approve your storyboards, so you put a little counterfeit humor on top of a spot about how much a guy loves the product. See, the C-people almost never really understand how communication works. That’s not their gift. Their gift is climbing the ladder.

Making the humor toothless and easy-to-approve is never a good (or original) recipe for success.

And I have to say: this ad is toothless. Which is appropriate for a product that’s boneless, I guess.

So even though a lot of the elements are in place for KFC’s teaser campaign, well, I pretty quickly figure out, “Oh, they’re breading chicken fingers with their original recipe. That’s probably pretty good but I’m surprised they weren’t doing it already. They sure are hyping it, aren’t they? Well, I just got a text on my iPhone and I’m going to think about something else now.”

Maybe that’s enough of an impression and a success. But is “enough” really enough?

Oh, and I see by my Facebook feed that now they’ve borrowed some interest from Daym Drops by giving him a “preview.” I know you’re not a super official journalist, Daym, but I really like you. Be careful with your objectivity, because your credibility grows out of it. Just sayin’.

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Filed Under: Advertising, Cliché, Opinion, Social Thinking

The Best Times of My Life Have Been Had Around Tables.

April 9, 2013 By Charlie Hopper Leave a Comment

And most of those were in restaurants.

Laughing, being laughed at, being laughed with. Making big decisions about life. Making little decisions about the nerdy details of favorite movies and books. Connecting with people I care about, or realizing that I care about someone I barely knew when we sat down.

I think this aspect of restaurant marketing is generally missing from most communications. For years I’ve thought this.

It didn’t help that the restaurant’s most fervent disciple was famously overweight and eventually lost the ability to eat. His eloquence made up for it.

Today I take as my inspiration an article in The New York Times, which I “rabbit-holed” my way to while reading one of the many encomiums that have come pouring out of the internet upon the passing of Roger Ebert.

Here is the passage of the the Times piece that applies here (referencing the fact, in case you don’t know it, that a few years ago Ebert was diagnosed with cancer and lost his jaw, taste buds, and ability to eat—which, almost ironically, sent America’s highest profile movie critic into a whole new level of wise and witty communications through blogs and social media):

But he remembers everything about the food at the Steak ’n Shake. In the hospital, he told me, he ate Steak ’n Shake meals a bite at a time in his mind. Still, what he longs for most is the talk and fellowship of the table.

“The jokes, gossip, laughs, arguments and shared memories I miss,” he wrote…

If you poke at this blog you know I had a nearly two-decade relationship with Steak ’n Shake, developing marketing. When I was a dedicated promoter of Steak ’n Shake (it’s very important to me that the apostrophe be a true apostrophe, not a hash mark, and that it scoop to the left like an apostrophe and not to the right like an open-single-quote, which is what your computer wants to do if you don’t control it), I was pleased and proud of Roger’s love of the brand, because I felt it, too. And he was always so eloquent about it.

There is something vivid about moments spent bonding in the spaces provided by a certain kind of restaurant that cannot be exaggerated.

This is why “Home Meal Replacement” and carry-out have only been small profit centers for most restaurants. It’s those tables that make your restaurant valuable. In a lot of cases, your delicious food that you spent months researching in the test kitchen and thousands maybe millions bringing to market is nothing more than rent.

People agree to pay the rent and eat the food just so they can sit there in your place of business.

Those renters who have Big Moments are fans for life. They develop a love and an attachment that goes beyond anything you could reasonably ask.

So why don’t more restaurants actively promote or enable these moments?

Sonic does a good job suggesting it (even better when the campaign featured three or four different recurring pairs of customers enjoying their time in the car instead of just the two guys). Olive Garden does such a ham-fisted job of falsely, manipulatively evoking restaurant-table-camaraderie it’s become a punchline.

Friday’s does a good job with its kid menus, encouraging parents and kids to relate to each other.

But this is an area that could stand more deliberate leveraging, in my opinion.

The Fellowship of the Table.

Okay, not literally.

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Filed Under: Advertising, Exploring In Real Time Together, Opinion

That’s not how you throw a chair, Applebee’s.

April 2, 2013 By Charlie Hopper 2 Comments

My wife was actually at the IU game where Coach “Anger Issues” Knight threw that infamous chair. It was a childish thing to do, but he was The General and the tolerance in the mid-80s was way, way, way more than zero, so he got by with it.

I guess it’s okay to joke about now, since he’s a harmless senior citizen.

Whatever. He’s not the first person to misbehave in the state of Indiana and turn it into something to talk about for money.

What I will say is this: when a brand starts borrowing old jokes from randomly placed mini-celebrities to sell its $20 Bourbon Street whatever-they-saids, I think they have abandoned any hope of figuring out what makes them different from everybody else. We might enjoy visiting with the celebs and mini-celebs, but whatever implied endorsement they make is pretty irrelevant, and in the end all it does it make you say, “Did you see Knight in that ad? It was for a restaurant or something.”

I think Applebee’s current agency—a talented bunch of people, by reputation—started out trying to position them with at least a clear point of view.

But those days are gone. Apparently.

So many of these big chains struggle to come up with a clear strategy, an “own-able” voice, and a promise that separates them in some way from the next restaurant on the strip by the mall.

So they do a temporary fix. They bask mildly in some other entity’s glow. In the old days we called this “borrowed interest.”

By the way, friend of the blog Eric pointed out that this ad also borrows interest (noticeable if you’re one of the 15 million who viewed this stupid thing) of the following meme bait.

Advice? Do not invest any time in the preceding YouTube video. I’d sooner have you put on the 10-hour loop of Nyan cat. It’s way more enjoyable. (Fun note: I went to get the link for Nyan cat and there was a :15-second ad for Olive Garden right before the ten endless hours begins. Who’s borrowing whose interest, now?)