I am starting a four
part series exploring ways that brick and mortar companies can compete in a
multi-channel world. For our purposes, I am going to divide all brick and
mortar companies into four categories:
- Apparel – American Eagle Outfitters, DSW, Target, etc.
- Consumable / non-perishable goods – Blockbuster, etc.
- Consumable / perishable goods – Buffalo Wild Wings, Cub Foods, etc.
- Hard goods – Best Buy, Barnes & Noble, Home Depot, etc.
Today, I am focusing
on the consumable / perishable goods, specifically Buffalo Wild Wings. I will
start by presenting my SWOT
analysis on Buffalo Wild Wings.
The SWOT analysis is a useful tool to develop and evaluate new strategies for businesses. For the sake
of brevity, I am choosing to only walkthrough a couple ideas to convert
weaknesses to strengths using multi-channel solutions. As discussed in my previous blogs, the key idea is that
consumers want convenience at an affordable price.
1. Inconsistent
service – “…can be SUPER awesome or SUPER slow and inattentive”
It is not fair to imply B-Dubs alone struggles
with inconsistent service. However, it is absolutely critical to create a
consistently great consumer experience, making as few mistakes as possible.
Poka-Yoke[6]
is a useful Lean Six Sigma concept to leverage towards accomplishing this goal.
It is a Japanese term that means “fail-safing” or “mistake-proofing” with the
purpose of eliminating defects by preventing, correcting or drawing attention
to human errors as they occur. For instance, a server can easily misunderstand
a consumer’s request or get delayed in taking an order during a busy period at
a restaurant. What if you leveraged the B-Dubs mobile app to solve these
problems? Imagine… It is Tuesday and a group of friends from work decide to do
an impromptu happy hour but, you cannot stay long because you have to get to
your son’s baseball game at 6:30 PM. In an effort to use your time wisely, you
use the B-Dubs mobile app to check the wait time at the nearest location. It is
15 minutes away and has a 20 minute wait time, so you check-in your group of four
on the B-Dubs mobile app. When you arrive you immediately get seated. After being
seated, the group decides to have the usual, but the server is nowhere to be
found. Again to save time, you use the B-Dubs mobile app to place the order by scanning
the items selected from the menu and the location ID on the table. After a
short wait, the beer arrives and the wings arrive shortly after. Now, it is
getting late and you do not have a minute to spare if you are going to reach
the baseball game by 6:30 PM. No need to worry, you do not have to waste any time
waiting for your tab since you already paid for it when you ordered it on the
B-Dubs mobile app. The end result is a great time with friends and you arrive
at your son’s baseball game without a minute to spare.
2. Chaotic
game day experience – “I go here because a friend organizes big watching
parties. If it were up to me I would never go back. You have to get there an
hour or more early to get tables”
I can personally relate to this experience. I am
a huge fan of the UFC, so I invited another couple to join my wife and me at
B-Dubs. We expected it would be a packed bar so we arrived at 7:00 PM for the
9:00 PM main event. Even with us arriving 2 hours early, there was no room
anywhere and people were lining up in the bar around the tables waiting for
people to leave. We tried positioning ourselves near a table where a couple was
finishing their meal. The man kept looking in our direction, smirking and
laughing to himself, seeming to relish in the fact that he was making us wait for
“his” table. After awhile, my friend politely approached the table to let them
know we would like “dibs” on the table whenever they decided to leave. Then,
the man proceeded to tell us that we could have the table only if we were willing
to pay his bill. Seriously, you want us to what? Well, we had no intention of
paying his bill and he continued to stall. Eventually, a woman approached him
asking if she could have the table when he was done and he immediately gave up
the table, mocking us on the way out of the restaurant. I have wanted to go back
to B-Dubs for UFC events on many occasions since then, but I have been apprehensive
because I do not want to potentially deal with an experience like that again.
You may be thinking to yourself, how can B-Dubs
possibly prevent these types of situations from occurring?! After all, seating in
the bar area is first come, first serve. Here are a couple of ideas…
It may not be possible to use an official check-in
process in the bar but you can give customers visibility to the capacity in the
bar. You could use the B-Dubs mobile app to let customers check bar capacity in
the hours leading up to the event. Using this information, customers could
choose when to head out to B-Dubs. Capacity could be described in fun terms
like “roomy” instead of “lots of open space” or “hopping” instead of “standing
room only.” In the short term, customers may decide to go somewhere else after
seeing the capacity is “hopping.” However, in the long term, customers will
appreciate this transparency and make B-Dubs the first choice before even
considering other alternatives.
In addition to giving customers visibility to
bar capacity, you could reserve a prime table in the bar area for the Foursquare
Mayor of the local B-Dubs. Customers would check-in to their local B-Dubs
during each visit to earn points. The customer with the highest point total for
the previous 7 days would be named Foursquare Mayor for game day. If unable to
attend the event, the mayor would have the option of designating a friend as
mayor in their place. In the moment, it appears the restaurant would be losing
revenue by having an empty table. However, I believe more frequent visits from
B-Dubs best customers would offset any potential lost revenue. Additionally, other
customers would be encouraged to visit more frequently in hopes of becoming the
Foursquare Mayor and score the reserved seating next time around! A significant
side benefit of the increased check-in activity would be free advertising on Facebook
and Twitter. Also, as game time approaches, potential customers looking for a
place to watch the big game can check Foursquare and immediately know where their
friends are hanging out.
Once again, the key
idea is that consumers want convenience at an affordable price. B-Dubs can dramatically improve the customer experience by integrating the mobile app with
social media by allowing customers to save time checking-in and making game day
a more enjoyable. Next time, I will look at how Target can leverage
multi-channel opportunities for their apparel business.
Share your
experiences, your ideas, and invite others to participate in the conversation.
I am interested in what you think.
Tim, I find your insights very thoughtful and appreciate the rigor you put into your blog. You have cutting edge ideas that it appears smaller companies are figuring out faster than larger organizations. It will be interesting to see how fast larger organizations can adapt to the ever changing needs of their consumers.
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