Meal Assembly Watch

Here is my list of 5 initiatives on what Dream Dinners (and others) need to do, right now in order to start saving their companies.

Be professional. Act like a real company. Getting press coverage where you are constantly blaming owners for their misfortunes doesn’t endear you to anyone. It makes you come across as a stone cold bitch or a complete egomaniac. Show some remorse for God’s sake, a little empathy won’t kill you Get it in your head that the owners are your customers and they have paid you money for a service. When you fail to live up to that service they will be disgruntled.

Now that you have your ego in check, get the pulse of owners and their customers. Find out what they want. How can you make their job easier? How can you make them more money? What services do customers want that you aren’t offering? What is the competition doing that you’re not?

Maybe you already did it but stop hiring people who are related to you and get the person most qualified for the job. You are messing around with people’s lives and their financial futures, you need to get your act together and be responsible with the company and the money. This isn’t something you’re running out of your kitchen or garage. You’re taking money from people, show some responsibility with it. Just because your buddy files their own taxes doesn’t make them an accountant!

Hire a real CEO. There is a big difference between washing machines and serving dinner. I don’t know anything about Darin, except for the small bit of background I have read on the Internet, but there is nothing mentioned about any food service jobs.

I also think there is a huge problem with hiring a CEO to work for you for free while still keeping another job. You need a CEO who is focused on the task of saving your company and making it profitable. Get someone who has rebuilt a company, or at least someone who has been at the head of a multi-store nationally recognized restaurant. 87 initiatives? What the hell is that all about? Focus, demand excellence from yourself and your staff. Create a first class product and stand up to the competition. Stop copying and start creating. This was a cheap, but foolish choice. And don’t say your company isn’t in trouble, because it is.

Stephanie needs to step aside. Instead of touting the virtues of her company and what it can offer customers she spends her time bashing owners. Not professional at all. Stephanie has created a great idea, but she obviously needs help with its execution at this stage. Stephanie lacks the vision and forward thinking needed to keep things going. You need to think beyond your local little area and what’s works in Seattle. Your company extends from coast to coast and you need to start understand that. The company needs to think big in order to be big, so stop giving out stupid plastic trinkets, toothpaste and other useless junk. Nobody wants this rubbish. You need to come up with something worthwhile like a rewards program that is integrated right into the system. Coupons and frequent shopper discounts should be built in. Stop putting so much work on each individual owner and standardize your web processes across all stores.

Hire a real chef to plan the meals. You’ve created a pretty decent menu, but it needs to be reworked and updated. You need to get a chef back in house who knows how to make meals that kids are going to want. You meals need to be simple, tasty and only take a few minutes of prep time at home. They need to be ready to cook from the moment they get home. Waiting 24 hours to defrost isn’t working. It doesn’t fit in the way people work. People forget meals and then you are cast aside. Your convenience ends at the store and it needs to extend through the entire meal making process. You need to create staple meals people can rely on. You should bounce back and forth between signature meals, each showing up for a month then swapping out with the others. Don’t change the menu as frequently, people are getting confused and it’s not what they want. Drop the price and make the pricing more realistic. Shrimp doesn’t cost as much as ground beef so adjust your prices accordingly. Get your customers involved and have them submit recipes of their own and offer those as a “bonus” to the regular menu. Compensate them with real money for their entry and draw attention to it. You started this but the idea died. No takers?

Hire a real PR/Marketing company. Build ads, nationwide. Get exposure in magazines that mean something. It takes more than one sidebar reference in “O” or in “Living” to make an ad campaign. Having your name in one issue of a magazine for the year is not national marketing.

Stop using email as a way to “connect” with customers. Only a very small percentage of emails ever reach their destination and only a small percentage of those ever get opened. It’s not a marketing strategy. Use the web, use blogs, use the owner’s blogs. Provide more than just things about your company and how you like to eat leftovers on your boat. Update your blog daily and act like a real person. Add pictures.

You should be writing a press release at least once a month on something new you’re offering. If nothing else you should be writing a press release style entry on your blog every week of how you are making the company better, how you are a company people should spend money on.

Build a brand. Separate yourself from the others and stand out in the crowd. Stop selling franchises and building stores and make the ones you have the strongest they can be. Find out the top 10 issues and fix them. Stop making excuses why something can’t be done.

Go big or go home!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 11th, 2008 at 2:20 pm and is filed under Commentary, Dream Dinners. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.