Mind My Own Business

In my previous blog entry I mentioned two reasons that are hurdles to any restaurant business and those are smaller market and close proximity to competitors. But there are also underlying facts that any entrepreneur should be aware of especially opening a restaurant in the province.

1. Income of the average household.
2. spending habits
3. Use of Time
4. taste

The usual way of doing business is the "kill the competition" attitude and there are a lot of nasty ways of doing that. Since it is a given that the market is smaller compared to the larger cities and given the fact that the proximity of competition is very close, it is very easy to fall into the trap of trying to kill the competition. You might ask me, "Isn't that what I'm supposed to do?" and my answer would be NO. What we are supposed to do is generate profit and provide good/great service.

The two things that immediately comes to mind when asked how to "kill" the competition, is spreading rumors about them and cutting prices to attract more customers. This is what we have experienced early in our building stage. Imagine, we haven't even started painting our walls we're already receiving bad press. And some of our current competitors have cut prices on similar products that we are selling to attract customers. This is not how business is supposed to be done. And we believe that minding our own business is the way to go.

Our philosophy of minding our own business is not about being indiffirent with what is happening outside the business (ex: competition, trends etc) It is about looking to improve your own business base on the knowledge and facts that we've gathered and not distract nor let what our competition do affect us. We have to understand that every moment we spend in trying to "kill" the competition is every moment spent away from what we are supposed to be doing and that is innovation of our business and commitment to service.

Moving on to the 4 facts mentioned above, we should always take note that you will only be able to sell something if your target market is able to afford it. In this particular province most of the population are in the lower income bracket so we positioned ourselves to have affordably priced food but not cheap food.

Second is on their spending habits, since there is limited money going around in the average household and eating out is already considered a luxury we make sure that they receive "luxury". Everytime a customer comes in our establishment we definitely make sure that they have an enjoyable experience because first impressions last (particularly true in this area). You only get one shot to convince that customer to come back and dine at your restaurant because it might be weeks before they get to spend again on eating out. And we want to be the first thing that pops into their heads when they decide to eat out again.

The third thing that we should take note is how does our consumers value time and how do they make use of their time. We know very well that time is a commodity and we make sure that speed of our service is quick and reliable. Many residents of the area do not own cars they usually ride motorcycles or walk. Customers who are working in offices are not going to spend their lunch hour walking to our restaurant so we decided to get delivery orders as well. Most clients that call us for deliveries are employees from banks.

Last point is on taste. People have subjective taste and I personally think that it is impossible to please everybody so just please the majority. We thought of making our own blend of iced tea instead of doing what every other establishment is doing, serving ready mix iced tea. It was a pretty big task especially when serving ready mix tea is the norm. We didn't think much about the norm we just did our own thing. We experimented on different batches until we felt that we had the right mix of our very own ice tea. We let it out into the market and had mix reviews at first. We listened to their comments and improved our formula. Our Ken Dough Magic Iced tea is now the best selling drink in our restaurant.

In our brief experience as a provincial restaurant owner, we believe in doing things our way and concentrate on our business and our customers. In the end of the day that's what we are supposed to do, minding our own business.