The Weekly: Edition #18 - November 8, 2019
If you can manage a Waffle House, you can manage anything (Wall Street Journal $)
+ At the core of a Waffle House manager's spirit is the sheer grit and willingness to role up their sleeves and jump into the fray. We noted a few other points about Waffle House's management and operations worth sharing. The best managers:
1. ...Manage the company culture. Even with robust systems in place, it becomes exponentially harder to manage all employee behavior and customer service as a firm grows. But the culture behind what you sell or how you serve your customers must always be managed.
2. ...Improve operational systems and speed of delivery. Waffle House abides by the WYSIWYG (Wiz-ee-wig) principle - What You See Is What You Get. 'The House' has no hidden fees, products, or services: the bacon, eggs, and butter are all right in front of the customer where the speed of the operation truly shines. How can you increase transparency to your customers for a better overall experience?
3. ...Are integrated into daily operations. "...doing the grunt work is good for business. It helps managers earn the trust and respect of their teams while staying connected to the entire operation.“You learn a lot about what’s working and what’s not”..."
4. ...Lead by serving. "Every executive, including the CEO, visits the restaurants. They wear the same uniform as hourly employees. And if it’s busy, they bus tables and take orders." As Harry Truman once said, "It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit."
5. ...Develop long-term customer relationships. At the end of the day, a company is nothing but a connected web of relationships - from employees to suppliers to customers - and how you treat those people will dictate how strong your web becomes."Above all, a successful Waffle House manager needs to cultivate regulars. And doing that means relating to people from all walks of life."
When you combine all of the above lessons in a well-oiled machine, is it any wonder that Waffle House equity shares, based on their annual audited value, have increased every year for the last 57 years running? Good principles add up to good business.
Commerce: a force for good - Shopify's global economic impact report (Shopify)
+ For businesses that need a selling presence online, Shopify represents a one-stop-shop for all of your backend needs from fulfillment to order management to building a site.
Unraveling the secret origins of an AmazonBasic's battery (One Zero)
+ While Amazon is a massive company, this serves as a good lesson for small and medium sized businesses: know your suppliers and dig into their business practices, because your business's reputation may suffer based on practices that are out of your control. The only control a business owner can truly exercise is who she does business with in the first place.
The gross margin problem: lessons from tech-enabled startups (David Sacks)
+ "How did we get here? The truth is that software startups never had to worry about gross margins until software started eating the world. Gross margins only became a concern once software blended with physical-world products and services to create new tech-enabled business models."
Ecommerce landing page playbook (Unbounce)
+ This is a 37-page guide on what constitutes a 'great' landing page for an online business - and how to ensure it leads to higher sales conversions.
The short life of online sales leads (Harvard Business Review)
+ "Firms that tried to contact potential customers within an hour of receiving a query were nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead (which we defined as having a meaningful conversation with a key decision maker) as those that tried to contact the customer even an hour later—and more than 60 times as likely as companies that waited 24 hours or longer."
Nothing this week…
The father of the modern frozen food industry (The Hustle)
+ A historic example of entrepreneurship improving the human condition: "Birdseye came to realize that the grainy texture of US frozen fish was a direct result of the way the meat was frozen: Slow freezing (the US standard) formed large crystals that eroded tissue cells, causing a grainy texture. By contrast, fish that was frozen instantly (as in Labrador) formed much smaller, less damaging crystals that maintained freshness."
The first map of America's food supply chain is mind boggling (Fast Company)
+ An interesting look at all of the export and import connections of the United States' food industry.
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