Sometimes in brand-world people do stuff which, frankly, leaves you wondering if the lights are on? If they're the full shilling? Or if they've had their tea yet? Or, as they say ooop north, do they know their arse from their elbow?
Take Little Chef – a sprightly 54 year-old. Who hasn't made a pit stop at one of their outposts in their lifetime, or pulled into one of their highly convenient parking spaces so that you and your significant other, or Mater and Pater can have an orientation-based barney?
Bought in administration by RCapital in 2005, we now learn that they are to close 67 sites with 91 remaining. The reason for this sits with the owners: venture capitalists looking for a return, but seemingly without any real understanding of what they bought, or any real empathy with the product.
They first decide to change the iconic Little Chef logo, Charlie – obviously whilst under the collective dubious influences of the five-a-day hysteria and PC madness – to deliver a slimmed down version. So that he now resembles a chap who's been on the Dukan diet, but captured just before he lapses into a coma. It does happen. See today's Telegraph.
Many complained – 1500 to be exact. Some of which, doubtless, were serial complainants and others five-a-day zealots. But many, I'm sure, waving the flag of common sense and asking, why? The tawdry initiative was abandoned in 2005.
Pressure from newcomers and competitors – McDonald's, M&S and Costa et al – saw them hiring Heston Blumenthal to transform their offer following a Channel 4 documentary in which he was challenged to turn Little Chef around. Yep. You read that right. They hired the Chemistry Kid to provide his Periodic concoctions to fuel the travellers, truckers and nuclear families of the UK and beyond.
After much trumpeting (and far more trumping than any one ever did after eating there) it transpired that Heston's creations only made it into three – yes 3 – of their 158 sites. Yet his services will be retained while they jettison 600 people and their livelihoods. I think that someone's goose isn't quite cooked.
If you are competing against competitors you don't set out to emulate them by selling 'posh' when your business is and always has been about providing 'grub' and not 'cuisine' – that's why people go to Little Chef. Doh! If you have a point of difference that is seared into the nation's psyche (and what brand wouldn't like to be in that position?) you do not seek to strike it out. You develop it...if you have any sense.
Little Chef is a right of passage. A dip into childhood. A fuel stop. A place of remembrance. A friend. A certainty. A place full of stuff you like to eat...occasionally. You work on the differences to make them more enjoyable. And so – as so often is the case – the future lies in the past.
It's all been change for misguided change’s sake.
If I am driving to Yorkshire to see the family I often choose to take the A1 so that I can pull into one of those white and red detached berths of scoff-ness so I can indulge in stuff I wouldn’t cook for myself. Beans, fried toast, mushrooms and (if I want them) chips at 10am. What I don't want is Heston's fecking deep-freezed wombat wings, served in a Conran Petrie dish, with a garnish of a 5cm-long lettuce leaf.
It's a guilty pleasure like admitting that I like Dolly Parton, Billie Jo Spears and her Blanket on the Ground, or cheese and onion crisp sandwiches when no one is looking.
You chumps are throwing your brand and its heritage away. You're dismissing, diminishing and alienating 54 years worth of clientele. You are purveyors of the magnificent Olympic Breakfast. How apt in 2012! So get out there. The world is coming here and they all need one of the same. You don't need to transform. You need to improve.
Little Chef. Big Opportunity.
Great article Sue!
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