Monday, September 2, 2013

Customer Experience in the Culinary Industry


I read an excerpt from a book on culinary anthropology, specifically the evolution of the restaurant industry, that seemed to encapsulate the basic approaches to customer experience in general – or perhaps that’s what I paid attention to, given my own cognitive filters.  Whether it was intent or inference, it seemed worth a bit more meditation.

Choices in Cuisine

The author’s approach to categorizing cuisine (which is only one of several facets of the restaurant experience) considers the choices that restaurant operators made out of operational or competitive necessity, and seems to portray the contemporary restaurant scene as branches in evolution:

  • Home Cooking – Food prepared in the home is the basis for all cuisine, and the customers’ alternative to dining in restaurants.   In this genre, the home cook does as best as he can given the constraints of his skills and budget.   It is a moral imperative to provide food that is substantial, nutritious, and pleasant to consume when feeding one’s own family.
  • Utility Cooking – This involves food prepared for the masses.  Food is delivered to a large number of people and the focus is on adequacy, being merely “good enough” to pass for a meal with emphasis on time and cost efficiency that often take priority.  This includes not only cafeterias and mess halls, but also hospital and airline food service as well as “fast food” restaurants … and likely any other venue that is infamous for abysmal quality.   
  • Traditional Cuisine – Restaurants that attempt to mimic home cooking, which serve a substantive and flavorful meal but often compromise on nutrition, in which time and money still have some influence and a corresponding effect on degrading quality to varying degrees.   This includes most typical restaurants, and also includes many ethnic restaurants, which mimic “home cooking” of a different nation or culture.
  • Haute Cuisine – Restaurants that attempt to elevate the dining experience, by using high-quality ingredients and hiring talented chefs to prepare a meal that a home cook cannot general execute.   This form of cooking focuses more on the presentation and flavor than on the substantive or nutritional qualities, focusing on the pleasure of consumption rather than its functional effect in satisfying hunger or nutritional needs.
  • Non-Cuisine – A catchall category was suggested for restaurants that prioritize to non-culinary concerns.  Meals are prepared to suit religious practices (a Kosher or Halal restaurant), dietary restrictions (meals suitable for diabetics), or political sensitivities (a vegetarian or “organic” restaurant) – with the admission that they may fall into one of the other categories as a secondary priority (a Kosher restaurant may be utility, traditional, or haute)

I have the sense this could likely be picked apart a bit further – to consider each of the factors involved (substantial, nutritious, tasty, cheap, quick, and entertaining) – but my sense is that this original schematization is most germane to the analogy I’m not going to get back to: the choice of the level of customer service.

Choices in Customer Service

As the author described each of his categories, it occurred to me that it reflected a choice made by a business owner to provide a given level of customer service, and to serve different priorities.

A brief aside: I’d like to stress “different” because there is a tendency to consider the categorization in the nature of a hierarchy in which one is better than another – suggesting that all restaurants should aspire to the standards of haute cuisine as anything else is inferior.   I could not disagree more: there are many customers who prefer a utility meal to a fancy dinner, ad even those who enjoy fine dining on occasion have a more frequent need of a standard meal, so it’s just as valid a choice to serve their needs and interests such as they are.   There is no profit, and little point, in snobbery.

That said, I’ll ruminate a bit on how these culinary categories are reflected in terms of businesses and customer experience in general:

  • Do It Yourself (Home Cooking) – Businesses that support customers with equipment, supplies, and education that enable them to serve themselves.   This is likely the origin of all businesses, whose founders recognized that people will pay someone to do things they already do for themselves.  It is also the death of industries such as financial advice and travel agencies, as people have recognized that doing it themselves results in a better outcome, such that self-service investment and travel reservations have replaced full-service providers.
  • Discount Merchandisers (Utility Cooking) – Retailers that provide customers with something that is just barely adequate with a focus on cost and time efficiency.   This is generally seen in the lowest end of the retail industry, but can also be seen in services (cheap haircut chains, discount motels, and the like) 
  • Standard Merchandisers (Traditional Cuisine) – Retailers that aim to provide customers with something of moderate quality at a reasonable price, which is more or less as good as they could do for themselves, if they had the time.  Again, this also applies to service, considering that car washes, lawn care, or maid services do a pretty good job at something people would rather not do for themselves.
  • Premium Merchandisers (Haute Cuisine) - Retailers that provide the customer elevated quality at an elevated price, often providing a quality that the consumer cannot achieve by his own efforts.   Most “upscale” lines of merchandise fall into this category, as do most “upscale” service providers.
  • Fashion Merchandisers (Non-Cuisine) – Retailers whose value pertains to something other than their functional purpose of the goods and services they sell.   This remains vaguely defined: if a person purchase a garment to make a political statement or participates in an activity to socialize with fellow aficionados, these secondary characteristics of the experience surpass the typical benefits most consumers seek to obtain.

My sense in considering this is that it’s more difficult to consider because while “cooking” is something that anyone can do for themselves (to some degree), most people have lost the skills to weave their own cloth and make it into clothing (never mind making your own cell phone from scratch) so purchasing is their only means of serving their needs – so likely the base comparison of retailers and service providers to “what you could do for yourself” is not something that most people can even imagine.

In spite of that, the comparison does seem to fit – and it should be fairly simple to consider the way in which any given business has chosen to serve its customers: whether it supports customers who need supplies and knowledge to do it on their own, those who want something cheap and adequate, those who want something of standard quality at a reasonable price, those who want something superlative (or at least very good) at a premium price, and those whose purchasing decision is influenced by factors not related to the product at all.

In the end

Perhaps I’m making too much of too little, or stretching the analogy too far?   But at the same time I do think that it provides a slightly different way to consider the approach to customer experience that might provide more food for thought than the traditional “price versus quality” schematization based on the customers’ definition of “quality” in a given situation or market segment.

I’ve added the book to my reading list, and am eager to delve further, so it will likely appear as “reading notes” in future.



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