Does the menu matter ?

Have a look at some of the pictures I took while having dinner at Pizzahut on Sunday evening.





The pictures make everything worth eating and drinking. Drinks for example - under normal circumstance if everything is only written without any pictures then very few would really want to wander out of the normal Coke and Pepsi. But, when you open the menu and find a 15*10 cm picture of a refreshingly green "apple coolers.." it becomes tempting enough to try at least once.

Now lets look at what this could to the business. We as a group could have ordered a pitcher of Pepsi, which would have cost us Rs 90. But highly tempted by the pictures 2 of us ordered apple coolers and 3 ordered "masala lime" each costing 45 resulting into a total splash of Rs 225 only on drinks. That is 2.5 times what otherwise would have been.
Assuming that 1 of every 2 tables order drinks and 1 out of 5 such drink ordering tables is impressed by the pictures and makes an experiment, that would mean an increase of revenue from Rs 900 to 1035(vague approximation of all tables ordering same). This is 15% more!!!

The same goes for pizzas that we ordered.

15% more revenues for designing and redoing the menu once in every 6 months and including new and fresh pictures. I think the menu does matter!!

The bottom line for a restaurant is, pictures in the menu can definitely add value. But, remember it raises expectations at the same time and so living up to expectations is more important and difficult than creating those very expectations.

This is a practice seldom followed in Indian eateries, which I think is worth
spending some time and money in order to reap benefits from the visual impact.

Member Details

This morning I got a mail(in my bulk/spam folder) with subject line 'member details'.
I think this trick can definitely add traffic to the website at least initially.

The trick is, some website guys will send you thanks for registering on their xyz site with your username and password.

If you encounter a salesman approaching you with some product or file in his hand more often than not you look at him and say no, before even listening to what is he saying(in fact you don't even know if he is selling or buying). If you were a bit polite at the most you would listen to him and then say thanks, make some excuse for why you do not want to listen to him further. But now if he says "do you remember you bought that thing from us" or "do you remember we met" or may be something like "thanks for buying so and so" which you might have never bought, would you not be provoked to listen to him/her for a few more seconds and ask him/her back what is it that he/she is talking about.

Well the spam mails I am getting in my mailbox stating "thanks for registering at our website, your login details are following and please visit our website" is following the same trick(in my opinion). I think it does makes some new or gullible internet users to visit the website. In case you get an e-mail mentioning the website features, the possibility is that even the new internet users might not visit the site. This could be because they did not like the features or just that they are not involved with it. In case-I, it provokes them to think how could they be registered with this site so they visit the site to check it out.

I think the trick makes sense to introduce products to customers who are not willing to have even a single look at it.

2 years

2 years back from today, I joined this workplace. It was a fresh and new beginning to my career. I do believe I got a very good opportunity much better and higher than my expectations.

Over the two years I met lot of good and interesting people. Learnt lot of new things and saw places which neither I had ever though of or heard of.

Some of the things that come to my mind which i have realized/learnt:
1. It is not just the work profile that matters, it is the people among whom you work that matters equally.
2. Networking helps.
3. Its important to move on.

After having learnt my small share of the new things, now its time I start to unlearn as well so that I can learn new and more.

Learning is the key.

Being brutal

At my age I have read many a books on business which talk about performance and non-performance. All those authors often write about getting rid of non-performance and encouraging performance. I always thought it would be easy to encourage performance. At the same time when I read about the bell curve Jack Welch created I was shocked to hear that a team lead would be required to fire the bottom 5% performers of his team every year.

Jack himself said that he found team leads signing-off at the end of 3 years because there was no way they could fire someone they had been working with for 3 years and now he performed fine but was still at the bottom of his team.

I thought it was crazy but still always used to quote this example in any discussion that involved a point about performance. I did agree that it was an outrageous thing to do something like this but at the same time believed that if a standard of this sort could be established then others could try to establish standards equivalent to 80% of that by may be softening some of the rules.

I am standing at a position where my stance about someone's performance might result into a decision like that. Unfortunately the person in question is a good friend of mine. And more unfortunately an honest statement from my side might not result into happy state of affairs.

I do have sometime to decide on my position on the whole matter and I hope whatever I do is a rational and justified decision.

Comfort Zone

Life in a hotel sounds very dull, moronic and unusual. But, When I tell people I lived in hotel for 8 months(in China) then it sounds beyond all that = weird. Even I used to think it is silly to be living in a hotel instead of not moving into an apartment.

But, now I am missing all the comforts that I had in the hotel. From the cleaning of the room to change of bedsheets. From removal of towels in the bathroom to ordering of newspaper at 1 in the night.

Keeping apart all the problems of food and living alone and working 16 hours a day in a world totally away and different from yours now its time to live in a world that is not the same. Its time to re-create the comfort zone.

The old man and his God. Book review - IV

Author - Sudha Murthy.

I have not read Sudha Murthy before though I have read that she written quite a lot. This time I got my hands on it as my brother bought it.

The book is written in a very simple and plain style. Describing some very common stories that the author came across in her life. The statement she makes in the preface stands correct for such stories and it is that "we all come across such strange and touching incidents in our life it is just that we forget them".

Well some people makes note of them and get a chance to share with others. This is what Sudha has done in this book.

The book is written in a very simple language and does contains interesting stories with happy and sad endings showing different facets of life.

A good short read.