We decided on Friday to drive across the border to have dinner in Niagara Falls–the American Side. It is an hour drive and we wanted to pick up some mail at our post office box. We have been traveling and using Trip Advisor to pick restaurants and have found it to work fairly well. We wanted to try it out near home as well. We try to eat in a restaurant that is in the top 20 restaurants on Tripadvisor and although we are sometimes disappointed, our hit rate is much higher using this strategy than just looking around and picking a restaurant. I have a corn allergy which is making it harder to eat out, so I have to try to find restaurants that can help me get a meal that will work for me. On Friday we decided to try the Red Coach Inn. It had some good reviews and I looked at their menu online. It looked good and very reasonable in terms of price. We got there and it is lovely. The location is great. The waitress did an amazing job of taking care of us and of managing my corn allergy. She went to the kitchen to ask questions, looked at labels and generally was kind and helpful. We ordered a shrimp cocktail, a Caesar salad, and a house salad that comes with almonds, blue cheese, and strawberries. Our kids ordered a lobster trio and we each ordered the surf and turf. While the service was outstanding, our meal just wasn’t up to the standards we expect when we spend $180 for dinner with tip. We want something better than average. My frustration was with the amount of food the kitchen was serving that they don’t make on-site. They don’t make their salad dressings, they don’t make their wings, and they use cornstarch to “hold” their Bearnaise sauce. We had an opportunity to speak to the manager. He came to our table to apologize for a very small error with my meal (this error was really...
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As my family was traveling along a crowded stretch of highway, we came across a most interesting brand. My first impression was shock and a bit of disgust… not reactions I’d normally associate with good marketing. But it worked. The name of the business was “Kim’s Dead Stock”, and, to the uninitiated city dweller at least, dead livestock removal is a shocking and disgusting business. The logo—a cartoon-like picture of a dead cow—was on the back of a very clean and shiny white trailer. The tagline below the logo was—hold your nose— “No cow too ripe.” We followed the trailer for a good long time and the longer I looked at this brand, the more impressed I became. My initial reaction was shock. This got my attention on a busy road, confirming that my surprise served a purpose. Then came the gross-out phase, as I thought about “ripe” cows. After that, I contemplated the profession of dead stock removal in general and realized, well, someone has to do it. I also realized that if I had to call someone for dead stock removal, then Kim’s Dead Stock would be my first choice. I would contact Kim’s not just because they’re the only dead stock removal company I know of, but because they had effectively established their brand for me as I passed by on a crowded highway. How did this brand work? With their business name, they told me exactly what they did—“dead stock”. Then, with their tagline, they defined the boundaries of their business—“no cow too ripe.” I would feel good about calling this business if I had the misfortune to need someone in their line of work. I wouldn’t need to feel guilty or apologetic about calling to ask them to remove a carcass that had been around for a while—they had already normalized that for me. Putting a person’s first name in the company name also made me—as an imagined customer—feel at ease when I contemplated contacting them. In effect, the brand took the social stigma and “ick” factor of dead stock removal and made it...
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