Global Financial Crisis verses a positive bottom line (with quality mustard)

We can learn a lot from a hot dog stand.

Today I heard a very powerful story about a hot dog stand. This hot dog stand was run by an old man who had started if many, many years ago. He loved his business and his customers. He used the best buns money could buy and his sausages were made to his own special recipe by his friend the butcher. He took great pride in every single hot dog that he made and word of mouth had spread far and wide. As a result he had many customers coming back time and time again for over thirty years.

One day the man’s son came by to visit his father. His first question to the old man was to ask how he was coping with the challenges of the Global Financial Crisis? The old man said he had no idea what this crisis was and he certainly hadn’t seen any down turn in his business. But the son went on about how the old man needed to change his business, cut his costs, get smarter and do what ever he can to protect the hot dog stand.

The old man respected his son as he had got a good education and he was very smart. So he started to look for ways to cut his costs. He started buying smaller hot dog buns, that were one day old. That saved him a lot. Then instead of getting hot dogs sausages specially made by his local butcher he bought them in bulk from a supermarket. He also started to charge extra for condiments like sauce and mustard. And last but not least he cut down his working hours to save on electricity.

The old man told the son what he had done and the son told him that he had done the smart thing. Over the coming few weeks the old man noticed that many of his regular customers started to complain about his hot dogs – they had never done that before. Business got slower and slower, until finally the old man shut his hot dog stand down. He was very sad that his business was gone, after so many years, but his son reassured him that many businesses were going broke as a result of the Global Financial Crisis.

Mmmmmm………….kind of makes you think doesn’t it? I think there are a lot of great hot dog stands out there that are going to send themselves broke as a result of GFC induced panic.

The above story was taken from Andrew Griffiths Business Bullets (No. 25). Do you get his marketing bullets?