Cousins Maine Lobster by Jim Tselikis

Author:Jim Tselikis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

THE NEW REALITY

Barbara raised the idea of franchising early in our partnership. But it was just one of several ideas we discussed in those days about how to build the brand. After Shark Tank, our immediate concern was whether we could duplicate our success with another truck. This might seem like a fairly simple matter of adding more trucks to the LA fleet, but nothing is ever that simple. We were cautious. The show had thrust us into a kind of minor-celebrity spotlight and our single truck was reaping the rewards. We were selling out wherever we went simply because people had seen us on the show.

Pretty great, right?

Except that we had become a target. A glance through our Yelp reviews in those post−Shark Tank days tells a fuller story than the lines at our truck. Previously, we had been lucky to get almost 100 percent positive online reviews. But then Shark Tank happened and suddenly those reviews began to slip. Almost without fail, each negative review started in the same way: “After seeing the cousins on Shark Tank, I wanted to see what the hype was all about…” Then BAM! A negative review. It’s not that our Yelp reviews went completely south after Shark Tank, it’s that we found ourselves under a magnifying glass that we hadn’t anticipated. Even the good reviews would offer criticisms that we had never heard before. It’s as if customers wanted to find something wrong.

A company shouldn’t ever take Internet comments too seriously. You’re never doing as great or as bad as the commenters say. Moreover, the people who do comment on those sites aren’t a fair cross section of your customer base. They make up what statisticians would call an “unscientific” sample size. But they spoke to our new reality. There had been a time when a single customer’s bad experience or opinion was just that: just one out of hundreds of otherwise satisfied customers. If the customer came to us directly or complained on a site like Yelp, we did what we could to fix the problem, within reason. Some customer complaints are just unreasonable and you do more harm trying to make them happy.

But now it was as if customers were looking for flaws in our business. A customer who isn’t 100 percent satisfied at a random food truck doesn’t think twice about it. Sure, perhaps there could have been more lobster meat or the price was a tad steep, but they either enjoyed their experience or they didn’t. The degree of their (dis)satisfaction was registered by whether they came back. And a lot would come back. But now, they weren’t just buying a meal at a random food truck: they were buying a meal at a food truck featured on Shark Tank.

The bar had been raised. The customers’ senses were heightened. Our room for error had shrunk significantly. In fact, there wasn’t any room for error. Because when you’re in the public spotlight, people judge you differently than if you’re just another food truck.

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