Apr
27
Written by:
wschaaf
Sunday, April 27, 2008 11:09 AM
#1 Horn and Hardart Customer Convenience
When I was just a really young kid living in New Jersey, not far from New York City, I can remember taking visiting relatives for “the tour” to “the Big City”.
The tour always included:
1 The round-trip “cruise” on the Staten Island ferry to see the Statue of Liberty
2 A visit to either the Empire State Building observation deck
3 Lunch at Horn and Hardart Automat.
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The Horn and Hardart Automat (H&H) was a revolutionary restaurant concept for its time – a self-serve restaurant with walls of coin-operated chrome and glass doors with piping hot food behind each door, as well as everything from salads to deserts plus what was consider the best coffee in the world – kind of like a vending machine today – only on a grand scale with an art deco flare and a busy kitchen crew within arms-reach of the back side of all the food doors.
It was a radically departure from all the fancy high-priced sit down restaurants in NYC and relied well planned behind the scenes preparation and delivery of food, all at the convenience of the customers with their pocket full of coins and an appetite for all the great food we could see three the window of each food door.
Food was grouped into sections separating entrées from side items and desserts. You saw each item that you could choose from, and for a dime or a quarter in the slot, it was your’s to take. The item would then be promptly replenished from the kitchen on the other side of the doors.
H&H definitely left a memorable impression on the relatives visit to the “big city.”
As hot as recycling has become recently, recycling some of H&H’s great business concepts to new purposes is an exercise worth thinking about.
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Here are at least four recycled concepts we can take from the vintage H&H business model:
- Build in components that make a visit memorable. The art deco design and organized walls of food made H & H cool, fun, and on the “must visit” list to NYC in the 50’s and 60’s. Websites needs cool design, organized menus of options, and features that make them “must visit” destinations to your target audience.
- Make value and convenience the main focus – giving website visitors the products and information they want in a self-service environment with purchase convenience as simple as dropping a coin or two in a slot (credit card purchases these days).
- Build a quick scan and zero in organization approach – at H&H, you scanned the categories from across the room, then read the labels on the doors, then peaked in the window to see if that’s really what you want. Same thing with websites, give visitors a quick scan of what’s on your site, provide summaries of links if there are lots of choices, and then more details on those things visitors find greatest interest in.
- Focus on the behind the scenes details. The real secret success of Horn and Hardart was what happened behind the scenes in the kitchen. That’s where quality food was prepared and made available whenever a visitor has the urge or whim for “macaroni and cheese” or a slice of upside-down pineapple cake. Similarly, a website, needs to anticipate what visitors to their website want, and build a convenient and automated way to deliver products and information to each site visitor. This requires smart use of the latest technology and implementing effective “behind the scenes” processes to be efficient and effective their deliver.
The Horn and Hardart Automat - more than a nostalgic memory - is a great physical model of how we can build an effective business websites!
Copyright ©2008 wayne schaaf
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