The Trouble with Mom and Pop

When I was in college, there was a lunch place I used to love to go, and the love I'm talking about was of the psychologically damaging kind.

Here's what I mean--

Every day, depending on what you wanted to order from this place, you would have to get there as early as 10:00am before certain lunch items ran out.

The place was run by a bunch of women, all related, and they made it very clear that they had little-to-no interest in anything resembling customer service.

If you got there and they were out of something, they expected you to order something else immediately or else they'd send you to the back of the line like the Soup Nazi if he had been five foot three and bore a striking resemblance to Strega Nona.

I was there one day when some poor bastard suggested to the women that if certain items were really popular, they should consider making more of them.

You know...inventory.

Business.

Capitalism.

All the stuff that people running a business usually take an interest in.

Nope.

The women carved that man up right in front of me and stuck him in the egg salad then dared me to order it, which I did, because I swear to you, you've never had egg salad this good in your life.

They had no interest in doing anything to grow their business or keep their customers happy.  They made food.  They sold the food.  The sooner everything sold out, the sooner they could go home.

Why change?

And then...a Subway opened up about a block away.

A year later, they were out of business, and everybody moaned and whined about how chains were putting Mom and Pop shops out of business.

But the truth is, Subway's food could not compare to the food at that lunch place, but when I would go into Subway, people were obligated to be friendly to me.  I know it's all fake, but it still feels nicer than being shouted at because you were wondering if you could have extra mustard on your sandwich.

Plus, I got tired of racing to this place to see if I could get a lunch order when most people have just finished breakfast.

There was a part of me that hoped when there was some competition this lunch place would perform a little better.  It struck me as audacious that they'd completely dismissed the idea of satisfying their customers just because they were the only game in town.

But rather than change, they folded, and blamed it on evil corporations and low price points.

Now, I'm not here to defend corporations.  I'd rather eat whatever it is Subway calls bread (it's not bread) every day of my life, but the lunch place should have taken on more of the blame.

Growing up, I would hear this stuff all the time at family gatherings about bakeries and restaurants that were awful when it came to customer service, but did well anyway because this was before the advent of chain-everything.

I'm not trying to make a generalization here.  Many small businesses are owned by wonderful people who appreciate the people who frequent them, but like any barrel of apples, more than a few are a little bit bruised.

The other day I ordered a pizza from a non-chain pizza place.  Standard order--small pizza and a can of Coke.  The delivery guy arrived with a small pizza and a can of Diet Coke.

He explained to me that they had run out of Coke so they just decided I would like Diet Coke instead.

Reader, I hate Diet Coke more than you can possibly imagine.

But what really bothered me was the following:

- How do you run out of Coke when you're a pizza place?  A PIZZA PLACE.

- It's Coke.  It's not some rare ingredient from the West Indies.  It should never be scarce at your place of business.  You can buy it in bulk and just let it sit in a fridge somewhere.

- The delivery guy would have passed at least seven different places on the way to my place of work.  Why didn't the owners say to him, "Hey, on the way there, stop and grab a Coke for this guy and get a few boxes of it as well to hold us over tonight."

Did I tip him well?

Totally.

It's not his fault, and even if it was, I still would have tipped well, because I'm not a monster.

But I never ordered from that pizza place again, because--Yeah, I don't have to.

And they should know that.

They should know that Domino's may be garbage with crust, but it does not run out of Coke.  It is a machine.  It does not make stupid mistakes.

I am willing to pay more money for better food, because I understand that low price points are how big businesses close small ones, but good customer service is free, so there's no reason it should be that hard to accomplish, unless somebody is being a dick to you, in which case, have at it.

The issue may be that for a long time, as much as these small businesses hate their bigger competition, they benefited from essentially having a monopoly over certain areas.  Many of their customer service problems originated with the fact that they would hire their relatives as employees.

It's been twenty years since one of my relatives went to a certain bakery, and she still talks about how much she misses it, but refuses to go back, because the owner had his wife working the counter and she was a nightmare.

Now see, if that was a chain, you assume that at some point, somebody would do something about that, but when you're buying a birthday cake from Dean's Bakery and Dean's wife is working the cash register, you know you're better off just taking your business elsewhere.

Anytime I get the feeling that a small business I'm dealing with doesn't understand that I could go to at least three other businesses OR just shop online, I'm so put off by it that I wonder if they're even really interested in succeeding.

I've been to more than one restaurant in Rhode Island that I was sure was just a mob front.

There's one restaurant downtown that--on a Saturday night during a Waterfire--closed at 7pm because they ran out of pasta.

Pasta.

Again, buy it bulk and shove it in the pantry.

Do you know what kind of place this was?

An Italian place.

Does that sound...odd to you?

Believe it or not, that place is still open, because while it might be a mob front, the pasta is also really, really good.

When they have it.

Listen, nobody's saying Mom and Pop aren't great at what they do.

You just wonder sometimes if they could do it with a smile.