January 1992: Marketing: The Future Was Yesterday

In September, just as the leaves were beginning to turn, I went to Montpelier, Vermont for a Futures Conference, the brainchild of Phillip Cooke. The conference was sponsored by his company, Foodservice Associates, The International Association of Culinary Professionals, and The New England Culinary Institute. Students of the Institute, interning at the Inn where the conference was held, cooked and served the food. Several of the most recognizable names in foodservice were there, but to mention them while snubbing the rest—the unrecognizable—would be a disservice to all who participated.

Necessary pause: Conference sponsor, Phillip Cooke, has done more to advance the professionalism of foodservice than anyone else, save, perhaps, those quote-unquote legends (celebrity chefs among them) who spring to mind whenever the names of legends are bandied about, but whose agendas, unlike Cooke’s, are more self-serving than selfless.

Phillip Cooke, right, with lifelong partner Dan Maye.

The difficulty with debates about the future is that they aren’t. They are debates about the present and how patterns of behavior that affect the decisions we make today affect, rightly or wrongly, what we do tomorrow. Or, as Cooke put it in his conference preamble, “To adequately prepare for the future, we must increase our awareness of the issues that affect our industry today.” You bet.

The world is too much with us. Time flies.

To be or not to be wasn’t the question. You can, if you wish, debate conditions that, you think, might prevail five, 10 years from now, but that sort of exercise—a playful cartwheel for the mind—doesn’t provide the answers to troubles that plague you right now.

“What will the future bring and how will we cope with it?” wasn’t the question either, even though it was right there, a line item on the conference agenda.

Most of us know what the future will bring to foodservice: more of the same. Granted, we’ll deal with subtle changes in cuisine, preparation methods, delivery systems, consumer needs and demands, distribution, food and labor costs, labor and management relations, and so forth.  But, by and large:  more of the same. Our strategies for tomorrow, not our survival (always an iffy prospect), will be based on how well we manage our businesses today; and, most important, how we identify and isolate fads from trends marking one unstable, the other permanent.

Which is why—ruts and dumb-luck aside—the paths of our behavior should never be primrose strewn, but rather well-grounded in simple principles and practices employees and guests deem acceptable right now.

Today’s trends are tomorrow’s leftovers. Today’s fads are as fleeting as yesterday.

Every issue debated at the conference was linked directly and immediately to an appreciation of current business conditions, regardless of the environment nurturing them. So that when Cooke handed down bagsfull of issues, it was no accident he knew—not assumed—they had been steeping for months in the teapots of our minds and the minds of everyone else concerned with the “future” of foodservice. No sugar, no cream.

Name them? Of course. Here we go (stop me if you’ve heard any of these): recession, changing demographics, the environment, healthy eating, waste disposal, water shortages, labor shortages, service, management training, and computers.

Neat topics, eh? Indeed. Each provided us with a jumping off point to talk about . . .to talk about what? This: rather than construct new models for future growth and utility, we discussed sound business practices—in place right now—that pumped blood into our efforts; and how, if we were to keep these practices flowing, with occasional transfusions that responded to customer needs and whims, we could heartily face the future several beats ahead of our competitors. 

We talked about business ethics; about our responsibilities not only to ourselves, our employees and guests, and our budgets, but to community.

It didn’t matter what topic we touched on, ramifications existed that scored nerves, that made us aware. . . that forced us to admit that if we were to survive, we would have to address and resolve not only the constraints of our immediate market, but those of every other restaurant, restaurant chain, and foodservice outlet and retailer competing for our customers’ dining-out dollars.

The very same issues that might undermine our capacity to deal effectively with a sound consumer base were the same ones affecting everyone else: from tire dealers to fish mongers, hardware stores to banks, no one or thing was immune to them: immigrants, AIDS, the environment, drugs, an aging population, minorities in management, world hunger, media bashing—all were somehow impossibly and infuriatingly linked to the way we and our competitors would conduct business now and tomorrow.

If a resolution surfaced at the conference it was to address need rather than greed—the needs of employees (and, it would follow, employer), of customers, of community. Agreed: make a buck, invest it in growth. More importantly, invest in people, spend a buck on them. Deal compassionately with everyone who looks to you for commitment and nourishment. Invite them into the debate that maps your growth.

That, we concluded, was the key to our survival and success.

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