IT’S YOUR UP
How Focused Is Your Menu?
W
Tom Jennings Retail Training Expert Tom Jennings is a lifelong member of the flooring business. Since selling his family’s retail business in 2006, he has served the industry as an educator and speaker.
hen describing a retail flooring store's operation, I often use the analogy of running a restaurant. There are two basic elements of a restaurant — presentation and preparation. Most restaurants get their basic ingredients from common industry wholesalers daily — just as most flooring retailers do. Successful restaurants take ingredients that come in the back door in cartons and present them to their customers as tasty entrees priced fairly but profitably. Less successful operations never quite master either the presentation or preparation aspects. Since they can't command quality operators’ prices, they often try to play the giant selection of mediocre offerings at a lower price game. Lacking focus, they rationalize that someone might want liver or pancakes for lunch, so they include these items on the menu just in case. They seem to pride themselves in offering items that no one asked for prepared and presented rather unremarkably. Starting to sound familiar? How many times have you looked at a large and complex menu and thought to yourself, “there's no way that all of this can be fresh or well prepared.” Many lessons can be learned from the foodservice industry. There is a growing trend in the restaurant business that I have long felt the flooring business would benefit from — cutting the menu items. I recently read a newspaper article stating that the total number of entrée items at the nation’s top 500 restaurant chains was down nearly 9% last year alone, continuing a trend in recent years.
He is a past board chairman of the WFCA and is currently the board chairman of WFCA Services, Inc. He may be reached at tomg.jennings@gmail.com
34 Premier Flooring Retailer | Digital 3 2020
Many lessons can be learned from the foodservice industry. There is a growing trend in the restaurant business that I have long felt the flooring business would benefit from — cutting the menu items.
