It’s not often I get to go to a world famous delicatessen, but I did last week, and all in the name of research (more details about great sandwiches and fantastic customer service in a moment). But first for a deviation…
Zingerman's world famous delicatessen
Small Giants
For a couple of years I’ve been fascinated by the Small Giants movement. Typically businesses grow by default. If they’re reasonably successful, the immediate reaction is often “Let’s get bigger and turn over more money”. But rather than assuming this has to happen, it’s worth considering another alternative “Let’s get better at what we do, then we’ll become more profitable”. These businesses tend to be the way above average in what they do and the way they do it, and this is where we are heading.
An Interesting Flight
Last week I flew out to our Planright Office in the US. The lady sitting next to me was just returning from the Small Giants conference in Germany, and we got talking. It turns out she has a business a similar size to ours, in the town of Ann Arbor, which is only 30 minutes from our PlanRight office in Brighton (the one in Michigan, not the one with the pier). This is also the home of Zingerman’s delicatessen and a number of other small start-ups. We arranged to meet up and tour a couple of local high tech start-up businesses and have lunch.
The Field Trip
So last Friday, the PlanRight Team made a “field trip”, including a trip to The Whole Brain Group (a web development business), a visit to SRT Solutions (a software business) and a tour of downtown Ann Arbor, followed by a quick look at the University of Michigan American football ground (which is HUGE).
And we had LUNCH.
The Food
A Zingerman's Sandwich
What can I say. It probably took 20-30 minutes in the queue before we ordered our food. Whilst queuing we were offered free samples of various pickles and cheeses, and the staff were continually asking if anyone needed any help (given the amount of stuff they stock, that’s pretty important!).
Then the sandwiches came. Nuff said.
[...] interestingly, is my article about “Small Giants” – businesses who would rather be great than huge. I was pleasantly surprised about that [...]