Pudding Mittens wrote:.
There used to be a single-location, family-owned independent pizza place in my area. They made excellent pizza for decades.
Then, for whatever reason, they decided they could dumb down the quality of the product and use schitt ingredients, call the product the same name and put it in the same boxes and simply not say anything about the radical quality change.
Wow, what a great plan, reducing costs of raw materials and increasing margin! And if you call it the same name and use the same packaging, you can "coast" on the great reputation of the brand's prior quality and none of the rube customers will ever notice!
Except they did. Shortly after, everyone noticed the product now sucked and told all their friends, the brand's reputation was ruined, nobody bought the product anymore and they went out of business.
B-b-but it had the same name and packaging!!!!
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Seen that before. When I was stationed in Long Beach I bar-tended part time. I worked at a neighborhood place just down the road from Mc-Douglas that had great burgers, chile, and schooners. The special at lunch was a schooner and burger for $3 if I remember right. His wife made a big pot of the best damned chili every Monday and we used it all week, we would sell out by Thursday usually. Folks would be stacked up in there like cordwood. Holy crap.
Well the owner got greedy. Dude was making a killing but evidently not fast enough. He sourced the burgers from a "cheaper" vendor and made them a bit smaller. "Nobody will know the difference!" Yeah.
Then he cut back on the condiments and seasoning to some generic stuff. We couldn't use mayo (which had been a standard) unless the customer asked. Then, when he started not making enough as business was dropping off, he raised the prices.
All of us had tried telling him the new burgers sucked and go back to the old ones, even at a higher price and you'll be good. Nope, he knew better, so this is the way. End of an era. I quit about then, I had had enough. It was really too bad. That place was a gold mine and a great neighborhood hang. Last time I went by there it was shuttered.
Do not mess with success.
