One of my favourite hot
and cold sandwich shop is a little butchers in my town. They sell in excess of
400 hot sausage and bacon bap. A sausage and bacon bap is £1.75. (in the East Midlands, they are called baps)
They sell 600 cold baps a day. A full on, stuffed with ham, proper ham, made on the premises with salad, decent sized bap is £1.20. It's always crowded. Sometimes people wait outside, in the cold, even though there are plenty of alternatives within walking distance. So, what's the secret? Why is it worth a drive and a wait?
But before we carry on with the story, I come from the East Midlands (just to the right of Nottingham) .. you see the word baps and think .. he is rude. You see I love baps, large baps
.. but you might know baps as one of these ...
A bap is a individual bread roll .. anyway, glad we cleared that up! back with the story.
They sell 600 cold baps a day. A full on, stuffed with ham, proper ham, made on the premises with salad, decent sized bap is £1.20. It's always crowded. Sometimes people wait outside, in the cold, even though there are plenty of alternatives within walking distance. So, what's the secret? Why is it worth a drive and a wait?
But before we carry on with the story, I come from the East Midlands (just to the right of Nottingham) .. you see the word baps and think .. he is rude. You see I love baps, large baps
.. but you might know baps as one of these ...
- Bun – the Northern term for a bread roll, bread batch or bread
- Bread cake – (Yorkshire)
- Cob (Midlands)
- Bread roll or roll
- Barm or barm cake or flour cake – (Liverpool, Manchester, South Lancashire and West Lancashire.)
- Bin lid – (Merseyside.)
- Blaa – (Ireland)
- Bulkie roll – (somewhere strange)
- Buttery – (Aberdeen.)
- Dinner roll –
- Hoagie (Yorkshire)
- Nudger – (Liverpool)
- Oven bottom – (Lancashire)
- Stottie cake – (Newcastle)
- Teacake – (Yorkshire and East Lancashire)
A bap is a individual bread roll .. anyway, glad we cleared that up! back with the story.
No specific reason. Prices are reasonable but that’s not the
point. The energy of the owners is certainly part of it, but most customers
never meet them. I think it's the big picture of little decisions made by
caring management out to make a difference. Usually, when a business like this
gets bigger or turns into a chain, the marketing departments for bean counters
make what feel like smart compromises. The fancy degrees and fancy suits
collide with the magical, and the place gets boring. "Why do we need 32 different
types of sandwich filling when we can get away with six?" or "Perhaps
we ought to stop young lads filling their baps with unlimited tommy sauce for
free—we could sell over priced packets of sachets of Tomato sauce and profits
will go up?"
This turns out to be the secret of just about every really
successful enterprise. Sure, you can copy one or two or even three of their
competitive advantages and unique remarkable attributes, but no, it's going to
be really difficult to recreate the magic of countless little decisions. The
scarcity happens because so many businesses don't care enough or are too scared
to invest the energy in so many seemingly meaningless little bits of being
extraordinary.
Irrespective of whether
you are a one man (or one woman) band, a small independent, big chain independent
or corporate chain. Start making those decisions in your lettings agency today.
Sure you say, ‘Chris, we are part of YourM-aart-neeels-tree-wide, we cant make decisions
like that’ .. yes you can. All a landlord wants is someone who will care for
their property as if it were their own. You cant change the fees, but you can make them worth them. Take pride in your job, go the extra
mile, do that extra viewing at 6pm, drop by the tenant to check the water tap has
been fixed, ring up the landlord to check the rent has arrived in their bank
(you know dam well it has it just shows you care), .. do more than the minimum ..
and you will shine .. landlords and tenants will love you and you will enjoy
your job more
