BEING LUCKY & GOOD
7
Steps To Being
Lucky And Good
“Glitz will only get us so far; to achieve long-
term business sustainability our product actually
has to be good—not just have good marketing.”
I
n the past year or so, I’ve been asked
to speak on the subject of innovation
about 14 times. As the economic
screws tighten, it seems like the
pressure increases to invent the
culinary equivalent of the next iPhone.
People from the media, business
schools and bigger companies keep
asking me to predict tomorrow’s big
breadwinners and to foretell the food
world’s future. I’m honored to be asked,
but there’s little that we do here that’s
about being predictive—Zingerman’s
isn’t now, nor has it ever been, about
catching the next big wave.
So what’s the secret to success?
Well, I can tell you some of the things
that we’ve done in focusing on quality
and using the food we make, serve
and sell to create the foundation of a
sustainable, high-energy business. I’m
not 100 percent sure that the seven
points that follow are the right ones for
everyone. But I’m pretty sure that they’re
the approaches that have been working
here for nearly three decades now.
1. MAKE SOMETHING SPECIAL.
If we want to have a special business,
the products we sell have to be special
too. I’m not saying they have to be
expensive, just special. Exceptional.
Engaging. Interesting. Different. And
better still, unique. Selling stuff that
everyone else is selling—even if they’re
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moving a lot of it—is almost never where
we look to put our energies. What we
want to work with here is the stuff that’s
NOT selling—at least not yet. We want
to put something out there that people
will get excited about, take note of, talk
about and want to actively get behind.
“IF WE WANT TO HAVE A
SPECIAL BUSINESS, THE
PRODUCTS WE SELL HAVE
TO BE SPECIAL, TOO”
2. CREATE SOMETHING PEOPLE
ARE GOING TO WANT.
I almost skipped this one because it’s so
obvious but, yeah, making a distinctive
product of exceptionally high quality that
no one is going to like or be interested in
paying for isn’t going to get us far.
How do we know what people are
going to want? One option is learning
to go with our gut and find those foods
that feel right even though anyone in
their right mind would tell us they’d
never sell. Having done that dance
dozens—actually hundreds—of times
over the years I’m well familiar with it.
Seriously, it’s safe to say that nearly
every significant product we have here
was either
(a) unknown in Ann Arbor,
(b) something most everyone said would
never sell or, in many cases,
(c) both.
One of the ways we do it here at
Zingerman’s is to home in on foods that
hardly anyone in our part of the world
has ever eaten but that are traditional
and popular in their place of origin. To
me there’s not much research needed
for this stuff: people from the American
South, Tunisia, North Carolina, southern
Italy or almost anywhere in the Badger
state will tell you exactly how good
these foods are. So it’s not a huge
leap for me to forecast that as-yet-
unsuspecting Ann Arborites are going
to like them, too.
3. YOU’VE GOTTA BELIEVE!
I’ve come to realize over the years that
what we sell has to be special, not just
so that it stands out in the marketplace
but because the people who work in
our organization absolutely have to
believe in what they’re doing. When this
is the case, employees feel comfortable
selling the products, media people like
to report on them and customers like
buying them. Because there’s nothing
to hide, you can just come at it from
the heart and know that the more
customers learn about a product, the
more they’re going to like it. And from
there, we generate the solidity, trust,