Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Lab #11: Chains -vs.- Local!






For this lab we compared the nation wide known chain restaurant "IHOP" to the local (Winston Salem) restaurant "Mary's of Course!" We compared the restaurants on three main points: popularity with customers, overall income, and care for customers (atmosphere, nutritional value, and service).


Popularity With Customers:
  • IHOP - At the one closest to UNCSA, it is very rare to ever find a line to wait to get in. It is also rare that the restaurant is full of customers. It is a relatively untalked about restaurant that is visited mainly for its convince and late night hours. Few people talk about IHOP as a fine or nice restaurant.

  • Mary's of Course! - It is a very busy and popular restaurant. On almost any given Sunday, the wait to get in is at least 45 minutes for a party of 4 or more (unless you are an early bird like us and show up 15 minutes before it opens). Even though IHOP is not far away and has no line, the people at Mary's are willing to wait up to an hour and a half on average to get into the restaurant. Among most Winston Salem going people, it is a well known restaurant and a good place to take a friend on any given morning.

Overall Income:

  • IHOP - IHOP is a chain restaurant therefore its income includes IHOPs from all over the world. Therefore they make a very large sum of money on a daily basis and can easily expand, build new restaurants, and launch advertisements on a global level to promote their business.

  • Mary's of Course! - Mary's makes a good sum of money; however, it is only one restaurant with one income. While Mary's continues to fill her restaurant every Sunday, it is impossible for her to expand and build more restaurants simply because the overall income for the restaurant is not as high.

Care for Customers:

  • IHOP - The inside of IHOP is very basic; it is simply a room with some colorful booths and a few prints of paintings hanging upon the wall. The lowest calorie meal on the menu contains 590 calories and the lowest calorie salad contains 1050 calories. They use processed and frozen foods (obviously not organic). The service is very basic and not personal what-so-ever.

  • Mary's of Course! - Mary's has hundreds of trinkets decorating her walls, different salt and pepper shakers on each table, a variety of coffee mugs each looking completely different, free coffee while standing in line, real paintings done by local artists, old record covers and stickers on the wall, silly art all over the bathroom walls, and advertisements for local events on the windows. Mary's uses nearly all organic and natural ingredients including 100% juices and all food is prepared fresh from scratch daily (NEVER frozen!). The service is outstanding and very personable, in fact the entire staff knows my name (I go there every Sunday) and asks if I want "the usual" (which I always do). The owner (Mary's) seats customers everyday (except for when she is on vacation) and is very caring and takes care of all customer needs.

Overall: Mary's of Course! is much better!

Not only is it better for your body, the atmosphere, staff, and service are incomparable. Mary's is one of our favorite restaurants. It is an example of how real customer care can outweigh any chain any day of the week. If you haven't been to Mary's, you should definitely start now!

3 comments:

  1. This is a great illustration of chains vs. local restaurants. However (and this may have to do with how lame my family is...), I've lived in Winston-Salem for all my life and I've never been to Mary's. I guess that just goes to show how chains can make so much more money by using shoddy ingredients and bad service, then use the extra profit to dominate advertising and push local companies out of business. That said, I do hate IHOP, and this lab has given me a hankering for some delicious hometown breakfasting.
    -Tim

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  2. I absolutely love this compare and contrast post. Like most students at UNCSA, I too love Mary's, though I am not able to visit as much as I would like (which of course would be just about every day). I also think that IHOP was a great choice with which to make this comparison. It is absolutely true that the atmosphere, staff, service, and product is of a higher quality at Mary's. This conclusion, I believe, can also be applied to privately owned institutions versus the huge chain restaurants that hold a monopoly on our food industry. In terms of social capital, the intimacy and care of private institutions is far better. Chains, monopolies, and big industry are another great factor in the demise of American social capital.
    Samantha Miller

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  3. I loved the comparison! You guys really dove into this lab and thought hard about the differences. Bravo. It must have been really hard doing all that research at Mary's!!!!!! You guys did nice work on your blog!

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