The Pepper Grinder Debacle
OK, so it wasn’t so much a debacle as a snafu, or maybe just a glitch. But the experience got branded on my psyche because it was so emblematic of what I believed about business. Intrigued?
I’m reading The Goal (finally) by Eli Goldratt (thanks for the recommendation, Chris at Ceptara) and it made me think of the Pepper Grinder Debacle so of course, I want to share.
I was a waiter for 13 years in establishments ranging from neighborhood taverns in South Miami Heights to fancy-ish hotel restaurants in Seattle. One of these was McGuffey’s Restaurants in Asheville, NC. If you Google McGuffey’s you’ll see old references to various outlets, including one in Branson, MO as well as the three or four that were once in Asheville. At its height, McGuffey’s had 14 restaurants across North and South Carolina and Missouri. The story of their rise and fall is one for another post, but I can say with confidence that when I worked there, it was one of the best restaurants in every market it served; particularly in Asheville.
At one point, in addition to my waiter duties, I was providing some quality consulting so they could apply for (what was then called) the North Carolina Quality Leadership Award (a stepping stone to the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award). So I had the honor of mucking about in some of the inner workings of the corporation in order to guide the award application process. The owner had decided that the Baldridge was well within his company’s abilities, but I had talked him down to the NC version as a warm-up.
In one conversation with the kitchen manager, a great guy whose name escapes me – let’s call him Earnest – I learned about the Pepper Grinder Debacle.
It was the late 80′s and McGuffey’s was introducing many of the trends in contemporary restaurants at the time including pepper grinders. This era also included the introduction of sun-dried tomatoes (Waiter, is this a tomato or a raisin?), albacore tune steaks served rare (Waiter, this fish is RAW!), and blackened food outside of New Orleans (Waiter, this chicken is burned!) but those also are posts for another day.
Rare, even for high end restaurants, we had matching salt shaker / pepper grinder sets on each and every table. At least twice a week I had to teach a guest how to make pepper come out the bottom, as they frantically shook it up and down trying to get pepper out of the little silver knob at the top.
The set matched: about 6 inches tall made out of some oak-ish looking wood. The salt shaker was simply a hollow piece of wood with holes poked in the top and a rubber stopper in the bottom, while the pepper grinder was (obviously) somewhat more complicated with an adjustment screw at the top, shaft running through the middle, and a grinding mechanism at the bottom.
The superior taste of fresh-ground pepper was not lost on our guests and it was common for pepper grinders to disappear from tables.
This is where Earnest comes in. Looking over a new shipment of various supplies with Earnest, I saw a case of salt and pepper sets in the loading dock. Earnest opened each box, took out the pepper grinder, and put the now half-empty (half-full?) box containing the salt shaker into storage. Looking over his shoulder, I saw a LOT of boxes that I assumed contained just a salt shaker.
“Ummm…Earnest, why do you buy the whole set when all you need is the grinder?”
You know where this is going. Earnest was the KITCHEN MANAGER and I was just a waiter. He explained patiently to me that they came as a SET. Duh.
I had some time on my hands, so looked on the box, found the name of the company and called them. It turned out that McGuffey’s paid $20 for a salt and pepper set. I asked what it would cost to just get pepper grinders. $17 for just a pepper grinder. This seemed easy!
Earnest however, wasn’t convinced. “What? That’s a rip-off! The grinder is half of the set, it should cost $10!”
I’ll summarize, because this is painful even in memory. Short version:
- Earnest thought I was crazy or at least meddling in things I didn’t understand.
- He continued to order sets and continued to fill up the storage room with salt shakers. Maybe he eventually burned them for heat in his home. I don’t know.
- McGuffey’s won neither the NC Quality Leadership Award, nor the Baldridge (you’re shocked, I know). They continued to delight customers for a couple more years, however.
Why Earnest couldn’t calculate the real value of not spending money on something he didn’t need and didn’t have to subsequently store, was beyond me then and remains beyond me now. I told you it was branded on my psyche.
I think of this because I’m delighted at the characters in The Goal as they newly discover that the actual purpose of their manufacturing plant is to make money and that every single thing they do is related to whether they make money or not.
While seemingly common sense, the Pepper Grinder Debacle was not so much a debacle as an example of doing what had always been done because it was easier than critically thinking about the relationship between something as innocuous as a salt shaker and the success (or eventual failure) of a company.
Makes me want to ask clients to show me the storage rooms they never go into to see what skeletons lurk there.
~Geek~
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