I recently had brunch with a friend who was lamenting over the fact that his favorite bartender wasn’t working that day. As bartenders go, this was a tragedy, as I was told for the next two hours how they really relate to one another and share common stories and interests, in between glasses of “free” wine. I was starting to worry. My friend would reward this particular bartender’s generosity and comradery with a very large tip at the end of the afternoon. So, when we arrived to find him MIA, my friend couldn’t stop raving about him, ad nauseum. I finally asked, “Why don’t you solve the problem and find out what his schedule is?” He told me, “It’s always changing.” To which point I said, “Then you know what, you should open up your own bar, hire cool bartenders and post their schedules online.” “What?”, he said. It occurred to me while I was sitting there listening to him go on and on about this bartender, that if you applied design thinking principles to the equation, perhaps you could come up with a disruptive model for staffing your bar.
What if you hired a bartender and scheduled them based on their “following”? If research bears out that the largest and sustained tips come from your most loyal customers, and if we’re talking about brand loyalty here, then why not prototype a situation where your collective customer base chooses your schedule? For instance, if the same customers who enjoy your services always come there on a Saturday afternoon—assuming we are creatures of habit—then isn’t it possible, to insure you receive the largest tip haul, to always be there on a Saturday afternoon? I remember years ago I had a favorite bartender and even had conversations with his friends and loyal customers who would be there at the same time as me. When he changed jobs, I followed him to the tapas bar in midtown, then the restaurant on the westside, then to the bar at Rockefeller Center. Oddly enough, so did everyone else, and he wasn’t even bartending by this point, he was the manager. Our tips then benefited the other bartenders. OK, so I don’t do that anymore, but the point is to capitalize on a trend and develop a business model that insures brand loyalty, customer satisfaction and sustained revenue.
I encouraged my friend, who happened to be in IT, to envision an app where schedule is driven by popularity and accessibility to bring in the biggest tips in a given week. The app would highlight a brief profile and interests the bartender had, leaving out any personal information, to attract the most compatible customers. It might even bring in new customers whose old bartender just doesn’t do it for them anymore. I realize, never having been a bartender, that along with the pros there are certainly cons. For instance, even bartender’s schedules change in any given week, and some bartenders are just more personable than others. Jealousy and competition for the same schedule might ensue, and what happens if the other half of the bar simply don’t think you are the greatest?
Well, the point of design thinking is to immerse yourself in the research (Boss, I’m on my way to the bar to do research); analyze the pros and cons to come up with a viable business model (Charlie gets better tips on Thursday nights than she does on Sunday afternoons); and prototype a scenario to see if it has legs; then continue this iterative process until you’ve had too much to drink—no, I kid—until you can develop the app that addresses all the issues and concerns of both the bartender, customer, wait staff and manager, as this is as much about the customer experience as it is about the staff experience. This is where most business models fail, when it only addresses the customer experience. I told my friend I would organize a workshop of all his friends and bartenders to see what the possibilities could be. I also told him to call his new bar venture THE FOLLOWING. We here at thinkshift hope to one day soon hold the first design thinking workshop focusing on the bartender/customer experience. What a following that will bring!
