One MNB reader wanted to weigh in on our Buc-ee’s conversation:
You continue to provide my favorite morning read!
OMG has anyone writing to you that is opposed to Buc-ee’s ever been in a Buc-ee’s? You all make it sound like they are being built in neighborhoods. Most stores couldn’t be in more remote areas off major highways. I love it, there are signs on the freeways that say a Buc-ee’s is coming up in 81 miles…and people wait.
You really want to compare a Buc-ee’s bathroom to McDonald’s or a Starbuck’s bathroom? They also provide the best gas prices on the highway. Where if you haven’t noticed, if they are not at your exit you actually are being gouged by every filling station at every other exit.
So, what business moves to an area of this country and doesn’t ask for tax breaks, I can’t think of one in a red or blue state? You make it sound like the local government doesn’t have a choice, they can simply say no and you wouldn’t have a Buc-ee’s on the highway running through your town. But they will find a municipality that will welcome them down the road. By the way, there are less than 60 in the entire US…we are not talking about Walmart. They found a niche that travelers love and are willing to wait in line to outside and inside the store.
To cap this off, if you haven’t noticed they happen to be a great American success story. I would almost guarantee there is a business white paper on them in a library. Capitalism at its finest, two guys that had an idea to offer travelers clean bathroom’s and competitive gas prices.
I am sure I will get a rise from many readers, probably blue leaning. Know that this is only an observation and an opinion from a first generation American capitalist.
The only point I’d make is that I’m not sure it is fair to imply that everyone objecting to some of Buc-ee’s business practices are both blue-leaning and non-Capitalists.
On another subject, one MNB reader wrote:
On people accepting cooking advice from AI this is the classic situation where people are happy to rely on AI until they get their first recipe that makes no sense.
More and more YouTube videos that appear online are, I can only assume, AI generated. It is not unusual to look at pictures in the background of an instructional video and the picture makes no sense. A picture of a device may be shown half correct and half reversed. Truly undermines any credibility in the information being provided.
I love it when readers offer their own anecdotes, which is what Steven Ritchey does here:
Been shopping on Amazon for too long, while I don’t care much for Jeff Bezos, I do have to admire, at least to a degree, what he has built. Though I do have some issues with some of his methods and how he treats employees.
As I said, I’ve been shopping at Amazon for a long time now, and have barely had a hiccup in the service. Once in a while I package might get delayed, but arrived at the new, revised promised time.
However, lately, I’ve seen a few chinks in the armor.
A few months ago, I ordered some men’s grooming products from Amazon, some things I don’t find in stores at times. I placed my order, got my delivery date and thought I was set. The day of delivery, I got notification it was on the way, except it never arrived. It was a Saturday and I was home, so it wasn’t porch pirates.
Then I got a notice from then that it had been delayed, it would be delivered the next day. Again, no show. This happened for a few days, got a promised delivery and delivery never happened. In the end I learned after some pointed questioning that it got lost somewhere, they didn’t know where. First time for this. I got a refund, and found the product in a local store.
I call on supermarkets for a living, so it’s not like I’m never in a store.
Fast forward to now. My church does an egg ministry, where a group of members take hard boiled eggs to homeless people. It makes a good meal when they pair it with some other food item. We distribute them twice a week at a local food pantry. We go through 20 dozen eggs a week or more.
In the interest of helping, I’ve been proving eggs pretty regularly. I do it often enough I decided to get a made for the purpose egg boiler, with built in timer and auto shut off.
I looked on Amazon and found one I liked within my price range and ordered it. This particular unit came in two capacities, 7 eggs and 14 eggs. I ordered the 14 egg capacity. I was given a delivery date and it arrived as promised.
It was the wrong size, and even a different color that what I’d ordered. I ordered one in black and what I received was blue. I figured, OK, mistakes happened. I processed a return, and ordered another, making certain I had the correct one ordered.
That one arrived in a couple of days, same mistake, got the same model that holds 7 eggs instead of the requested 14, and again it was blue. OK,I processed another return, sent it back and reordered, a third time.
Third time wasn’t the charm. Got the exact same thing I’d already received twice. It held 7 eggs instead of 14 and was blue instead of black. I sent that one back, and ordered a different one, holding 12 eggs. It arrived this morning, the correct one, color, capacity, everything.
It’s not a big deal, was more of an inconvenience that anything. But, it was unusual that I gave them three chances to get it right, and they still blew it. It makes me wonder if they’ve grown too large.
Oh well, that’s my tale of woe. We’ll see what happens in the future. Companies can grow to a scale that service, the very service level the customer had grown accustomed to begins to wane. I’ve seen it elsewhere.
MNB reader Phil Herr offered some thoughts about this week’s FaceTime about what I view as Dunkin’s devolving focus on its core values:
Today’s FaceTime really hit home for me. While I am no longer working, a key element of my responsibilities to my clients, was helping them determine their brands’ core values. A simple way to get them engaged was to pose a simple question: “What is your brand famous for?” In other words, what brought you to the dance? And why is it no longer pertinent? Brands that stayed loyal to their values generally had greater value in the minds of consumers, than those that drifted or abandoned what made them famous to begin with.
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