Game Face

By Patricia Dailey, Editor-in-Chief -- Restaurants & Institutions, 3/15/2003

Tommy Lasorda swung into the International Foodservice Manufacturers Association annual Chain Operators Exchange (COEX) in Miami last month, posing for pictures and talking about the foodservice industry’s work force and training issues. Asked in a one-on-one what he misses most about his baseball career, the words nearly exploded from the mouth of the former Los Angeles Dodgers manager, propelled by passion, lifelong conviction and an unwavering love of his game.

“I miss beating other teams. I loved winning with our guys. Losing a game killed me every time.”

Lasorda’s relentless competitive verve was a good framework for viewing and analyzing COEX’s conference theme, Profiting in a New Marketplace. With a battered economy, changing consumer demand, growing obesity concerns, drawn-out discussions of war, terrorism and homeland security, even duct tape and plastic sheeting all heavy on the minds of anxious Americans, the restaurant industry is experiencing the type of herky-jerky tumult not seen since the early 1990s.

Within this chaotic sense that so many big issues are beyond immediate control, there is a tendency for some businesses to assume a self-protective, heads-down posture, retreating from the competitive playing field until the landscape reverts to something more familiar and easily navigable. Of course, a repeat of the go-go days of steady growth, easy expansion and near limitless profit potential could be a long time coming. Too long, in fact, for any of foodservice’s constituencies to play possum or compete at anything less than game best.

Certainly every person who took the COEX stage appeared to be in fighting form, saying all the right words as they chanted war cries, conveying moxie and armor-plated invincibility:

“We’ve stabilized our management team.” “We don’t get enticed by the benefits of short-term gain.” “We have a well-documented belief system.” “We build on our principles of customers, workers and franchisees.” “Our focus is on getting better every day.” “We wake up excited every day.”

These were among the standard, predictable lines, practiced to perfection and cheerily delivered from the COEX stage.

No one would argue the validity of these messages during difficult times. But amid the current challenges, words must become actions, strategies, fight plans, whatever it takes to endure and even thrive in this new marketplace.

A sputtering economy does not mean that a company or a segment or an entire industry can’t continue to expand. But financial success in the short term perhaps should not be built on assumptions of growth. Controlling operating costs and maintaining customers, attracting new ones and serving them well—unusually and extraordinarily well—are among the most basic operating principles, and certainly among the most consistently successful over time. Put into place and practiced with rigorous discipline, they can help to smooth bumps and jolts that come with a stalled economy.

Although the business milieu is substantially different from a ball field, the drive to succeed is very much the same in either setting. To avoid a loss, play with the passion to win and understand that every change signals opportunity.