No Turn On Red

Let’s play a game. I’ll name two retailers and you guess which one has more locations in the five boroughs of New York City. Ready?

Starbucks vs. Dunkin’ Donuts

McDonald’s vs. Burger King

Rite Aid vs. CVS

Coach vs. H&M vs. Pinkberry

Best Buy vs. American Apparel

According to a new study from the NYC-based think tank, Center for an Urban Future, the numbers are suprising.

Dunkin Donuts has more locations (341) in the five boroughs than Starbucks (235). Though Starbucks’ has more than double the amount of Manhattan locations (186 vs 78). McDonald’s has 248 locations compared to Burger King’s paltry 92. Rite Aid has 209 locations to CVS’s 108, but not as much as NYC-favorite Duane Reade (with 216 locations). Coach and H&M have as many NYC locations as California upstart Pinkberry (all with 12 locations in the city) and would you believe that American Apparel has more locations than Best Buy (16 vs 9).

The details revealed by the study are interesting, with a thorough breakdown of how many locations each retailer has in each borough. It is worth downloading the PDF and taking a look at their results.

Couple of interesting commentaries on the report from the New York Daily News, the New York Observer, and the New York Post.

Photo above from Flickr user lab2112, used under Creative Commons.

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Boy, do I feel like an idiot.

Yesterday I wrote about the new Sobe Energy Coolatta at Dunkin Donuts. But you know what I didn’t realize? In my multiple mentions of the word “coolatta” in that post, I spelled it wrong every time. Stupid me.

I don’t feel so bad, since I am currently the number one Google search result for “sobe coolata” and that has actually driven a bit of traffic to this site. Welcome!

Maybe this post will put me towards the top of the results for “Sobe Energy Coolatta” or “Sobe Coolatta”, with the proper spelling!

There’s some more information about the new drink at QSR Magazine (of course they spelled the name right!) and also an official website, that doesn’t seem to have much to it right now, at Coolatta.com.

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I am a loyal Dunkin Donuts drinker. I’ll usually stop in to one of the (many) local locations twice in a day. I like my coffee with extra cream and extra sugar. I don’t care if coffee snobs look down on this, I love my Dunkin Donuts.

Last week, Dunkin Donuts announced that they were launching a new website, MyIcedCoffee.com, today. Partnering with MapQuest, the site has a driving direction application that will let you know where the nearest Dunkin Donuts are along your trip. More coverage is available from the Boston Globe.

Judging by the few addresses I put into the application, they seem to be rather liberal with the locations that they are coming up with. From Point A to Point B, I know of 3 Dunkin Donuts that I pass but the application provided me with the addresses of 2 Dunkin Donuts that would require me to turn off my route. Technically speaking, I think that this website is bloated and too flash intensive. It’s well designed but it takes a few seconds to learn how to navigate. The driving direction portion of the site isn’t intuitive to get to. But, they’re giving away $10,000 and I’m sure people will look around.

The underlying branding message is there, though, and that’s important. Dunkin Donuts needs to keep reinforcing the notion that they are the drink that you will grab every day. Coffee while running errands, Coolatas at the beach, Smoothies at the kids baseball game. Being able to find out where Dunkin Donuts is while you travel reinforces this notion. Just because you aren’t home, doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the coffee you like.

In my travels across the country, Dunkin Donuts is something I have looked for. I’ve started my days with my favorite coffee whenever I can. I was suprised to find a Dunkin Donuts during my recent vacation to Aruba. This website, bloated as it may be, is something I will look at when I am planning my upcoming Summer getaways.

When walking into Dunkin Donuts today, I saw that they’ve also unveiled their new marketing campaign with Rachael Ray. She was unveiled as the spokesperson in March, but the extent of her marketing involvement seems to have been slim until this point. Now, her photo is now slathered all throughout the store. There has been a commercial playing with her on television, but I wonder if now there will be more to come.

My worry is that Dunkin Donuts is going to get away from the branding message that works for them. Coffee your way, I think is what they say. They have to keep that idea strong in people’s mind. Rachael Ray will increase their visibility, but they can’t rest on that. I don’t want to see Dunkin Donuts settle for a campaign that basically says, “Rachael Ray likes Dunkin Donuts and so should you”. Consumers are smarter than that.

In addition to the new marketing, they’ve unveiled some new drinks and new donuts.

To the left, my friends, is the new Sobe Energy Coolata from Dunkin’ Donuts. Don’t be turned off by the neon greenness, it is actually refreshing. The Sobe Energy Coolata is one of the new drinks they’ve unveiled. It has a cherry citrus flavor and I am enjoying that. Their Smoothie was my go-to drink of the summer of 2006, Coolata could be my go-to drink for this Summer.

That is, until the nutrition information is posted for this drink and I find out exactly how much sugar I am consuming.

Key Lime and Lemon donuts are now featured to compliment the Berry Berry donut the chain started featuring a few weeks back. I was asked, “Would you like to try one of our new donuts?” when I ordered my coffee today.

Dunkin Donuts is trying to kick the summer off in high gear. I just hope that they continue a multi-channel, multi-faceted approach to their marketing campaign. They can’t rest on the superstar spokesperson, but she doesn’t hurt.

When everything comes together, this could be a very good season for Dunkin Donuts.

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The second half of last week was crazy busy for me. Let me catch up on a few of the stories I missed last week:

Fendi sues Wal-Mart over sales of fake handbags:

Italian fashion group Fendi S.R.L. sued Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in U.S. federal court on Friday, accusing the world’s largest retailer of selling counterfeit handbags and passing them off as genuine at its Sam’s Club warehouse stores.

Sam’s Club stores in California, New York, Florida and other states sold knock off handbags, wallets and key chains that were identified as “genuine” Fendi products, according to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

The suit by Fendi said that Wal-Mart has never purchased its products and never asked Fendi if any of the items bearing its trademark were genuine.

Having never stepped foot into a Sam’s Club, I’m suprised to even imagine that they would carry any Fendi products. This suit will be interesting to watch to see where the blame, if any, lies within Wal-Mart. Is this the case of an over-zealous buyer making sure they’re meeting “always low prices” or is this the case of Fendi not happy that their goods somehow ended up in Sam’s Club?

Good coverage in the comments over at Wake Up Walmart

More about the changes at Federated as the September transition to the Macy’s brand approaches. Here’s the rundown: Macy’s is the brand that people response to the most nationally, even if people in this article are negative about the loss of their regional department stores. Expect less promotions and increased private-label and exclusive offerings, as well as stores tailored to the region that they are in, so that Federated can maintain some of the things that people loved about all of the chains that they’ve swallowed up. Very informative article, though.

And lastly, two food-related quickies about two different chains who are being compared to Starbucks:

First is Dunkin Donuts, who are obviously competiting in the same space as Starbucks (in the sense that they both sell coffee). Boston.com has an article outlining the future growth plans of this chain. The plan calls for 15,000 U.S. locations in 2020, up from 5,000 today, and this will be done through a variety of store layouts and prototype as well as increased product offerings to drive afternoon business.

Is this all being done in an effort to compete with Starbucks? Not so much, it seems. As a loyal dunkin Donuts coffee drinker, I think that as much as these two brands concentrate around the same product (coffee), there is not too much overlap in their philosophy and themes, so I can see both of them co-existing pretty well in the world we live in. Seriously, though, whoever thought that there will be a day that we will live in a world with tens of thousands of locations of the same two stores?

The other eatery being compared to Starbucks doesn’t deal with coffee, but instead deals with ice cream.

USA Today has an article outlining the future growth of Cold Stone Creamery and the ice cream business in general. Two quotes that sum up this article really well are the following:

Cold Stone doesn’t just sell sundaes and sorbet, it sells sizzle. “It’s like Starbucks for kids,” says George Carey, president of Just Kid, a consulting firm.

and

An industry that once sold ice cream now is selling an ice cream experience.

Tonight I went to Friendly’s to get a large Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup sundae. I’m not concerned with the experience, I just want good ice cream. But with that said, it will be very hard for me to resist the new Cold Stone Creamery that they are building three minutes from my house.

That’s all I got tonight.

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Here is one thing I believe in: customer service is not one way street.

Customers, as well as businesses they deal with, have an obligation to better customer service. Customer service cannot go from bad to good if the company doesn�t know that they are providing bad customer service. On the same hand, customer service cannot continue to be good or great if the company doesn�t know that they are already providing that level of service. It is important for the customer to communicate with whoever they are able to in order to help build good customer service relationships.

I�d like to share with you five ways that you, as a customer, can improve customer service in the places that you shop. Although the scope of this post is geared towards retail, restaurants, and industries where customer interaction is one-on-one, the basic tenets that I will describe can be applied to almost all of our business relationships.

Most of these ways should seem simplistic and obvious, but that’s the point. Talking to friends and family, it doesn’t seem that a lot of people are doing these incredibly simple and easy things that they can be doing to help businesses improve customer service.

For a little back story as to why I wrote this, check out my other post: On poor customer service and me being a poor customer.

Continue reading this entry

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