Sure, every business has information that is best kept private. In China, though, it seems that so much is considered a trade secret that nobody is ever able to benefit from open communication. And in many cases, if not all cases, the customer is the one that loses in the end.
How do we provide customers with the best possible product and service and still protect those unique products or services we have? Better yet, how do we decide what is kept secret or private?
This all came to mind when I was having a coffee in Liuzhou. No, it was not the coffee that spurred my mind, it was the process of trying to order the coffee that brought up these thoughts. Here, I will use coffee as an example, but the truths can be easily applied to much more than just a cafe.
The average coffee menu in Liuzhou consists of twenty or more coffee items, half of which are regional coffees (Blue Mountain, Columbian, Brazilian, and so forth). With such a low volume of coffee sold and such a variety of beans, that can only amount to stale coffee.
So, I like to ask about the beans before I order. "How fresh are these beans?" "What is your freshest bean?" "Who supplies your beans?" The answer to all those questions was, "Don't know; ask the boss." In other words, that is a trade secret that must be kept in the private hands of the owner.
In the case of Liuzhou coffee, I can understand why they would keep those facts secret, because were the truth known, customers would never buy their coffee: "We freshly grind only the oldest beans we can find and sell at the highest price imaginable." I would bet my life's fortune that at least half of their regional coffees are not from that region anyway, especially Blue Mountain. So, they have fake, old coffee, and half the time, employees that do not know how to make it.
Compare that with the cafe scene in the West. Sure, there are some trade secrets, but any quick look online will reveal every coffee shop technique, suppliers, and the standards for quality for the entire industry. Customers do not choose a cafe because that cafe actually knows how to make coffee; that is the prerequisite. They choose a cafe's atmosphere, location, specialized drinks, or something else, and those are not secret.
Because of the open lines of communication about coffee, customers know what to expect. If they want fresh, they can find cafes that provide only the freshest beans. If they want expert baristas, they can choose between any number of shops and find the barista they like or knows makes their coffee the same every time.
In China, though, with all of those things being secret, coffee remains stale and customers remain uninformed that it is so.
What if somebody broke on to the scene, gave clear information about their coffee's freshness and origin? How would that change things? Well, if customers tried the coffee, tasted the difference (easily noticable to even the uninformed, amateur coffee drinker), and moved their business, then yes, I do think things would change. "But could they sustain business, if everybody else could just use the same coffee source?"
Of course! First, unless those other cafes opened up information about their own source and freshness, then the open information cafe would still have the upper hand. And even if the other cafes did start giving out that information, the customers would have much more quality coffee available and could then choose their cafe of choice on other factors, which really are the main reason they come anyway.
Coffee source is not a sustainable differentiator. Somebody can always find out where you get the coffee if they really wanted. So, why not go ahead and open up the communication and use it to your advantage: "We guarantee coffee less than two weeks from roast, the freshest in town." And once the industry starts to open up along with you, rely on other sustainable differentiators:
- We are the well-lit place, not a dark, dank bar.
- We speak English
- We are the family-oriented place.
- We are conveniently located
...and so on.
