Second in the series on When I've Arrived...As Lucas proved in the first of this series, arriving at the top rarely produces the stellar, life-changing results you were hoping for. My next thoughts went to Zoës Kitchen, a small quick-serve restaurant in Birmingham, AL (my hometown).
Zoës is known for a chicken-focused, Greek style menu. They make their own house dressing (which is really good), as well as fresh squeezed limeade (also really good). Zoës started out with just a couple of small locations I knew of around Birmingham, both of which were the kind of place you went to for their great food, not so much for the atmosphere.
With their food being as good as it was, more and more people started talking about it, more locations sprung up, and they took it to the next level. They got a huge face-lift and developed a consistent brand that included a really well designed interior in all their locations. Then I started seeing Zoës in other cities around the SE and knew they were really seeing big growth. It was really cool to watch a small restaurant I frequented develop into a regional dive.
Things changed.
The more locations I went to, the less the food felt like the homestyle, authentic food I was accustomed to getting there. It lost flavor, it lost its family-owned feel, and over time, started loosing me as a frequent customer.
Don't let this happen to your customers.
There is a lesson here. Make sure the quality of your service or products doesn't start to slide as you succeed. Its a hard thing to realize when you're in the midst of it, but keep asking yourself the hard questions. Don't ever settle. Keep challenging everything you do.
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