Gotta Chuckle

Back when I worked at the Bou, the place was still run by the founders and the company was on the verge of either bankruptcy or great things---it just depended who you talked to. Kim and John Puckett, the founders, had brought in so many original investors, to get things up and running, and they wanted to be paid off handsomely. To achieve this end, Kim and John pretty much had the entire company running around like chickens with their heads cut off, implementing this or that new management technique brought in by this or that new manager.

My personal favorite was the "Labor Management Manual" which was, in theory, meant to help store managers like myself to recognize our peak hours and the adequate level of staffing necessary to maximize said peak hours. Filling out this manual meant going through a week's worth of hour-to-hour sales figures, checking the manual to see how many staff I was supposed to have on shift to cover said sales, and then reporting how many staff members I actually did have on hand. This had to be filled out and handed in with my P&L sheets, and it did me no good whatsoever in a tight labor market, when I couldn't find another person to work the morning shift to save my life. Besides, I didn't need a freakin' manual to tell me that I needed an extra person on staff to handle the morning rush---it would have been obvious to a blind man on a galloping horse. In essence, it was busy work. And it was an "innovation" that was brought in by a guy named Jay Willoughby, who took Boston Market public, and pretty much tanked the company in the process. The Boston Market IPO---and the management that led up to it---is now being taught at Harvard Business School as an example of what not to do. This is the guy who Kim and John hired to help pay off their original antsy investors---and he bailed as soon as it became obvious that he wasn't going to be promoted to CEO. They brought in some dude from McDonald's for that. He managed to get Caribou sold off to some Investment Dar in Dubai and then he bailed.

Then the board hired Michael Coles to take over and take the company public--- and now he's decided to leave the company.

{...}He issued a statement saying it was "time to step aside and let a new CEO take the company through its next phase of growth."{...}

Given that the share price has apparently dropped two-thirds of its value since its launch, I'm not surprised. What's better about Coles' leaving is that it's loaded with irony. You see, when Coles took over the company, a lot of old friends were either ignominiously shitcanned (as in the case of my dear old boss, Eliot, the man who famously advised us that, "You can put shit on a stick and sell it at the airport.") or quit, simply because Coles was intolerable and they didn't want to work for him. Some people waited until the company went public, finally got their stock options they'd worked so very hard for from the very beginning (and which you couldn't keep if you quit before the IPO), and got the fuck out of there with their sanity barely intact, but others who stuck around and disagreed with him were fired. He canned so many people, his nickname around the support center (aka company HQ) was "Willy Wonka" because "people just keep disappearing." It's laughable in the extreme that Willy Wonka has morphed into Veruca Salt.

It's even funnier when you take into account that he and his wife wrote a very touching (heh) children's book called "The Land of the Caring Bou" and it was sold in every single store.

One of the reasons I was so very glad to get the hell out of that company was because it had changed from when I started. Kim and John had been investment bankers in Manhattan, had become fed up with the daily grind, and, after an inspiring trip to Alaska, decided to start up a coffee shop with an Alaskan theme to it. It was a hit, and it rapidly expanded. It wasn't uncommon to find Kim and John actually working behind the counter at any given store. They liked it. They had managed to build it up, but in the process had brought in all that corporate nuttiness they'd eschewed from the very beginning so they could pay off investors. Caribou was the anti-Starbucks, until everyone came to the realization that the only way they were going to make this pay off was to turn into Charbucks. While I abhor their coffee, Charbucks is top dog for a reason, and Caribou will always be playing catch-up if they think that branded breakfast bars and drinks are the solution to the problem. It's completely possible that Caribou will never catch up to Starbucks. Starbucks built up its brand not by selling Frappacino drinks at 7-11, but by building stores. Only then did they they branch out into other marketing opportunities. Caribou thinks they can leapfrog this step---mainly because it's freakin' expensive to open new stores. If I'm remembering correctly, it's about a quarter mil per new store. And now they want to franchise, but instead of attracting franchisees, they want real estate developers instead. When I worked for the Bou, the word "franchise" was anathema. Now, it's apparently the way to go, but only for a select few who have "real estate development" experience. They're just doing everything wrong. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see this.

And never mind about the fact that many, many talented and successful store managers leave the company every day because they're promised advancement within the company, and are always passed over for a. men or b. ass kissers or c. ass kissers who happen to be men. None of that is, apparently, relevant.

Oh, and you can't buy pork sandwiches there, either.

It seems as if the company still hasn't learned its lesson, particularly when it comes to investment money, and I'm beginning to wonder if it ever will.

I hope it succeeds, even though I don't work there anymore, because, really and truly, they do have a superior product. I'm still a loyal customer. But I wonder how long that's going to last.

Posted by Kathy at November 14, 2007 11:56 AM | TrackBack