When you join the Great Harvest family, you get the honor of coming to our world headquarters in beautiful (and I am not kidding) Dillon, MT for three weeks of school. Today was the beginning of our latest cycle of classes for new franchisees and we have an awesome group from all over the country.
I teach the opening session and it is called “Vision” but I am 
thinking of renaming it “Focus.” In our core business our greatest competition is the ability to stick your arm out in the bread aisle of your grocery store and pick up a loaf. We ask you to make an extra stop to come see us and tens of thousands of people do that every year.
Why? I am the only person in Great Harvest that I know of that pays for bread (all home office employees are given a pretty unlimited supply of bread and most bakery employees get a bread allowance as a job benefit) so I kind of feel qualified to answer that but probably not as much as you. I had to miss my class this morning (note to Delta…. thunder storms happen in the south in the summer….if you are going to make the busiest airport in the world live there, figure out how to work with the weather in a way that is more customer friendly than “deal with it”…Northwest never had these problems) and the woman that teaches it when I can’t is on vacation so I had to give a quality tutorial, quickly, to the next person up. I didn’t do it well because of time zone issues but it did make me come back to what matters. I have the first chance to frame the discussion of the training cycle so what is really important? Whatever it is that makes you walk by the grocery bread aisle without putting a loaf in your cart. But, what is that?
According to all of our research, I am a pretty normal customer. I buy our products because I get a tasty, fresh, whole grain product made by someone I know. Pretty simple but it requires a strong focus to do it well. Make something that tastes great, is incredibly fresh (that is why it tastes so great….), make it help me live longer and have it served by someone I can relate to. Done. I am in.
But it is so easy to get lost in the reality of our market. Everyone has an idea. There are diets du jour. People used to hate carbs. Now they hear bad things about gluten. We sell those for a living so it is important to not loose sight of what matters to you. I suspect the important things are: Taste. Freshness. Local ownership. Whole grains. Change things up but keep that focus and I will buy it…..
Is that it or am I not as typical as I think?
