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Jake’s Ice Cream – Jake Rothschild’s Atlanta Ice Cream Dream

June 8, 2009 By Marcel Crudele 2 Comments

On June 3, 2009, I had the opportunity to sit down with Jake Rothschild – a serial entrepreneur in Atlanta that started Jake’s Ice Cream 10 years ago. Since that time, he has grown the company to 3 locations and established distribution deals with local businesses as well as national chains. Here are some of the highlights and advice he offers other organizations – sorted into the CC: ScoreCard.

Click here to listen to the whole interview

Jake's Ice Cream

PROMOTIONS

Where should time and money be spent regarding promotions?

Traditional Advertising – Jake is not a fan of advertising with media like printed publications, TV, and radio. Historically, this hasn’t produced great results for him and there are no real metrics that can be measured to determine the effectiveness of these efforts… no traditional advertising for this ice cream business.
Online Advertising – this experience consists of working with Citysearch and, to some degree, Yelp. While Jake’s has paid for promotions with Citysearch and doesn’t think that it has been a waste of money, he has no plans to continue the effort because there’s no indicator that it’s been effective enough to justify the cost. Most of the value has stemmed from the user generated content on these sites (user reviews), which is free.
Jake’s Website – the website provides a place that serves as the authoritative source of information about the business and has proven to be a good way to publicly present what the company is all about. It’s the easily accessible marketing face of Jake’s and is frequently one of the first places a potential patron learns about the business.
PR – Jake’s Ice Cream has been featured on msn.com, NPR, Zagat, Wall Street Journal, and Frommer’s. It’s these less bias sources that have added fuel to the business’ growth – “it means so much more to (people) than a full page ad.”
Cause Marketing – he recommends being a co-sponsor of organized events. Working with organizations like Special Olympics – Georgia has helped to reach new patrons and drive sells.
Social Networking – tools like Twitter and Facebook have given Jake a way to stay connected with existing patrons and he thinks these are great for fostering the customer relationship – the most important thing about his business.

LEVERAGE

Jake believes that word of mouth is the number one way that people find out about Jake’s. Social network tools like twitter, the Jake’s Ice Cream group on Facebook, and user reviews on sites like Citysearch and Yelp help to accomplish this as does providing a great customer experience that leads to traditional word of mouth… ya know, where people actually talk to each other.

AUDIENCE

Jake describes his first-tier audience as “label readers” – the people that are concerned about what they are putting in their bodies – they are the people that shop at Sevananda, Return to Eden, or Whole Foods. His second tier audience is people that simply want a great quality product. His focus on high quality ingredients and a great product is the right message for this audience and he reaches them through Promotions and Leverage.

CONNECT

Jake’s uses the various means mentioned in Promotion and Leverage to Connect to their audience, however, the ongoing dialog is done through social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter and the in store interaction. Due, in part, with the time required to update their website, they are also excited about implementing email marketing by using Constant Contact to keep all of the subscribed patrons up to date on the daily flavors available at each store.

ENTICE

How does Jake entice his audience?

High quality product. Enough said.
Superior customer service. Jake wants to know everything about his customers to personalize the experience – “we want to know their dog’s name, we want to know their kids’ birthdays.” It is also a goal to respond to any customer complaint within 30 minutes… by a personal call from Jake.
High quality in-store experience. This includes providing a comfortable environment that can serve as a second home to patrons.

Jake also offers incentives to customers, with one of their most successful campaigns being the distribution of “Moolah.” These $1 and $5 gift certificates can be purchased in each store or can be distributed by Jake’s for promotions. This “virtual cash” can be redeemed for any purchase (versus a 2-for-1 or 10% off coupon) and is credited for the programs success.

SIMPLIFY

The main way that Jake simplifies is through technology:

NuRol POS – Jake’s POS system is “monkey stupid easy” and has the ability to report on the sell rate of all flavors at any point in time, which helps determine the flavors that are successful.
Quickbooks is used as the accounting system and is “extremely user friendly.” They did try out Peachtree Accounting, but it was more difficult to use.

SUCCESS

There are a few areas to evaluate when it comes to measuring success.

PR, Advertising, and Social Networking

Measuring the success of all of these efforts continues to be a struggle, as it is with all organizations. There is the feeling that traditional media hasn’t delivered the results desired and even the metrics provided by local search solutions like Citysearch that shows the number of profile views has not been able to measure ROI. There is a feeling that the efforts of Facebook and twitter are effective at keeping in touch with existing patrons.

Incentive Programs

The Moolah program does provide some feedback. There are relations that can be drawn between the number of virtual dollars distributed compared to the number of those redeemed.

Technology

As mentioned under Simplify, NuRol provides easily generated snapshots of what flavors are selling, which helps determine the quantities that should be produced and identify slow moving products.

SHOUT OUT’S

I asked Jake about any vendor relationships that he considers exceptional. He highly recommends:

U.S. Food Service – Their customer service is excellent and they show their love of working with small business in myriad of ways.
360 Media – Our PR Firm loves on us like we are family.
Carlton Fields – a great law firm that protects us, suggests to us, and nurtures us so that we are a healthy company

FINAL WORDS OF ADVICE

Do what you love. If you are going to lead your own organization, make sure it is something you are passionate about and adjust the direction as needed to insure this.
Never quit on your dream. Running your own operation is hard, but be persistent.
Learn how to ask for help. You don’t have to know all of the answers.

BACKGROUND

Jake wants to be Willy Wonka when he grows up, but he doesn’t plan on that happening anytime soon. When he was 10 years old, he used to make children’s books as gifts for his grandmother. When he was in college at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he introduced the first instant, all natural hot chocolate on the market – something that caught the attention of Money magazine. His first physical business – a coffee shop in the Morningside neighborhod called MOCHA (Museum of Contemporary Humorous Art) – transformed into the first Jake’s Ice Cream over 10 years ago, with the original location in Old Fourth Ward, Atlanta.

Jake’s playful nature is much more serious when it comes to his products. He is dedicated to providing the community with high quality, uncompromised products – with a focus on all-natural ingredients and hormone free dairy. This diligence has led to a number of local restaurants including his creations on their menus and has recently resulted in an agreement with Planet Smoothie for a non-fat, agave sweetened yogurt called YMG, or Yo My Goodness. The focus on the product is rivaled only by his commitment to the experience of his patrons.

CONNECT WITH JAKE

Website: http://www.jakesicecream.com
Facebook Group: Jake’s Ice Cream
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/jake-rothschild/5/b61/741

UPCOMING EVENTS

Non-fat Frozen Yogurt

June 5-7, 2009 – See Jake at the Virginia Highlands Summerfest.

June 8, 2009 – Jake’s new product line YMG (Yo My Goodness) – non-fat yogurt sweetened with agave – will be sold at Planet Smoothie at The Peach in Peachtree Shopping Center – 2900 Peachtree Rd, Suite 113 Atlanta, GA, 30305.

JAKE’S ICE CREAM LOCATIONS

Jake’s Ice Cream – Irwin Street Market 660 Irwin Street Atlanta 30312 (678) 705-7277	Jake’s Ice Cream Cafe 2745 Lavista Road Decatur, GA 30033 (404) 343-3525
Jake’s Just Desserts 2144 North Decatur Road Decatur, GA 30033 (404) 963-7151

PURVEYORS OF FINE JAKE’S PRODUCTS

Anis 2974 Grandview Ave NE Atlanta, GA 30305 www.anisbistro.com (404) 233-9889	Valenza 1441 Dresden Dr NE Atlanta, GA 30319 www.valenzarestaurant.com (404) 969-3233
Dave’s Cosmic Subs 1540 N Decatur Rd NE Atlanta, GA 30307 www.davescosmicsubsatl.com (404) 373-6250	Inman Perk at Inman Park 240 N. Highland Ave., Suite H Atlanta, GA 30307 www.inmanperkcoffee.com (678) 705-4545
Haven 1441 Dresden Dr NE Atlanta, GA 30319 www.havenrestaurant.com (404) 969-0700	Inman Perk at Flowery Branch 5866 Spout Springs Rd., Suite D Flowery Branch, GA 30542 www.inmanperkcoffee.com (770) 965-6065
Our Place Bakery 3387 Main St Atlanta, GA 30337 www.ourplacebakery.com (404) 767-3181	Inman Perk at Gainesville 102 Washington St. NW. Gainesville, GA 30501 www.inmanperkcoffee.com (678) 943-8080
Planet Smoothie at Ansley Mall 1544 Piedmont Ave., Suite 301 Atlanta, GA 30324 www.planetsmoothie.com (404) 541-9124

You can also see this interview on UrbanSpoon.

Filed Under: Festivals and Events, Interviews, Microblogs (like twitter), Restaurants / Food Service Tagged With: 360 Media, Atlanta, Carlton Fields, Cause Marketing, Constant Contact, Ice Cream, Jake Rothschild, Jake's Ice Cream, Moolah, NuRol POS, Peachtree Accounting, Planet Smoothie, Quickbooks, Restaurant, Sevananda, social networking, U.S. Food Service, YMG, Yo My Goodness

Decatur Arts Festival – Location, Location, Location

May 30, 2009 By Marcel Crudele Leave a Comment

Decatur, GA held their arts festival last weekend and did a good job.

Around Atlanta, there are a ton of festivals in the spring – Dogwood Festival, Inman Park Festival, Sweetwater 420 Festival and tons more. They’re great. People are happy, the weather is gorgeous, the art is good, and there are funnel cakes! Decatur, however, does something that the others really don’t – they intertwine the festival with their town center.

Decatur Arts Festival

Decatur has a distinctively awesome layout for the Atlanta area. There is a town square full of retail stores, restaurants, music venues, and offices. What’s more, underneath the middle of the area is the most perfectly placed MARTA stop – imagine, a stop where you emerge into an area of bustling activity … stuff you actually want to do. My running comment about the rail system is, “MARTA would be great if the trains went to where people wanted to go” – MARTA and Decatur got this stop right.

So we have a great town square combined with the perfect MARTA stop on top of which the city overlays an arts festival. People were enjoying lunch just steps from vendors. Bands were playing on the central gazebo (man that’s cute). There was a great synergy of the permanent and transient that highlighted the area. Bravo!

So how do they do on the CC: Scorecard? Big points for Enticement. There is something for everyone with the added bonus of a fun and social atmosphere. Because of the multi-faceted aspect of the events, I’ll go ahead and give them good points for Audience as well. The message is simple and obvious to each audience member it reaches… Art Festival in downtown Decatur. Good stuff.

However, Promotions and Connecting weren’t that good as far as I can tell. I found out about the festival initially because I saw a big banner close to Decatur – it was just luck that I was in the area. Although I don’t think they intended it, there was some success through Leveraging. I saw a couple of posts on Facebook from people that were attending and received one phone call abut the event. This was organic viral leveraging – imagine what they could do if they made a concerted effort to harness that.

Success and Simplification are hard things for any festival to address and there were no innovations that I noted in regards to this. It would be interesting to know if they polled businesses afterward to see how much their sales increased, but I’m guessing they didn’t.

The Decatur Arts festival drew me to the town center where I realized all of the restaurants I need to try there. That kind of enticement has long term economic impact and helps to enforce the idea that their town square has a lot of value with and without a festival.

Did anyone else go? What did you think?

Filed Under: Festivals and Events Tagged With: Decatur, Decatur Arts Festival, Georgia, MARTA

McDonald’s McCafe Coffee

May 22, 2009 By Marcel Crudele 2 Comments

McDonald’s McCafe – specifically the Iced Mocha and Iced Latte – are not so bad.

Latte's and Mocha's

I am a self proclaimed food snob. When it comes to coffee, my preferences are:

1) Freshly ground Ethiopian Harrar in my cone filter coffee maker
2) The local coffee shop
3) A fancy chain like Starbuck’s
4) Other, just give me something that resembles that delicious nectar of the Gods

That is why, when caffeine deprived and driving back to Atlanta from Florida, I was looking for a Starbuck’s to fuel the journey. Unfortunately, there were none to be found. I finally broke down and went to McDonald’s for Other. I had the chance to try the Iced Mocha and the Iced Latte and they were surprisingly good.

Sure it took 5 times to get the person at the register to understand what I wanted to order (an Iced Mocha and Iced Latte… no half foam, non-fat, blah, blah, blah … just the thing on their menu). I also felt a little guilty ordering after the 8 year old, rural Alabama boy in front of me had just asked his mom, “Why would anyone order coffee in the afternoon? That would be weird.” And, it took 2 employees about 10 minutes at the magic Mcdonald’s one push coffee barista to make the drink – apparently the 4-stirs is a critical part of the process. But the drink was good. An much less expensive than Starbuck’s.

So how does this fit into Community Cultivation? Well, first, McDonald’s is everywhere so they are part of most communities. But let’s get more specific with the CC: Scorecard.

Promotions – McDonald’s is promoting the hell out of it, as they do with everything, but with a little tongue and cheek advertising. They know people are gaining a taste for fancy coffee drinks and that the public’s view of them is as a low cost purveyor of fast food. They bridge this gap with delicious shots of their beverages combined with jabs at the “fancy” drink names, discussing how party changes to parte’ and debate transforms into debate’ with this added elegance.
Leveraging – not so much in this metric.
Audience – Here is the huge one. Companies like Starbuck’s made coffee drinking a widespread part of American culture. Coffee shops and these national chains were capturing the top dollar tiers of the market, but that leaves a lot of room to grow. Not wanting to leave money on the table, companies like McDonald’s and Dunkin Donuts introduced premium coffee to improve their footing on lower dollar tiers and began a push to the middle. Starbuck’s countered with reduced price coffee (Pike Place). So here we are, a battle is brewing (come on, that’s funny) … and McDonald’s is ubiquitous. Who will get the middle?
Connect – McDonald’s has a huge budget to promote and they are using all of their channels to try to connect with patrons about their new offering.
Entice – good coffee that is cheap and easily found. Enough said.
Success – POS data on sales provides great feedback on the effectiveness on the new product line.
Simplify – Well, this is not great yet – as witnessed in the 10 minutes it took to get my beverage. They do have the one button magic barista machine which should make this easy, but they need more training. Their inventory already includes coffee, milk, ice, chocolate and caramel so they didn’t increase the number of SKU’s, they just added a new piece of equipment. Not too bad if it adds to the bottom line.

Overall, I think Mcdonald’s might have a winner. Especially considering, with the state of the economy, they are one of the few companies that has increased revenue. In economic-speak, McDonald’s would be considered an inferior good (no offense Ronald, it’s an academic term) where demand increases as patrons’ incomes fall, but if their McCafe’ is viewed as a substitute good that is considered comparable to more expensive offerings by competitors, well that just captures market share. Holla!

Filed Under: Restaurants / Food Service Tagged With: coffee, Dunkin Donuts, Latte, McCafe, McDonald's, Starbuck's

Domino’s Pizza Tracker

May 18, 2009 By Marcel Crudele Leave a Comment

Domino’s Pizza let’s you not only order online, but track where your order is in the process using their Pizza Tracker. From order placement, prep, bake, box to delivery – patrons can watch as their creation comes to life and is delivered to their door.

Let’s face it, online ordering rocks! You get to leisurely peruse the organization’s offering and construct your order then, in the case of food, verify with everyone that you got everything. From the organization’s standpoint, it helps to insure that you don’t forget anything and maximizes their sales dollars. Plus, there it is less likely that your order will get messed up – all of these things score high on the CC: Scorecard for Enticement. Also, by getting your patron to enter the order, you reduce overhead which scores well on Simplifying. Finally, there are easy to track metrics on who is using the solution, how long it takes them to place the order, what pages they linger on, etc., which racks up points for measuring Success.

The pizza tracker adds even more value. It extends the Connection to patrons and improves their experience, giving them a reason to stay on Domino’s website for approximately 30 minutes (or maybe less) while improving their overall experience and – as weird as this is to say about a national chain – helps to form a more intimate bond with the organization.

In my case, I had not ordered from Domino’s in about 5 years, but the commercials advertising their new sandwiches and finally their pasta bowls was too much. I had to give them another shot. After configuring my order, the Pizza Tracker popped up and I was informed that Christopher was personally overseeing my dining enjoyment. The tracker updates automatically without refreshing the screen and I watched Christoper’s progress for about 15 minutes until I was informed that Michael was bringing my meal to me. When the knock came at my door, I opened it and immediately asked, “What’s your name?” The surprised delivery person replied, “Uhhhh, Michael.” Wow.

“Michael, who prepared my order?”

“Ummmm, I think it was Christopher.”

Cool. A confirmation that Domino’s deserve some more Enticement and Connection points. Hell, throw in some Leverage points too because I told about half a dozen people about it.

Now there is some discussion about whether the tracker is legit (link 1 and 2). For all I know, Domino’s determined the average time each step takes and the tracker automatically updates at set increments. It does get employee names right, so there is some kind of interaction. If it isn’t valid, they are at least persistent with the sham, even offering an iPhone app.

What I am interested in is how it really works. Ideally, when an order comes in, it would generate a tracking number and as the employee goes from stage to stage, they would toggle the status – old school would be a bar code tracker that gets scanned as the food moves along, new school would be a touch screen task list that employees use for each stage. This information would be phenomenal for Success and allow for Domino’s to track employee performance and process speed.

Any Domino’s employees on the prep line want to shed some light on this?

Filed Under: Restaurants / Food Service, Technology Tagged With: Domino's Pizza Tracker, DPT, online ordering, pizza

Decatur Arts Festival – Location, Location, Location

McDonald’s McCafe Coffee

Domino’s Pizza Tracker

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