Unity is Honor
#InThisTogether
We all heard the short story “Unity is Strength!” In its various versions…
A farmer teaches unity to his three sons by asking them to break a bundle of 3 sticks which they fail to accomplish!
While all of them could break each individual stick effortlessly.
The moral of the story — unity among the three brothers would allow them to surmount great odds, which they individually could not hope to…, a case for unity as a force multiplier.
The intention of this post, is not to be preachy and proselytize on the obvious virtues of unity, but to take cognizance of insidious Threat of Irrelevance, and how, in the context of this threat — Unity is not just strength but definitely the honorable path.
What is — “The Threat of Irrelevance” ?
Restaurants are all about delivering a great experience to the customer — from the way we curate our menus to the way we plan our dine-in experience we try to put our soul into everything we do. — “Creativity” & “Customer experience” are the building blocks of our business model.
The Internet, as in other industries, has, and is, continuing to change the business paradigm for us.
It has been a catalyst that has enabled great conveniences, and comforts, to customers, [some that people feel one could not have lived without]
Tap your phone a couple of times, a pizza or a rice bowl will show up at your door. The mobile has become the gateway for F&B experiences.
With this, — Aggregator apps, have become the ‘gatekeepers’ controlling close to the entire supply-chain.
The internet gives dis-proportionate leverage to these ‘gatekeepers’ that entire industries are forced to adapt to these new masters of algorithms, to survive somehow, (not thrive for sure!) under a Digital dictatorship of sorts.
These new masters use the restaurants customer data to build algorithms that further increase the dependence of the restaurants, eventually deciding who succeeds and who fails at business.
Are you on the first page of the delivery app in your location? Lets say you get the highest volume of sales — still !!
Are you spending enough on ads to promote yourself on the aggregator platform — perhaps then you may, [ or may not] get business — but the sales guys of the apps will tell you — Why don’t you discount unto 50%?
Then you will get ahead and we all do at sometime or the other, fighting to be the last to die, clawing others out of the way to sustain something we all realize may not be sustainable.
Aggregators have come to wield inordinate power, that they use algorithms to control demand by choosing the food that end customers should be eating while deciding who survives and fails on the supply end by becoming the primary sources of demand.
The people will say, this is business right? The fittest survive, business processes have to be efficient etc etc
But no, this is not OK. Creativity and entrepreneurial spirit, are being sacrificed at the altar of corporate greed — There is no level playing field, not even the pretense of trying to make it so, and the rules are set by those far removed from the field, in some cold corporate corner office, never near the heat of the kitchen or the cacophony of a busy restaurant. Innovation and creativity thrives when there is freedom — but not under the influence of a digital dictator who is getting to decide what is right and what is not !
This is the “Threat of Irrelevance”. When there is no scope to work on our ideas and our creativity in order to succeed, but give-in to the power of someone else to decide our fate — we are deeming ourselves irrelevant.
How to counter threat of irrelevance with Unity?
We cannot change customer behavior, so that’s out! We cannot ask our customers to stop using the internet or the mobile to access F&B experiences.
But what we can do though, is to come together, and evolve a clear way forward for all; in-stead of fighting the algorithms, lets embrace them and convert them from being the preserve of a few, for the use of many — Let us in a democratic way, build and evolve our own “gatekeeper” platform on based on the tenets of equal opportunity, equality, freedom from exploitation and as even a playing field as possible, that will help the industry and the individuals, as one without the other is worthless — and we add a third leg of tech and intertwine it into the basic fabric of Restaurant industry and the community of restaurateurs.
Knowing the problem is half of the solution; we have come thus far and we have a the framework built and in place, that has been fleshed out to an extent. It is important that we add facets to it, but adhere to the core tenets and the why’s and whereof spelt out earlier.
This has to be a Community effort and build, the local edifice more important than the national one.
Local has to take precedence over the state or national.
This alone will ensure that we stay democratic as far as possible, without compromising on agility and though nothing need be considered sacrosanct, there has to be some which we will hold in place as values for the next ten years, [ an eon in this digital age], just to give the baby the legs and the time to evolve a culture of service to the restaurant industry — that is long overdue!
“CoEats collective” is creating technology and protocols to benefit the long term future of F&B industry while also ensuring short term sustainability.
CoEats.org is the home to our activism and free to use software. Our agenda is to build a digital democracy for the restaurant industry.
Kindly follow CoEats for us to form a collective — Because we are #InThisTogether.
