Draining the lizard in the old west franchises
The other day I had the good fortune to dine at an authentic
tex-mex style restaurant: Montana's. For those Texans or
Chi-chi's diehards reading this article, who are currently
reverse tracking my IP address and loading your shotguns to head
on over to my house...I am of course, being sarcastic. Not a
single one of us would ever consider Montana's "authentic" in
any way, except for the authentic diarrhea following one of
their meals. Nonetheless, that doesn't stop the
"marketing-wizards" behind this latest cholesterol cafe from
trying to fool us into thinking that we have traveled back in
time to the old west...
One of the fascinating things that I discovered as I was zipping
my way to the bathroom after another delightful meal at this
establishment was that even the washroom had a "air" of the old
west. As my eyes eagerly scanned the place for the sign reading
"Bathrooms" or "Washrooms", they eventually came to rest upon
the Old-Westernized "Outhouses" beacon. Of course in my state of
colo-rectal anxiety, my brain took some time to travel through
my Wild-West dictionary of repertoire, derived from episodes of
Bonanza and Clint Eastwood flicks, to finally translate the
"Outhouse" reference.
It's not that I don't enjoy playing the
guess-what-the-washroom-is-called game while my bladder is
swelling to the size of a watermelon from all the free-refills
or that the Nachos-Grande is making a run for the border, but it
looks like those franchise marketing wieners have screwed us
again.
Did these geniuses think that the average Alice Fazoolies
customer actually thinks that they are in Italy and hence would
be frozen in absolute panic if the bathrooms were labeled in
English ("Men" and "Women", instead "Bambinos" and whatever the
hell girl is in Italian)? Or that the average Casey's patron
would mistake this salmonella production factory with a trip
back in time to the old west where they can order authentic
frontier foods like "Fish N'Chips" and "Vegetarian Burgers"?
My only conclusion to this blatant lack of connection with the
patrons that visit these franchises is that in order to be
successful in franchise marketing, one must be so full of crap
that going to the washroom would only hinder success.
See more of my rantings at: http://alphamaleal.blogspot.com