Moe's vs. Chipotle

VS



Let the battle for Brown Street begin.

There is a new player in town attempting to take down the juggernaut that is Chipotle. It was only last week that I realized we were getting a Moe's

Although Chipotle has a special place in my heart with their cilantro rice, their super fast service, their $5.25 chicken burritos and their ridiculously high employee turnover I went against my better judgment and decided to try Moe's anyway.

I, however, did not go it alone. I brought a few close friends with me who are equally biased toward Chipotle. As you navigate Moe's menu you notice that they have strange names for everything. My choice? The Joey Bag of Donuts (see comparable Chipotle's Chicken burrito).

Below is my scientific rating scale developed through qualitative and quantitative methods and extensive research:

Scale - 1 to 5 (1 being the worst and 5 being the best)

The Service:
Chipotle - 5
Moe's - 3

Moe's was slower and was not as busy. I give them a get out of jail free card because it was their first week. Perfection like Chipotle's assembly line takes time.

The Food:
Chipotle - 5
Moe's - 4

Although it was different, both were equally delicious. Moe's food did come with complimentary chips, which is a huge bonus. Also Moe's had a few more options than Chipotle. That being said, Chipotle's meat was better tasting and their burritos really are bigger.

The Value:
Chipotle - 4
Moe's - 5
Moe's gives you free chips and a complimentary salsa bar. Their burritos are only a few cents more and you get all of the extras.

The Overall experience:
Chipotle - 5
Moe's - 4.9

I had to let Chipotle win this due to my bias toward tin corrugated sheeting affixed with screws and bolts.

The Winner:
Chipotle with 19 out of 20 points
Moe's - 16.9 points

It was close, and I was scared that my test might betray a restaurant that has been so good to me, but it was worth it. Whew...I need a burrito!

Jeff Schmidt Cadillac

If you have been paying attention to television commercials for Cadillacs recently and you live in Dayton you are probably aware that Jeff Schmidt just purchased Roberts Cadillac. It is now Jeff Schmidt Cadillac. As stated in the Dayton Daily News Mr. Schmidt is planning on "attracting a younger crowd" to the Cadillac market. Say What!?!

Per my father (who has a Ph.D in Marketing and follows these kinds of things) the median age of a man who purchases a Cadillac STS is 52 years old. The median age of a man who purchases a Cadillac DTS (The flagship car) is 56 years old. These are descriptors that help define what Marketers would call a Target Market. There are many reasons for this high median age you can probably name a few without any help.

• The cost of a new STS is $49,775.00 per Jeff's website. The cost of a DTS is $54,685.00 fully loaded.
• The styling, while chiseled and modern looking, is not what this younger demographic is after. (see Pontiac G6 with it's new curved lines and convertible 2-Door option.)
• 4-door large wheel base luxury sedans do not sell to families who have parents in their 40's and need practical cars (i.e. a Minivan)

I assume Mr. Schmidt is meaning someone in their 40's when he claims to reach the younger market. See above description and think of the 40 year olds you know: Do they have $50,000 to spend on a car? Will they allow their pre-teens to haul their muddy soccer gear all around town in a new STS?

Marketing 101. The answer to the questions above is "No". As we learned in our consumer behavior courses, the target market selects the product. Not the other way around. Groups of people are naturally drawn to products for specific reasons. If you try to "push" or suggest a product to a group outside of the primary target market your marketing efforts will have a very minimal effect.

From what I can tell Mr. Schmidt is doing his very best to be different. Understandably so as he bought a failing dealership. He does need to do something. Age, however, is not the place to change the game. Perhaps he should focus on service, possibly he could throw in an extra year of that fantastic OnStar service. He could maybe even buy the first "X" people who purchase a Cadillac a round of golf for 4 at a local swanky country club.

What ever he decides it needs to appeal to the same group that buys Cadillacs normally. Think 50+. What do they like to do? What is their stage of life? Where do they travel? Who is their peer group? Who are they trying to impress? What is their primary reason to purchase?

I wish Mr. Schmidt the best. But unfortunately his current model will not work in the long run. He is making a classic mistake. He is trying to change the customer base, rather than focusing on the customer.

Watch UD Basketball online for free

On the Dayton Flyers official site all of you Flyer fans from across the country can watch UD Basketball for free. They just added a feature supported by CSTV that allows you to stream the live feed onto your computer. I hope that this will continue with the NCAA tournament when we make it (Crossing fingers)

You will need the latest version of Internet Explorer (which pains me since I am an avid Firefox user) and the latest version of Windows Media Player as well. Unfortunately those are kind of annoying to upgrade to, but well worth it I assure you.

Other than the stiff software requirements I am pretty excited about this. I also was messing around on the site and found out that you can stream many of the games earlier in the season as well. So for all of you that missed a home game...enjoy!

Go Flyers!

Dayton Flyers NCAA Basketball

I have been going to the UD Basketball games for about 15 years of my life. As my family is closely tied to the University of Dayton in a number of ways, we have been Flyer fans for quite some time. I can even remember back when we first got tickets in the nose bleed section so that my sister and I could run around be be kids without disturbing the game for anyone else who actually cared. I can also remember the senior season of Negel Knight who would later be drafted into the NBA. The Dayton community has supported the team with out reservation for many years and I am proud to be a part of that community.

Within the past week the Flyers have added another page to the history of Dayton basketball: Brian Roberts scored his 1,000th point. Only 36 other players for UD have achieved such a status. This accomplishment speaks for itself. I am normally not one to glorify athletes, but from personal experience Brian Roberts is not your normal NCAA student athlete. He is actually smart, lacks the ego that has become so tiresome in college sports, and he unselfishly produces on the court. In short; a leader.

In the most recent game on Saturday against La Salle how does Brian Roberts respond to breaking the 1,000 point barrier? He scores 34 points and wins the game with his unfailing free throw shooting. He is routinely over 80% at the line, but on Saturday, in the last 2 minutes of the game, he was 7 for 7.

Will Roberts have the same long term impact at Negel Knight? Maybe not. Will Roberts continue his basketball stardom into the NBA? Most likely not. In Dayton our stars come and go, and we only get them for a short for years. Our only chance is to watch them play in college, and that is why UD basketball is so special. That is why our fan base is so strong. The fan base roots for the team, not the players. It seems Roberts is rooting the same way.

GO FLYERS!!

Xerox - Finding A First Job

So you have graduated...now what.

I graduated from the University of Dayton in may of 2005 and had been applying for all sorts of sales jobs. I had applied to every type of company from American Income Life Insurance to a start up company that sold mobile bar-coding layouts for huge factories. I must have had applied for 30 jobs and had been through at least as many interviews. My search ended with my realization that I was going to be selling copiers for the first part of my life.

I had been contacting a number of businesses in the Dayton, OH area and had narrowed my search to a few well known companies: NCR, IBM, Xerox, Procter and Gamble, MeadWestvaco etc... I had high aspirations and was willing to do just about anything to not end up like some of my friends working for Localsmallcompany Inc. I wanted to be branded and have a pedigree so that when I left my first job, my second employer would say, "I want you to meet Kevin, our newest employee. He worked at ________ ."

When I was an intern at Reynolds and Reynolds in college I noticed that people always said that, "Kathy is our number one sales rep this year. She came from IBM." They mentioned that as if it was no surprise that she was successful here. I wanted that. Kathy was riding the coat tails of a company that she no longer worked for. She always humbly pushed off the compliment, which only made people talk about it more.

Well, IBM never returned my call even though I had the help of my sales professor, who worked for IBM for 15 years, passing out my resume to his old IBM-ers. In fact, of all of those companies mentioned only about half had contacted me at all. Xerox, however did. I must have sent Leah, Xerox's Dayton sales manager, three resumes and half a dozen e-mails from January to May and finally she returned my repeated request for a job. Lucky for both of us she was jsut in time. Another local copier company that sold Konica Minolta had been calling me and I was in the interview process with them as well. In fact they had an offer on the table before I had even heard from Leah. This was a huge advantage: I had ammo. Unlike most college graduates I already had leverage, and with a competitor!

I met Leah and toward the end of the interview when she asked me who else I had been talking to I made sure to mention Konica Minolta. She asked a few other questions about them and the rest is history. I started with Xerox and began a journey that I could only have imagined.

I thought I knew a lot about sales.

I was about to find out that I did not.