Defining - and delivering - Value

Defining value is relatively easy. Delivering value is hard. – Hopefully you’ll find this lengthy post delivers some value of it’s own.

What makes something, anything we decide to spend our increasingly precious money on, a good value? Bringing that question home to us, the right-between-the-eyes version became: “Is The Elephant Walk a good value?”

We’ve taken a long, hard look at ourselves this year in the context of value. Of course, we’ve learned some interesting things about subjects other than value that we’ll talk about here at elephantwalktalk as time goes by. But, on the question of whether or not we’re a good value, we found that – surprise, surprise - it depends… It depends heavily on the lens through which people view us.

We learned that most people view The Elephant Walk restaurants through one of two lenses, as either “fine dining” or “Asian.” At the risk of being accused of stereotyping, it seems to us that the dining public gives fine dining restaurants permission to price almost as they like, but most Asian restaurants are expected to price their menus inexpensively. And we concluded that more people view us as Asian [some say “ethnic”] rather than fine dining. Accepting the foregoing, it is not surprising that price over the years became an issue for many customers of The Elephant Walk. For the most part, most people who view us as fine dining considered us a good value. On the other hand, those who view The Elephant Walk primarily as Asian grew to feel we had become expensive – or, in other words, not such a good value.

The choice we made nearly 18 years ago to serve both Cambodian food and French food has been a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it gives The Elephant Walk texture and nuance; our guests have more choice in an authentic [authenticity will be the subject of a future post!], multi-cultural context. On the other hand, being both Cambodian and French [we ARE bi-cultural restaurants; we are NOT “fusion” restaurants] has sown seeds of confusion, some which have matured into strong opinions about us that conflict with one another.

In all honesty, we’ve probably been a bit confused ourselves about our own identity – a not our cultural identity, mind you, but our economic/marketing/branding identity. I’ve been using the term “fine dining” in this post. But a more accurate descriptor of how we’ve regarded ourselves for many years is the restaurant industry has term “upscale casual.” We grew very comfortable viewing ourselves in that context, as peers of many other great restaurants in Greater Boston. What we ignored is that most of them were American or European in theme, there having been relatively few upscale casual Asian restaurants in Greater Boston during our time. We felt very comfortable comparing our pricing with the European and American restaurants in Greater Boston [look for an analysis of the Zagat Survey's list of Greater Boston’s “Most Popular” restaurants in a future post]; in that context we ARE a good value. But the fact is, according to most of our customers [and our sales bear this out: nearly three out of four people order Cambodian food at The Elephant Walk]… we are Asian.

It did not feel good sweeping away the denial, to understand and accept that a large percentage – perhaps more than half – of our existing and potential clientele thought we were overpriced. Swallowing hard, it was on to the obvious next question: What were we going to do about it?

If math is not your thing, please accept my apologies… but one way it’s possible to define Value is in the form of the following equation: V = Q / P or Value is equal to Quality divided by Price. Accordingly, if we increase the Quality of The Elephant Walk dining experience while holding our Prices steady, the Value of The Elephant Walk dining experience goes up. Similarly, if we hold the Quality of The Elephant Walk dining experience steady while lowering our Prices, again, theoretically, the Value of the dining experience we offer goes up.

It was easy to decide that we wanted to commit to providing better value to our guests. In the healthy internal debate that ensued over how, we concluded we should address both quality and price. Quality is the far harder nut to crack since, when you do, it fractures into so many big pieces: We can change how our dining rooms look and feel, what food and drink we serve and how it is presented, how we greet people, seat people, serve people, and much more. We have begun the process of planning how to improve in each of those important areas. But price, while not EASY to address, requires a much narrower focus to address. So it was price where we decided to begin our process of making The Elephant Walk a better value to our guests.

The first decision we faced was: What kind of new pricing policy would be truly meaningful to our clientele? The immediate follow-up question: Can we do it? Our discussion zeroed in on making a genuine effort to price ourselves more in line with Asian restaurants at our level of quality. And we also felt that we had to make it obvious at a glance that our prices were better than they were, and better than other restaurants perceived to be at least at our level of overall quality regardless of ethnicity. The prices on our menus today meet those requirements, with the clearest indication the fact that all of our entrées are now under $20.

Reprinting a menu with new prices is easy. Maintaining food quality in the process is hard! Nadsa faced the huge challenge of creating new dishes that met our price and quality standards and re-plating our classics that had to look better while costing less, using the same ingredients. Something had to give, of course. What was required of her was reducing portion sizes where necessary, and possible, to fit our new pricing structure. When she bumped up against a dish that no longer fit, she created a worthy replacement. Nadsa, I think, achieved something great accomplishing this daunting task, recalibrating our menu pricing to meet people’s expectations of Asian restaurants with no sacrifice of The Elephant Walk quality that our guests have loved for so long.

While eating my lunch yesterday afternoon at The Elephant Walk in Waltham, a few days after the last new menu was implemented, I picked up a copy of the September 23, 2008 edition of Stuff @Night, a Boston “scene” bi-weekly. Flipping through the pages I came across a review by Louisa Kasdon of a new Indian restaurant in Brookline, Massachusetts called “Tamarind Bay Coastal Indian Kitchen” – quite a mouthful! It sounds like an interesting place worth checking out – but I digress…

What caught my eye in Ms. Kasdon’s rich and informative review was the conclusion of the third paragraph: “…And with only one or two entrées above $20, it’s also a fabulous value.”

I agree.

Do you?

Comments

[Leah Klein]

I love what you have done and written. I have always thought that overall the Elephant Walk is a great value for a nice dinner out.

Thanks.

Leah

[Leah Klein]

I appreciate this article. I think it's fantastic that you are thinking about defining value and acting on it.

I still think that Elephant Walk has always been great value. The food is excellent, the restaurant is beautiful and service excellent, and the portions have always been generous.

Thanks!

Leah

[d ketten]

Bravo on two counts. One: for recognizing, analyzing, and solving a problem in a way that responds to your customer's opinions. Two: for going to the trouble to provide a clear explanation for those who are interested to read it.

A reduction in portion size is a very good solution. I congratulate you on that since it preserves the quality and taste those of us who enjoy and revere your preparations but it also addresses the problem of America's expanding waistlines. I for one am very happy to see this. Those who fill unfulfilled by smaller portions always have the option of ordering more, and with the reduced pricing, that is no hardship. This is a win-win strategy. In these increasingly difficult economic times, it must be a difficult pill to swallow to cut your prices, but I hope it will be rewarded by not only the retention of your customer base but also by a surge in new customers seeking the more conventional Q for the "Asian" designation. I would have continued with you anyway, as EW is among the finest of Boston's restaurant experiences but I believe you are pursuing a wise path to be both sensitive and responsive to your customer base. Bravo, indeed.