Mouton’s Bistro
Neighboring towns, Cedar Park and Leander, TX are two of the fastest growing cities in the US, and have been so for close to a decade. The constantly increasing population continues to bring the need for new local restaurants. In 2012 the Mouton family opened Mouton’s Southern Bistro, a flavorful Cajun and Southern restaurant in Leander.
With resounding positive response from the community and success for over 6 years, the Mouton family launched its second location, Mouton’s Bistro and Bar, in Cedar Park. The newer location has been operating for just over a year now and has also enjoyed positive reviews and good response from the community.
As the local population continues to boom and technology continues to provide new ways of delivering what the masses want, and with a fleet of self-employed on-demand delivery drivers waiting to hustle orders, the shape of today’s commercial kitchen has had to evolve. Food delivery services have now become a standard operating way of life. As an industry, the on-demand food delivery market is steadily growing, innovating the user process and offering a new non-traditional revenue stream to a wide range of everyday people looking for additional income. And with a motto like “I want it all and I want it now” that Grubhub advertises with, the customers are most likely to be just as demanding as if they were dining in.
While the financial impact of accommodating on-demand food delivery services is beneficial to most restaurants, the challenge lies in maintaining and improving customer relations with existing front of house guests while garnering those ever coveted positive online reviews for “Great Food!”
For a small restaurant balancing the service between guests in the restaurant and those sending for delivery can be a serious challenge. Restaurants must adapt to the feel of the rush of orders when its pouring rain outside and clicking a few buttons to have dinner delivered is just so easy.
The first step in developing the Mouton’s Bistro brand is to strengthen it by uniting it.
Consider that the three main outlets for Mouton’s Bistro are 1. Leander Location, 2. Cedar Park Location, and 3. Delivery.
The importance of creating a unified brand comes through the synergy created when the multiple players and teams work together. Developing the Mouton’s Bistro brand has to start with the internal organization all on the same side. Therein lies the first challenge: getting both houses to play nicely together and with the delivery drivers.
As any company expands and succeeds there will be times to come back to the drawing board for a logo revision. Since Mouton’s second location is now established we want to fuse the images of the two restaurants. The 2 restaurants serve the same menu but have slightly different names. It is a regular question to hear “is this the same as the other Mouton’s in Leander?” Developing one logo and one name with multiple locations creates an external synergy with added ease of additional expansion.
Challenge: Building recognition of the brand
Externally, The Mouton’s brand needs to be developed. Several pieces of the brand coexist, now we need to tie them together.
Recommendations:
- Create a single brand “Mouton’s Bistro” with
multiple locations
- Mouton’s Bistro Leander and Mouton’s Bistro Cedar Park
- Logo for both locations should be the same
- Merge the two websites to be a single site with multiple locations
Savage Woods
Savage Woods LLC is an importer and retailer of exotic tropical hardwoods. This Texas based company was a tiny startup in 2010 when they hauled a single trailer of wood from the edge of Guatemala back to Austin. At that time the industry was dominated by lumber giants touting decades of established experience. Savage Woods has a very specific niche market. This click and mortar business carries a few select high end species of wood usually used for small or artisan projects such as musical instruments, ornate boxes, knife handles.
The first challenge was to present Savage Woods to the world as a leader in the industry. Days and weeks of research went into studying the product, the users of the product and how the top 10 competitors accommodated these users. Compiling the information from research and creating personas helped in mapping out user journeys and creating detailed user flows.
During the development process a major challenge became very poignant. The process of checking out had a major issue. Because each piece of lumber is not only a unique item, but an often unusually sized and quite heavy product, integrated shipping charges were not easily calculated. After more research, it became clear that none of the major lumber retailers included shipping fees in the initial ecommerce transaction. Upon purchasing online, the customer would either receive an email or phone call with separate shipping charges. The customer would then have to go through the checkout process again just for the shipping charges.
The challenge was to display each piece of lumber individually and include the shipping charges in a single, seamless, ecommerce transaction. The process was complicated, but after creating the flow, developing the technology, and implementing the user-friendly check out process, the results spoke for themselves. Within 6 months, the most prominent players in the industry reworked their check out process as well as their user flow on their sites to compete with Savage Woods.
This powerful stand took the niche market in this industry by storm and Savage Woods rankings and popularity soared.