Yes it is. But the lessons for the HN crowd are to pay attention to the ingredients of your success. Even after nailing so many aspects of the business right out of the gate, they had to discover the factors that made for a good location. A/B testing is a wonderful tool that these folks didn't have.
I also liked the bit about being confident in what you are / what you have / what you offer. Instead of worrying about public opinion and blow back for being unhealthy or partnering with a television show about cooking meth the Cinnabon company embraced everything. It won't work so well for everyone, but I think companies and products that are a bit more on the unsavory side could take a big lesson, here.
It's much more endearing than lying or being fake. It's much more endearing to admit faults or to be honest with your customers and the public about your goals and how you perceive yourself. People might not love everything about you, your product, your services or what you stand for but they will find more reasons to hate you for being a liar than for simply acknowledging what everyone already knows about you.
Stories of chain restaurant origins are really interesting, except I find them hard to read because I'm so grossed out by the amount of obesity, diabetes, and heart-disease they've caused. Cinnabon is surely only a little behind Philip Morris in collateral damage caused.
> Cinnabon is surely only a little behind Philip Morris in collateral damage caused.
I disagree. I had a bad bowel obstruction once after minor surgery. I was backed up for over a week. My doctor told me to head straight to the local mall and get a Cinnabon. It flushed me out like it was opening the gates of the Erie Canal.
It was a miracle. The doctor later told me that he is 14 for 16 for getting people to start pooping again through Cinnabon.
I have gastroesophogeal reflux disorder, and used to regularly get food randomly “come up” and get stuck in my throat making it hard to breathe.
My doctor quite literally “prescribed” a can of Pepsi: the carbonation and acidity did the trick! Now I keep a bottle of soda water in the fridge for all meals :)
In the case of cinnabon, I'd profoundly disagree with you:
"The company anticipated mega sales when it opened bakeries in a handful of Seattle-area QFCs in 1996. Instead, remembers Greg, “We’d get a three-month boost, and sales would just die.” In marketing speak, Cinnabon suffers from high levels of “product fatigue.” In real talk, it’s not the type of thing most people can eat on a regular basis and maintain their self-respect—or their pant size. Grocery store regulars eventually learn to resist the siren song of icing, dough, and cinnamon goo."
In any case, you choose to smoke, you choose to eat too much, you choose to do things - while yes, you can get addicted to nicotine (and likely will), and you might get addicted to junk food - you made the choice in the first place - its not as if the risks are unknowns.
While I'm in favor of a gradual delegalization of tobacco, banning food is beyond the pale for me - moderated consumption of even calorie bombs like cinnabon, has not been proven harmful - what alternative do you have?
Sugar triggers the same parts of your brain as cocaine, while also causing severe health problems when overconsumed.
Please don’t say “you made the choice” when talking about substance abuse, regardless of the substance. While I’d advocate outlawing tobacco, I think products based on sugar should carry a hefty tax to fund healthcare costs and dissuade their consumption.
Should we legislate against exercise too, which can cause death when done to extremes? We should also outlaw extreme dieting, due to similar health effects. We also might want to enforce a bit of overeating since somewhat overweight people live longer.
I didn't say legislate; my workplace health insurance plan charges me less if they detect I'm using the gym plan they pay for and my blood tests show I'm not smoking. I have the option of paying more per month if I don't want to participate in these wellness activities.
Internalize the economic externalities. You can lead an unhealthy life if you want, but you should pay for it.
>While I’d advocate outlawing tobacco, I think products based on sugar should carry a hefty tax to fund healthcare costs and dissuade their consumption.
Were you talking about costs related to private insurance, or government-imposed taxes?
> Were you talking about costs related to private insurance, or government-imposed taxes?
To be clear, I'm for both, as I believe that government should provide a single payer system and activities that make you unhealthy and have an excessive cost to treat should be taxed to fund those treatments.
If numbers are a concern, we should outlaw having sex with multiple partners, as that spreads enormous amounts of disease and leads to many unwanted pregnancies and abortions.
The idea of choice as free will untethered to outside influences is clearly nonsense. However, people do respond to external stimuli when making decisions. Translation: the machine that is my brain considers things like cost when following the laws of physics and chemistry down a deterministic path.
In other words, taxes can influence behavior, regardless of the role of "choice".
The company know that their product is bad for people and that people try to avoid it, yet Cinnabon use manipulative tactics to wear their customers down:
> “Let’s face it, people really want to avoid us,” Greg Komen once told an audience. “We have to get in your way.”
What if this were a tech company? Facebook got a lot of heat for supporting an experiment where they influenced people’s emotions.
This seems a lot worse because there are negative mental and physical effects. And they can’t even try and justify it with any sort of “connecting the world” style message. It’s purely about making cash.
This is marketing - and while it might be brash to say so, people have been doing this for well over 100 years - again, Cinnabon isn't bad for you unless consumed all the time - the same could be said about Facebook.
The difference is, facebook is targeted in such a way to encourage constant engagement, and Cinnabon markets itself in such a way as to encourage occasional engagement.
Yeah but he has a point. I can't keep cookies in my own house unless they are in a cupboard ("out of sight, out of mind") or I'll eat them late at night when I seem to have no self-control left. Meanwhile some Cinnabon locations heat up sheets of just cinnamon and brown sugar under purposely under-powered fume hoods.
Ah yes. Regulate the guns, not the shooter. The food, not the eater. The soda, not the drinker. The couch, not the potato. The Home Depot truck, not the maniac.
Or, you know, be deliberate in what you do. There is plenty of evidence showing that a "slippery slope" argument is borderline bullshit. Typically used by folks that are just trying to kill the conversation.
Meanwhile, there is the similar perverse truth that bad regulations got us into some of our current situation. In particular, the sugar and gun lobbies were remarkably effective at promoting their topics.
So, by all means, if you are just trying to rhetorically shut down conversation; keep at it. Just please don't be surprised to find nobody wants to talk back at you someday.
I’m not making a “slippery slope” argument. On the other hand, I concede that my tone could give the wrong impression.
To clarify — I think people should be free to buy or sell any food product. I don’t think we should punish a seller because buyers happen to overbuy the product.
I think the goverment’s role should be limited to punishing bad actors. For example, a seller who deceives or cheats buyers.
Fair, apologies if I came off as too harsh. What you said just felt like the slippery slope argument.
For me, I see it less about limiting peoples freedoms, and more about moving delayed costs up front. People are still free to buy/sell most any food product. However, some appear to have a marked impact on society, but in a delayed fashion.
That is, you won't get sick from drinking 32 ounce sodas the day you drink them. However, you are likely to get addicted to them and they will make you unhealthy eventually. Increasing the costs moves some of that pain early, so that it is easier to make the choice to avoid.
Do I think this is perfect? No. Not even close. Nor do I think people should be disallowed from buying stuff like this. I do think more of the proceeds should go to making people healthy or at least educated. Going into the producers of these products doesn't help the health, and the way marketing works, they become less educated on the risks of these products. There is a reason we had to regulate the hell out of cigarettes, for example. And I don't shed any tears over that.
I have conflicting opinions on “sin taxes” on cigarettes and soda.
On one hand, yes, it does make sense that increasing the prices of cigarettes, for example, decreases the number of people who smoke. That’s a nice result.
On the other hand, the sin taxes hit poor people the hardest. First, the incremental increase is a larger percentage of a poor person’s budget. Second, humans do not have a linear response to price changes — to achieve the desired cessation rate, you might have to massively increase prices, which exacerbates the first point. Third, one could argue that rich people can afford a multitude of stress relievers and therapy methods. Poor people cannot afford that, so the sin tax is a draconian method.
I view it not as a sin tax, but a moving of the externalized cost.
Does it have the problems you are listing? Yes, absolutely. However, they already have problems that they will just have to pay for later in some of these. This is forcing some of those extra costs to be factored into the decision in the first place.
This is simplistic libertarian nonsense. Pollution regulations have had obvious good effects. Workplace regulations have made the workplace a much better place for all than previously. Road regulations make transport safer. And deregulation has frequently failed.
As taeric says, reality is more nuanced than polarising libertarian rhetoric would have us believe. Slogans make a poor substitute for thought.
Obesity is a huge problem and legislators have effective tools for dealing with such problems.
Whether people agree with deploying these tools is one thing, but it's clear that even the fear of regulation is enough to make companies act. Coke has been heavily invested in zero calorie drinks for a while now, and candy companies have been self-imposing size restrictions.
Can you please elaborate on the effective tools for fighting obesity? Do you have any pointers?
I am not convinced simply by the obvious statement that corporations will respond to the threat of regulation. The advent of Coke Zero does not prove effective fighting of obesity.
Totally random factoid: Cinnabon is huge in Saudi Arabia, which is one of the few places that gives the US a run for its money in having large numbers of wealthy and morbidly obese people who drive everywhere and get virtually no exercise.
I also spotted one in Tokyo earlier this year, nestled in the shadow of the Mori Tower in one of the toniest neighbourhoods in the country. The rolls were scaled down to Japanese size expectations, but the shop was still rattlingly empty every time I passed by around 9 AM in the morning at what you'd expect to be commuter peak hour.
The Tokyo one gets lines on weekends, but to be honest Cinnabon is just way too much relative to other food here.
Even having spent my childhood chugging Doctor Peppers and stuffing my face with pizzas, I couldn't deal with a normal-ish roll from there after being here. There's a Frijoles close to the Cinnabon, and I came away with the same feeling. Just way too much, and way too heavy.
I was actually surprised by this. At least in hotels (specially in the traditional "ryokans"), the Japanese breakfast consists of some sort of fish (normally grilled), rice, some small bites (mostly for flavor) of seaweeds and some soup or another. I have no idea what people eat at home, but all in all it's not a terrible way to start your day (once you get over not having a bunch of sweet stuff.)
Well, that's the canonical Japanese breakfast, in the same way that a canonical American breakfast is eggs, bacon, baked beans, hash browns, pancakes etc -- but most people scarf down some cereal instead.
Rice for breakfast is definitely a thing though, but it's a lot simpler than ryokan fare: in my student days, I often just had last night's leftovers with a cup of miso soup and maybe some pickles. Here's an interesting view of various actual Japanese breakfasts, although I suspect these are also towards the elaborate end of the spectrum:
This is interesting. I don't have a routine of what I eat for breakfast. I just improvise every morning (: do people usually eat the same thing every morning?
I do for the most part. I always eat oatmeal and plain yogurt, I just add different fruit. I can buy the oatmeal and yogurt in bulk,I don't have to think about breakfast, and the variety of fruits keeps it palatable.
Only visited a few times. Traditionally I hear it's fish and miso. There is also what seems to be french pastry places where half of them are filled with custard. When I was there we went to the pastry places, but after a few days became too much.
We tried to check out a few artisanal donut places around Tokyo since I heard they were a new thing (at the time). Most seemed to be open very at odd times (I can't remember, but maybe from like 1-3pm?). We stumbled onto a Krispy Kreme and were surprised they offered a donut served with ice cream on top. I guess it was seen more as a dessert than breakfast?
I am an American adult and was raised in America and I have never heard of anyone admitting to having donuts (or even a donut) for breakfast. But they must...
I guess I just thought people were going to Dunkin Donuts in the morning just to grab a coffee. I mean you've only just gotten up there's no way you've already done something to deserve a donut.
Really? Donuts seem like a pretty common office carry-in. At every place I've worked, someone would bring in donuts at least once a month. When I worked at a regional pizza chain, the morning shift would make donuts out of leftover pizza dough and dump chocolate syrup on them.
It feels like they are the quintessential breakfast food for feeding groups (much like pizza is). But maybe that's only a midwestern thing. But I'd be surprised because most major donut chains (Dunkin, Krispy Kreme, Tim Hortons), are not from here.
I'm an American in my 40s and I occasionally have a (vegan) donut for breakfast, but I recognize this as the ridiculously caloric and unhealthy choice that it is. I don't really consider donuts breakfast food.
Japanese “Japanese-style” meals usually consist of fish, rice, miso soup, and 2-3 side dishes.
Breakfast is usually the lightest meal of the day so sometimes we will have just rice and miso soup and pickles or natto.
Japanese “western” breakfast is toast and a Japanese-style fried egg (medamayaki). Maybe bacon too.
Most people I know alternate between Japanese-style Japanese, western (fried cutlets, bread, pasta, meat sauces), and Chinese (fried rice, gyoza, ramen, mabo tofu) or Korean (kimchi, yakiniku) for lunch and dinner.
There are about 10-20 dishes that pretty much every Japanese person who can cook learns to cook.
A quick search confirmed what I suspected, Cinnabon doesn't seem to have done too well in India. India does not seem to like cinnamon flavored stuff too much.
Cinnabon is a guilty pleasure when I'm visiting family in the US and Canada. There was only one remaining store in the UK in the Trocadero Centre in London last time I looked, but it seems they have expanded again and have a bunch of London locations and a couple outside of London. When I was working in London I would go every now and again and buy a tray and take them back to the office. No one ever complained.
55 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 114 ms ] threadIt's much more endearing than lying or being fake. It's much more endearing to admit faults or to be honest with your customers and the public about your goals and how you perceive yourself. People might not love everything about you, your product, your services or what you stand for but they will find more reasons to hate you for being a liar than for simply acknowledging what everyone already knows about you.
I disagree. I had a bad bowel obstruction once after minor surgery. I was backed up for over a week. My doctor told me to head straight to the local mall and get a Cinnabon. It flushed me out like it was opening the gates of the Erie Canal.
It was a miracle. The doctor later told me that he is 14 for 16 for getting people to start pooping again through Cinnabon.
In this case, it's the 15 teaspoons of sugar that helps the medicine go down!
My doctor quite literally “prescribed” a can of Pepsi: the carbonation and acidity did the trick! Now I keep a bottle of soda water in the fridge for all meals :)
"The company anticipated mega sales when it opened bakeries in a handful of Seattle-area QFCs in 1996. Instead, remembers Greg, “We’d get a three-month boost, and sales would just die.” In marketing speak, Cinnabon suffers from high levels of “product fatigue.” In real talk, it’s not the type of thing most people can eat on a regular basis and maintain their self-respect—or their pant size. Grocery store regulars eventually learn to resist the siren song of icing, dough, and cinnamon goo."
In any case, you choose to smoke, you choose to eat too much, you choose to do things - while yes, you can get addicted to nicotine (and likely will), and you might get addicted to junk food - you made the choice in the first place - its not as if the risks are unknowns.
While I'm in favor of a gradual delegalization of tobacco, banning food is beyond the pale for me - moderated consumption of even calorie bombs like cinnabon, has not been proven harmful - what alternative do you have?
Please don’t say “you made the choice” when talking about substance abuse, regardless of the substance. While I’d advocate outlawing tobacco, I think products based on sugar should carry a hefty tax to fund healthcare costs and dissuade their consumption.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/brainwaves/is-sugar-rea...
Internalize the economic externalities. You can lead an unhealthy life if you want, but you should pay for it.
Are you sure? You also said:
>While I’d advocate outlawing tobacco, I think products based on sugar should carry a hefty tax to fund healthcare costs and dissuade their consumption.
Were you talking about costs related to private insurance, or government-imposed taxes?
To be clear, I'm for both, as I believe that government should provide a single payer system and activities that make you unhealthy and have an excessive cost to treat should be taxed to fund those treatments.
In other words, taxes can influence behavior, regardless of the role of "choice".
> “Let’s face it, people really want to avoid us,” Greg Komen once told an audience. “We have to get in your way.”
What if this were a tech company? Facebook got a lot of heat for supporting an experiment where they influenced people’s emotions.
This seems a lot worse because there are negative mental and physical effects. And they can’t even try and justify it with any sort of “connecting the world” style message. It’s purely about making cash.
The difference is, facebook is targeted in such a way to encourage constant engagement, and Cinnabon markets itself in such a way as to encourage occasional engagement.
Let’s regulate our way to utopia.
Meanwhile, there is the similar perverse truth that bad regulations got us into some of our current situation. In particular, the sugar and gun lobbies were remarkably effective at promoting their topics.
So, by all means, if you are just trying to rhetorically shut down conversation; keep at it. Just please don't be surprised to find nobody wants to talk back at you someday.
To clarify — I think people should be free to buy or sell any food product. I don’t think we should punish a seller because buyers happen to overbuy the product.
I think the goverment’s role should be limited to punishing bad actors. For example, a seller who deceives or cheats buyers.
For me, I see it less about limiting peoples freedoms, and more about moving delayed costs up front. People are still free to buy/sell most any food product. However, some appear to have a marked impact on society, but in a delayed fashion.
That is, you won't get sick from drinking 32 ounce sodas the day you drink them. However, you are likely to get addicted to them and they will make you unhealthy eventually. Increasing the costs moves some of that pain early, so that it is easier to make the choice to avoid.
Do I think this is perfect? No. Not even close. Nor do I think people should be disallowed from buying stuff like this. I do think more of the proceeds should go to making people healthy or at least educated. Going into the producers of these products doesn't help the health, and the way marketing works, they become less educated on the risks of these products. There is a reason we had to regulate the hell out of cigarettes, for example. And I don't shed any tears over that.
On one hand, yes, it does make sense that increasing the prices of cigarettes, for example, decreases the number of people who smoke. That’s a nice result.
On the other hand, the sin taxes hit poor people the hardest. First, the incremental increase is a larger percentage of a poor person’s budget. Second, humans do not have a linear response to price changes — to achieve the desired cessation rate, you might have to massively increase prices, which exacerbates the first point. Third, one could argue that rich people can afford a multitude of stress relievers and therapy methods. Poor people cannot afford that, so the sin tax is a draconian method.
Does it have the problems you are listing? Yes, absolutely. However, they already have problems that they will just have to pay for later in some of these. This is forcing some of those extra costs to be factored into the decision in the first place.
As taeric says, reality is more nuanced than polarising libertarian rhetoric would have us believe. Slogans make a poor substitute for thought.
Whether people agree with deploying these tools is one thing, but it's clear that even the fear of regulation is enough to make companies act. Coke has been heavily invested in zero calorie drinks for a while now, and candy companies have been self-imposing size restrictions.
I am not convinced simply by the obvious statement that corporations will respond to the threat of regulation. The advent of Coke Zero does not prove effective fighting of obesity.
I also spotted one in Tokyo earlier this year, nestled in the shadow of the Mori Tower in one of the toniest neighbourhoods in the country. The rolls were scaled down to Japanese size expectations, but the shop was still rattlingly empty every time I passed by around 9 AM in the morning at what you'd expect to be commuter peak hour.
Even having spent my childhood chugging Doctor Peppers and stuffing my face with pizzas, I couldn't deal with a normal-ish roll from there after being here. There's a Frijoles close to the Cinnabon, and I came away with the same feeling. Just way too much, and way too heavy.
Rice for breakfast is definitely a thing though, but it's a lot simpler than ryokan fare: in my student days, I often just had last night's leftovers with a cup of miso soup and maybe some pickles. Here's an interesting view of various actual Japanese breakfasts, although I suspect these are also towards the elaborate end of the spectrum:
https://en.rocketnews24.com/2015/02/20/whats-really-for-brea...
We tried to check out a few artisanal donut places around Tokyo since I heard they were a new thing (at the time). Most seemed to be open very at odd times (I can't remember, but maybe from like 1-3pm?). We stumbled onto a Krispy Kreme and were surprised they offered a donut served with ice cream on top. I guess it was seen more as a dessert than breakfast?
http://krispykreme.jp/campaign/doughnutice/
I guess I just thought people were going to Dunkin Donuts in the morning just to grab a coffee. I mean you've only just gotten up there's no way you've already done something to deserve a donut.
Outside of breakfast, they are generally just served as something to go with coffee and so on, but they are definitely not dessert. A snack.
It feels like they are the quintessential breakfast food for feeding groups (much like pizza is). But maybe that's only a midwestern thing. But I'd be surprised because most major donut chains (Dunkin, Krispy Kreme, Tim Hortons), are not from here.
Breakfast is usually the lightest meal of the day so sometimes we will have just rice and miso soup and pickles or natto.
Japanese “western” breakfast is toast and a Japanese-style fried egg (medamayaki). Maybe bacon too.
Most people I know alternate between Japanese-style Japanese, western (fried cutlets, bread, pasta, meat sauces), and Chinese (fried rice, gyoza, ramen, mabo tofu) or Korean (kimchi, yakiniku) for lunch and dinner.
There are about 10-20 dishes that pretty much every Japanese person who can cook learns to cook.
https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Cinnabon-in-India-shut-down-mo...