Your Business is a Burger

Think of your business like a big juicy burger. You've got the bottom of a freshly baked sesame seed bun. A juicy beef pattie still sizzling from the grill sits on your fluffy bun-half. Creamy cheddar cheese is slowly melting on your grilled pattie, while garden fresh tomato slices lie on their cheesy bed, shaded by crispy lettuce leaves that fan out beyond the edges of your piping hot salt-n-pepper seasoned pattie.

And perched lightly on a throne of lettuce leaves, underside spread with seasoned butter and fresh aioli, is an old, stale piece of bread. Mottled blue and white from mould, the sesame seeds have mostly been scavenged by the kitchen's resident cockroaches. Small bite marks around the edges belie the interest of other small, sharp toothed vermin.

I'm not eating that burger any more. Neither are you.

I think businesses are a little like burgers - burgers have layers, and so do businesses (and so do onions, according to Shrek). So think of your marketing as a buttered bun, your product as the meat pattie. Your website or online shop is that freshly tossed garden salad. Your customer service is the bun perched on top. 

Ok, so now that you're with me, here's where my business-as-burger thinking is headed. Two points:

Customers don't talk about the bun or the lettuce. No one says "it was a great burger, except the bun was moldy". They say: "the burger was moldy." They talk about the whole burger - their experience from start to end.  

So, how does your business taste?