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Not the Same Old Song & Dance
Can singing servers and dancing margarine sell more edibles? At three Connecticut businesses, customers are eating it up
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Business New Haven
9/4/2001
By: Susan Cornell
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When you go out for ice cream on even the hottest summer night and the digital sign above the parlor indicates, “Now Serving No. 70,” you may suspect that either the ice cream was express-delivered from Heaven, or something else is going on. Such is the case in Clinton, where a Cold Stone Creamery has employees singing the scoop and customers licking it up.
Cold Stone is an Arizona-based franchise operation that has grown rapidly throughout the West and offers its customers not just dessert but an “interactive entertainment experience.”
The recipe for the interactive experience is super premium ice cream, sorbet or frozen yogurt mixed to order on a granite stone chilled to 15 degrees Fahrenheit and served by singing “crew” members. Explains manager Krysia Anatra, “People pick out a flavor and we try to fold in any mix-in that their heart desires onto the stone. It's not pre-made.”
Cold Stone's distinctiveness also comes from making the frozen desserts and waffle bowls and cones fresh, on location, daily, Anatra says. “A lot of places don't do that. It's also the neighborhood feeling that we try to give everybody. We try to be friendly and outgoing and bring a good atmosphere to the community. And it's the way the kids work. They sing for a tip and it motivates them to be really friendly and enthusiastic. There's just a lot of uniqueness over other ice cream stores.”
Franchise owner Chris Anatra and wife/manager Krysia opened Cold Stone in a strip mall across from the Clinton Crossings Outlet mall in July. The company put the new franchise owners through a rigorous six-day training at Ice Cream University. There, in addition to learning how to make ice cream (and money), the marketing team edifies the buzzwords that are part and parcel of the Cold Stone concept. There are catch-phrases such as “mass personalization” that describe the customer's flavor combination. And, the employees (a/k/a crew) “audition” for jobs.
Cold Stone offers more than 40 mix-ins and in excess of 30 ice cream, yogurt and sorbet flavors. The flavors may be as exotic as Irish cream, rum, root beer and cheesecake. Customization is created with mix-ins including Gummi bears, honey, peach pie filling and pineapple.
Cold Stone even offered chocolate-covered, oven-roasted, farm-raised crickets for a limited time as part of a nationwide contest for entry into a drawing for a trip to the Australian Survivor show campsite. Watching customers consume crickets, in itself, provided plenty of entertainment.
A costumed Hershey's Kiss and red and green M&Ms greet guests at the door. “We like to make everyone comfortable in line and happy before they come in,” explains Krysia.
In addition to the Anatras' store, the only other franchises awarded in the East thus far are in Pennsylvania and Florida. The concept and product impressed Chris Anatra, who started and continues to own NEC, a business that develops computer software for food distributors, as well as the shoreline Internet provider Cybershore. Both NEC and Cybershore are based in Madison. “People in California have no patience for anything, but will wait two hours in line at a Cold Stone Creamery,” he says.
The franchise hopes to open another 1,000 stores by 2003. Explains Krysia Anatra, “We want to open up more stores in Connecticut. We've looked at West Hartford and Norwalk, but I think our next location will be in New Haven. It's a definite happening area.”
Those “auditioning” to work at Cold Stone are asked to select a song to sing during the initial interview. The interviewees “had to choreograph a Cold Stone song. We wanted to see their enthusiasm, their leadership and teamwork,” says Krysia Anatra. Many of the crew are choir members, cheerleaders or drama club members at school. Chris Anatra says that workers are trained to amuse customers and compete for tips with both songs and other forms of entertainment.
“There are more local people and some New Yorkers passing through,” says Krysia Anatra of the store's clientele. Although open less than two months, the following includes regulars who come weekly, she says.
The question is: Do customers come for the ice cream - or for the entertainment? Krysia Anatra finds that it is not exactly 50-50. “It's more like 100-100,” she says. “People come in because they know the ice cream is awesome, but then they also want to tip the kids because they want to hear that new song.”
But what happens when the novelty of the novelties wear off and the customers feel they are just hearing “the same old song”? And, will customers continue to pay the hefty price for customized, ultra-high-end ice cream (a writer taking a spouse and a five- and seven-year-old for ice cream spent $14)?
Manager Jennifer Small maintains that “once people have had the product, they won't be able to go back to places such as Friendly's. Even if times are tough, people will be willing to make the sacrifice.”
To counter the novelty-wearing-off problem, Small says, “We'll just keep our energy up and keep on singing.” She adds that the store really cannot add new product lines without corporate approval - like most other franchise operations, Cold Stone aims to work, look, and feel the same no matter where it's located.
The “interactive experience” of the method by which the product is prepared and the quality of the ice cream appeal to customers, food-industry studies maintain, while the unusual style of service adds the entertainment value to the marketing concept.
Twenty-four years ago, Chuck E. Cheese, the mighty mouse, started entertaining children in the days when Pac-Man and Donkey Kong were still in vogue. The restaurant was the place to go because it had the latest in arcade games.
But when arcade-game popularity decreased in the 1980s and the company faced competition from rival restaurant chains such as Billy Bob's Showbiz Pizza Palace, the mouse was nearly exterminated. Chuck E. Cheese today, however, rates as one of America's most popular characters among the six-to-eight-year-old set; the mouse mascot ranks in the top four percent of 671 different children's cartoon characters and properties according to research firm Marketing Evaluations Inc.
The research shows that Chuck E. has ranked impressively over the past six years while other characters come and go based on, for instance, a specific movie or show that is popular at the time.
The company has several licensed products currently on the retail market including a line of food products from CCF Brands and Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Factory from Wham-O Toys.
There are three Connecticut locations: Newington, New London and Orange, in the chain of more than 360 pizza restaurants. Do the games, on-stage entertainment, and costumed characters help to sell the food? This question must be answered by another: Have you ever had the cardboard pizza? Actually, manager of the Orange location, Tony Garcia, says, not surprisingly, “Our pizza is excellent.” With greater candor, Garcia adds, “You could sell the pizza without the entertainment, but you probably wouldn't be very successful.”
Doesn't that say something about the quality of the food and the value of the entertainment? Garcia says that less than two percent of customers come in for the restaurant alone.
Garcia finds that, “Initially, people come in for the live shows. The arcade portion is the secondary attraction.” The business makes far more money on the food than the arcade, Garcia explains.
Down in Norwalk, Stew Leonard's was wowing customers with in-store performances long before the newfangled Cold Stone or Chuck E.'s. Entertainment has been a part of the business since the store opened in 1969.
At Stew Leonard's, “The Farm Fresh Five” is suspended on a stage above the store's dairy section. These state-of-the-art audio-animatronic robots perform original songs about milk and shopping at Stew's.
The band members include cartons of milk, a chorus of half-pints, butter sticks and chickens that move their legs and arms and show realistic facial expressions. And employees dressed as animals including ducks, chickens, and cows stroll the aisles to amuse customers and their children.
“This probably draws the children in more than anything. But the adults watch, too. It's cute,” explains Jeff Fanning, store manager in Norwalk and a 19-year employee.
“Our thought process is that it draws the kids into the store - which draws the parents into the store,” Fanning says. “Entertainment definitely helps sales because the parents are in the store.” Additionally, Fanning finds that today's investment in entertainment will provide the store with a future payoff. “If the kids enjoy the entertainment, 15 to 20 years down the road they're going to be customers, too.”
Fanning acknowledges that entertainment is positioned throughout the so-called “Disneyland of Dairy Stores” for strategic reasons. He says that amusements are placed “sporadically throughout the store because it helps movement of groups of people.” You need to “stop the flow, then stop the flow again and again for a few minutes here and there so everyone going through the store isn't going through the front end at the same time. Basically, it eases the traffic flow so people aren't standing in line at the registers at the same time. Instead, they're shopping.”
Fanning isn't so convinced that the keeping the kids happy will reduce the stress parents feel when shopping with them, contributing to an easier shopping experience and, thus, increased sales. “Whether it helps the parents while they're shopping,” he says, “maybe at that particular moment while in that particular area.”
Some out-of-towners visit Stew's three locations (Norwalk, Danbury and Yonkers, N.Y.) just to see what all of the hoopla is about rather than do the major weekly shopping trips. But with more than 100,000 shoppers each week, the touristy onlookers aren't much of a concern. Getting people in is the primary goal - the rest is the icing on the cake (or the mix-in).
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