It was a lazy afternoon in Damansara for me and I had just finished a meeting. I need a place to finish up additional work fast and I was dead tired so I settled for a small café that doesn’t even have a proper banner (The name was fading I could bare recognize).
I am a coffee lover so the main thing that I need to have before doing any work is having a good cup of coffee. So the first thing I did after getting a table there at the café is order a nice hot black coffee. To my demise, the coffee wasn’t up to my expectations. The coffee tasted like it’s been poured with too much water (probably to save cost), the cup seemed to have cracks everywhere and it also has a bit of a plastic smell (probably re-used coffee how disgusting is that).
So I quickly asked the waitress, “where’s the nearest Starbucks?” I know that I can always rely on Starbucks for a good cup of coffee even if it does cost RM12 for a cup which is considered a cut-throat price for a typical Malaysian unlike in America where it only costs $3.
The waitress told me that it’s about 15 minutes’ walk from the café so I quickly paid the bill and left to find Starbucks. Knowing Malaysia, every afternoon is scorching hot and after half an hour walking, I can’t seem to find Starbucks and that’s when it hit me – The café serves coffee and the waitress must have been offended when I left without finishing my coffee.
That pretty much covers all of my Starbucks story because the main motivation point comes from seeing an overview of Franchising. The story of how a customer (me) despite the scorching heat still tries to find his way to the nearest Starbucks when he can actually go to any other coffee shops – That’s the power of true franchising.
Warren Buffet has talked about this which he refers to as the “Franchise Value” which is a key point that company needs to have in order to attract successful long-term investor such as himself.
A great business is one in which you build a name for yourself, your brand, and your products, to the point that your customers are willing to go right out of their way to get to you, walking by the competition.