There was a hot dog place in my hometown called Little Louie’s. I’d stop there as I was biking home, a sweaty young teen, from my summer job as a caddy at a local country club. Little Louie’s sat (slouched really) next to the village green and baseball diamond in the center of our suburban town, Northbrook, Illinois, just north of Chicago. To grab a shake or a hot dog, you would open the squeaky wooden screen door, which would slam down on your backside if you weren’t quick, and stand in the un-air conditioned heat of the claustrophobic storefront. Little Louie’s was always crowded, and in my memory was always hot and noisy. A group of anxious customers, jockeying for position in front of an old wooden counter, faced forward with mouths open and eyebrows up, trying to catch the attention of either Ed, one of the founders, or Louie himself. There was no line, but more of a mosh pit; it was up to you as the customer to compete with the others to get noticed.
The walls were hidden under dozens of paper plates that had been stapled up, each listing a scrawled, faded menu item – some still available, some not. Tacked among the paper plates were assorted autographed black-and-white photos of unknown vintage, many showing older Chicago sports figures like former Blackhawks, Cubs and Bears, smiling with Ed or Louie.
“You!” The shout was always shocking. If you weren’t paying attention, you could get passed over in a micro-second when Louie yelled and pointed at your gape-jawed, confused, 14 year-old carcass. “Chocolate shake, hot dog, no peppers,” I’d mumble.
“Speak up!” he’d scream over the din. I’d repeat, louder, a nervous adolescent squeak in my voice. Occasionally, you’d hear a first-timer, usually a guy in a suit, ask for ketchup on his dog, and the customers would all shut up and stare, waiting. “Ketchup?” Louie would start. “What are you talking about? You don’t put ketchup on a hot dog!” Hint: when in the Chicago area, you traditionally don’t put ketchup on a hot dog. Yellow mustard, a kind of neon green relish, and sweet and/or hot peppers, maybe some sauerkraut (though that’s more for a Polish), but not ketchup.
Banging out the screen door toward the shade of the park across the street, sipping on my shake in its misbranded cup (Louie’s never printed its own cups; they just bought overruns) grasping the crumbled plain brown bag with the dark grease stain spreading along the bottom (from the fries dumped inside, which you didn’t order, you just got) I was a happy camper.
But why?
The experience I just described, on its face, is anything but a “stellar” customer experience. In fact, if you listen to management gurus and read the latest books about creating profitable customer relationships through CRM and more efficient customer processes, and you look at the experience in a business-like, logical way, Ed and Louie did just about everything wrong. They were rude, the product mix was confusing and what they did serve was a widely available commodity, there was nowhere to sit, they didn’t visually establish a consistent brand message, and their brand image was – while ultimately powerful – inadvertent.
But there was something inexplicably magnetic about it. Customers swarmed into the shabby storefront in the affluent suburb in droves. And along with the customers, the money flowed in, year after year after year.
So what was it about Little Louie’s that made it a business success? As for the customers, one has to wonder: “What were they thinking?”
There is no perfectly logical answer to the question above. Because we (and we are all customers) don’t think that way. In fact, we’re “irrational.” The reasons we act the way we do are much less clear than some might assume. The answers lie within this fantastic puzzle box of our subconscious.
Moving forward, we’ll look at some of the latest science around how we really think, and just what companies can do about it.
