When April hits, you may be thinking of crocus and daffodils, Easter bunnies and warm weather. But when we think of April, we think grilled cheese. Yes! April was National Grilled Cheese Month. And believe it or not, there are some business lessons to emerge from the timeless-yet-contemporary grilled cheese story.
You (or your parents) probably grew up on piping hot grilled cheese sandwiches made from Kraft American slices (or Velveeta!) and white bread – mmmm. But everyone knows that a grilled cheese is naked without its companion tomato soup (Did your mom make it with water or milk or both?). Through the decades, grilled cheese and tomato soup have been the go-to cold-weather lunch, mostly for kids. But something happened to this combo along the way. It’s now for everyone, and it became unexpectedly hip!
And this is where the business story gets interesting…
There’s a growing number of specializing-in-grilled-cheese places around. But two guys in Cincinnati have taken it to a whole new level. Their business is called Tom + Chee, and it is booming! You don’t have to be in the restaurant business to learn a few things from the Tom + Chee guys. Here are a few gems from their journey:
- Have a vision—and stay focused. They started out in a small food vendor tent on the public square in downtown Cincinnati. They could have stayed there and probably still made a go of it. But they had a bigger vision and stayed squarely focused on it.
- Got detractors? Meh! We don’t know the exact comments and warnings they got from well-meaning others, but you can bet there were a lot. Grilled cheese – really? How will you live? You’ll be ruined! You can only imagine. Did they cave? Absolutely not! Their experience and instincts told them they had something. They ignored all the slings and arrows.
- Listen to the universe. It sounds like a contradiction, but it’s not. They learned to pay attention to events that were giving them real information about the business. For example, people were lining up around block to sample Tom + Chee. They felt confident that this wasn’t a limited-time event or unique to Cincinnati.
- Put it all out there, regardless. The Tom + Chee guys got themselves on the TV show, Shark Tank to try and get an investor among the “sharks.” If you’ve ever watched, you know that the sharks show no mercy. True to form, the Tom + Chee guys were grilled endlessly by the sharks, right down to their logo, which the sharks didn’t like. But in the end, they came away with an investor—and big bucks, so was it worth it? The proof is in the…cheese.
- Don’t pass on opportunities. Especially after the appearance on Shark Tank, Tom + Chee is franchising all over the place. They are becoming huge and are turning franchise applicants away! They’ve made the journey from the tent to franchising look easy, which it hasn’t been. Did they always believe they’d have this kind of success? We don’t know—but when the opportunity unfolded in front of them, they took the leap.
- Push through the fear. We don’t know the Tom + Chee team, but they must have had—and probably still have—plenty of sleepless nights and stomach churning. So it’s not that they’re fearless, but they found a way to push through the fear to stay on course. You can, too!
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