Buffalo Wild Wings - Another Example of Innovation Effectiveness
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There is a Buffalo Wild Wings about 15 miles down the Interstate from me now. It opened about two months ago, in a rather large mall. There is also a well-established restaurant 3 miles from my house that specializes in wings. It has a more locally appealing flavor variety, the wings taste better, and they’ve been doing extremely well for years. So naturally, people all over town are flocking to…
…Buffalo Wild Wings, even though it’s out of the way and has lower quality food. Why? How is BWW kicking ass?
First, the local restaurant: Bill Bateman’s has a couple of carryouts and a main eat-in location. The eat-in place is physically separated into two areas - bar and dining room. The bar area looks like any local sports bar - pro sports memorabilia, a few TVs on the wall. The dining room looks like a reliable neighborhood Ma and Pa kind of place. The food is very good. You get a lot of really tasty flavor varieties - where else can you get your wings with Old Bay seasoning? You can also get sandwiches, ribs, and a great selection of appetizers (crab pretzel!).
Now then, with that kind of quality so close, why does my family, and tons of others, make the trip to BWW, given that the food at Bateman’s is better?
Because BWW has innovated the wing-eating experience. First of all, the restaurant is attached to a large sporting goods store at a larger mall. So there is a lot of mall traffic already there. But the BWW facade faces the parking lot - you don’t even need to enter the mall to eat there.
Second, the food is good. Not as good as Bateman’s, but very good anyway. You can get a few exotic wings sauces like mango habanero. Plus their menu offerings are more customer-friendly. At Bateman’s you can get wings, and you can get ribs, but you can’t get a wings/ribs combo platter. You can at BWW. You can get wings in a combo with just about every other menu offering.
Third - and most important - BWW management team has brilliantly integrated wings, ribs and other beer-loving foods with sports, in the process creating one of the best sports-watching experiences out there. The ceiling is high and exposed. The bar area is open to the main dining area, separated by a low wall. Yet each area has its own set of TVs overhead, and each TV has a game on. Not the same game either - on college football Saturdays you might see as many as five games on at once. Twenty TVs circle the bar area alone, seven of which are HDTVs. At least that many circle the dining area.
BWW has combined most of the types of innovation that maximize effectiveness - networking (by locating itself in the well-trafficked mall next to the sporting goods store), customer experience (by combining the wings experience with the sports experience), and branding (by creating a strong positive emotional connection with their name and product). By doing this they can get away with not having as good a product as Bateman’s. When you go to Bateman’s you eat wings. When you go to BWW you have an extremely positive wing-eating experience. The difference is telling.
What if there is a line to get in at both places? At Bateman’s you stand in line and wait - if the line’s long enough you wait in the parking lot. At BWW you mosey over to the bar area and watch sports with your favorite beer for a while. BWW knows it’s more than just the food that attracts customers. They have created a stronger brand than Bateman’s, so customers are more likely to make the trip.
This kind of success story further illustrates the secret to innovation effectiveness. Focus your innovation on customer experience and the rest of the areas that make the most difference.
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4 Responses to “Buffalo Wild Wings - Another Example of Innovation Effectiveness”
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They advertise that here in New Jersey, but there isn’t one around for miles.
Correct, we get their ads in South Jersey but have to drive 50 miles to North Delaware to enjoy the restaurant. Which my friends I do for road trips.
[...] Buffalo Wild Wings - Another Example of Innovation Effectiveness Posted on October 22, 2007 by Innovation Catalyst Open Source Innovation has moved - here is the new link to Buffalo Wild Wings - Another Example of Innovation Effectiveness [...]
PUT ONE IN NEW JERSEY!!!!!