IMAGINE SPA MANAGEMENT

I love Starbucks! I have this ability to sniff them out and have been known to plan my meetings around Starbucks locations to ensure I get my favourite caffeine fix. Probably the clearest indication of my love for Starbucks is that when I collected our first born from hospital we stopped off in Starbucks before we took her home! No wonder that even now, at the age of 4, she still asks to go to Starbucks whenever we are out shopping together – it’s like going home for her!

I think what I love about Starbucks is the way the business is based on a few core values that it lives out wherever possible. It started out as a small shop in Seattle that sold fresh coffee and was on a mission to educate Americans on how to enjoy real coffee. The idea of actually serving coffee in the shop came later but proved to be the turning point for the business that is now a worldwide global brand with awareness not far behind such giants as Coca-Cola and McDonalds.

The man behind the business is Howard Schultz (check out his book – “Pour Your Heart Into It – One Cup at a Time” – one of my favourite business books). It’s his passion that has made Starbucks what it is today.

All the way through its exponential growth Starbucks has been great at communicating its story. But Starbucks has a problem – how can that passion still be delivered, by a Polish student working in an Ipswich store for example, when the head office is in Seattle? The answer seems to be that it can’t. Not always. Not consistently. Along the way the passion and the core values get diluted and you find an experience that is far removed from the original concept.

You see, if you really pushed me, my favourite place for a coffee isn’t actually Starbucks at all – it’s Byfords in Holt. Byfords is just a fantastic coffee shop, bistro and delicatessen in the North Norfolk market town of Holt. It’s run by Iain and Clair Wilson who have built it up over the past few years. They have just the best flapjack and chocolate shortbread you will find anywhere and their breakfasts are legendary!

Of course, Byfords doesn’t have the worldwide profile of Starbucks but you’d struggle to find many people from Norfolk who don’t know of it, such is its great reputation. Apart from the great food, its success is largely due to the great staff team who work there and the really friendly service they provide. And they tell their story really well through the menus and posters in the place – it oozes friendliness. The Wilson’s business empire is growing – they’re now also involved with two pubs, another restaurant and they’ve taken on the management of the catering at the Assembly House in Norwich.

But here’s the thing – if you go into Byfords you’re still likely to see Iain around the place helping out the staff and leading by example. That impresses me so much and it’s leading from the front that keeps the Byfords experience ahead of any of its competitors and certainly why I’d choose it over Starbucks anyday. I’m pretty sure the key to successful growth for the Wilsons will be how they manage to maintain the great service when the business becomes too big for them to be involved on the shop floor.

At Imagine we’ve tried so hard to instil our values into our teams. We have five key values that we want everyone in the organisation to live out:

• Value of people matter – making every guest feel so special, important and pampered
• Value of outcome – ensuring that the way we deliver the spa day leaves the spa guest relaxed, revitalised or restored, whichever is their desired outcome
• Value of education – recognising that a lot of our guests may be visiting spas for the first time and need us to help them get the most from their visit in a friendly and empathetic way
• Value of entertainment – we want to create a “sense of theatre and magic” in the way we deliver our spa days
• Value of irresistibility – we want our spa days to be so wonderful that our guests leave already planning their next visit

The scary thing for me is that with eight sites dotted around the country I can’t be like Iain Wilson and I don’t want to be like Starbucks. At Imagine our long term success will be determined by the abilities, enthusiasm and commitment of our Spa Managers and Head Therapists to deliver our values and motivate our spa teams.

It is something that as a head office team we have to stay so focussed on. One of the most telling quotes, in my opinion, from Schulz’s aforementioned book is this:

“Ultimately, Starbucks can’t flourish and win customers’ hearts without the passionate devotion of our employees.  In business, that passion comes from ownership, trust and loyalty.  If you undermine any of those, employees will view their work as just another job.

Sometimes we lose sight of that at Starbucks, especially as we get larger and a distance develops between me and the newest hire in the newest store.  But I know, in my heart, if we treat people as a line item under expenses, we are not living up to our goals and our values.

Their passion and devotion is our number 1 competitive advantage.  Lose it, and we’ve lost the game.”

We can all draw our own conclusions as to whether Starbucks have “lost the game” – I, for one, am still a regular customer – but what we will be challenged on every day at Imagine is to ensure that we never lose sight of our values, instill the passion in our teams and never, ever lose the game.

Of course, it won’t be us who decides whether we’ve achieved this or not – it will be our customers.