Peter Perfect, The Rocky Roaster and a successful commercial makeover

I caught this interesting show on The Style Channel called Peter Perfect yesterday with Heather. (video clip here)

OK, so it started out... inauspiciously. I walked in when Rocky Rhodes, the proprietor of the Rocky Roaster coffee shop, was getting his unibrow waxed.

"You should do that," Heather remarked to me.

The stylist, Peter Ishkhans, made over the employees and owners of the coffee shop so as to make the store more successful. He recast their appearance to make them more, well, approachable. It was a big improvement - and the stakeholders were happy. "I cannot wait to go to work tomorrow," remarked one employee. How often do you hear that, especially in the food service industry?

Peter also remade the store interior. Before the makeover, there was no underlying, unifying store theme. A chess table here, an old unattractive coffee hutch there, homemade shelves down there.... The colors and mismatched knickknacks made the store look... dowdy.

After Peter did his work, it was a whole different feel. The warm colors connoted friendliness and community. There was a large table in front so that people could sample the coffees. Everything was inviting.

Even the store sign change was dramatic. Here's the old logo (taken from http://www.rockyroaster.com/index.php:

Kind of looks like an old Waffle House or something, doesn't it? It doesn't suggest coffee shop at all.

The new sign:

Wow. What a difference. Nobody could mistake this for anything but a coffee shop now.

It's interesting - one of the changes that Peter (as well as the owner's wife) suggested was placing bags of coffee beans on display, so as to indicate to the customer that, hey, bags of coffee beans could also be purchased. Rocky was highly resistant to this, because he was staking his reputation on selling beans that were never more than three days old. The solution was to go ahead and display the bags of coffee beans, but then when a customer made an inquiry, the employee would say something like "you know what? Let me go get you some fresh coffee beans." More coffee was moved, and at the same time the customer felt like he or she was getting special treatment. Brilliant - I love it when incredible opportunities surface just by thinking about and addressing problems with even moderate creativity and sophistication.

Another thing that struck me was the profound resistance on the part of the owner to change. Case in point: he had this God-awful, colorful, damaged rooster statuette on display. Peter was trying to convince him to part with it, but Rocky was just so attached to it. I guess in the end Rocky gave it up, but it looks like it was a big, emotional struggle.

It makes me wonder about the ways in which I myself am resistant to change - change that probably is really good for me. So, friends, if you see me irrationally grasping for my rooster statuette, do me a favor and call me out on it, OK?

This episode of Peter Perfect is airing again on The Style Channel tonight at 9pm and midnight.