Double Decker Sandwich

There’s a local coffee shop I occasionally use.  I do wonder how it makes money.  It reminds me of the ending scene in Midnight Run, where accountant Grodin advises bounty-hunter De Niro he should move on from his dream of opening a restaurant as they never make any money.  The same applies today to coffee shop style delis I’m sure.  Where’s the margin in a few dozen lattes a day?

Of course, people sometimes buy food.  And this causes me much frustration.  I’m determined to help out any such small business over the likes of Starbucks, yet I’m convinced my local store miss several tricks with their munch options.

Faced with the typical sandwich, panini, soup, pasta quandary, I tried to do something about it, and asked for something ‘off-menu’.  They prepare to order a number of reasonably priced and tasty sandwiches, yet especially when it seems an age since brekkie, they often leave me wanting more.  So I asked if they could do a ‘double-decker’.  Take the normal sarnie, add another dollop of filling on top, then slap a third slice of bread on.

Working out how to charge for this caused so much trauma that I eventually scaled back my request and settled for the normal offering.

But then my over-riding frustration was a thought that they were doomed to failure.  The secret to more profits was not in adding new sandwich fillings, but variants on what they already had.  If the standard fayre was £2.25, then surely they could charge £3.50 for the maxi version.  And wouldn’t more people order food too when greater choice elicits more engagement?  And why stop at the double-decker, how about combos, with two different yet complementary flavours on each deck?  How about left-field ideas, like smorgasbord?  Half an hour trawling the web could I’m sure lead to all sorts of interesting, simple to prepare and margin-rich ideas.

Of course, it wasn’t long before I drifted to thinking about whether similar extensions could be applied to my own products and those of my customers.  The simple answer is that ideas flowed. So, the question is, what’s your double-decker opportunity?