"NO ONE WHO COOKS, COOKS ALONE...A COOK IN THE KITCHEN IS SURROUNDED BY GENERATIONS OF COOKS PAST."
Laurie Colwin, American writer (1948-1992)

Striving for Third Place
April 2, 2007
Becoming what‘s known as a “third place” is a status that every community-oriented business should want to achieve. I first heard the idea of the third place in reading Ray Oldenburg’s book, The Great Good Place, originally published in 1989. Here is the key concept:

Five Steps to Building an Organizational Culture
February 28, 2007
At Zingerman’s, we are often asked, “How did you build this great group of people? How do you get people to care and have such a good time at work?”

Basically, they are asking what the secret of our culture is. And, of course, there is no secret; there are a thousand things to make the culture what it is.

Managing by Pouring Water
November 7, 2006
There is no single, “right” way to be a leader. Finding the style and routine that’s suited to you, and to the particulars of your environment, is not easy. Even when you find one that works in one phase of your business, it may be less effective as your company grows.

Stewardship: Power Without Authority
September 29, 2006
The guiding model for effective management at Zingerman’s is what we call Servant Leadership, which details that leaders are obligated to provide great service to the organization and, more specifically, to the staff. Stewardship is one of two important approaches to making Servant Leadership effective. (The other is our Entrepreneurial Approach.) The concept for Stewardship is adapted from a highly recommended book of the same name by Peter Block.

Twelve Techniques to Create Successful Promotions
August 29, 2006
Successful promotions should be fun, but they must also sell product. Here are a dozen techniques that can contribute to increased awareness and sales.

A Guide to Planning Effective Promotions
July 1, 2006
Organizing promotions is a less-than-glamorous subject. Good promotions are all about creativity combined with nuts-and-bolts stuff that “everyone already knows.” But without good nuts and bolts, it’s tough to build the solid, successful businesses we all want to operate.

Getting ZAPped
June 1, 2006
Everyone at Zingerman’s is currently engaged in what we’ve affectionately come to call ZAP, a simple acronym for Zingerman’s Annual Planning. Like any skill one is attempting to perfect, it takes time, practice and dedication to become a master planner.

A Culture of Positive Appreciation
May 2, 2006
High achievers, those focused on ways to improve an organization, may not be as appreciative as they should be. I’ve spent the past 15 years trying to turn my overachieving nature inside out and become good at appreciation.

Fifteen Characteristics of Effective Champions
January 10, 2006
I first met Geri Larkin in the early ’80s, not long after we opened the Deli. She was a consultant with Deloite & Touche, and has since left the world of high-powered consulting to become a Buddhist monk. Fortunately, she contributed a number of exceptional books on business and, speaking personally, left me with a few little pearl-ettes of wisdom. One of the best: “If there isn’t a champion,” she wrote, “somebody who says, ‘this is my thing, this is what drives me,’ then nothing happens.”

Food Writing for Non-Writers
November 1, 2005
More people in the food world should write about what they do and sell. Writing has helped me contribute to the building of Zingerman’s. It’s also pushed me to learn more about what I do, while making me a better listener and a more sensitive taster.

Part 2: Ten Steps to Designing a Great Game
October 1, 2005
While there’s no perfect formula for designing group games, here is a ten-step recipe that we use at Zingerman’s to get better results. The recipe can be adapted for individual or group rewards, both short- and long-term.

Part 1: Meaningful Games at Work
September 1, 2005
People always give me a funny look when I tell them that we like to play games at work.

The games we play at Zingerman’s are not what you think. While they can be as much fun as baseball, bowling or bocce ball, the point of these contests is simply to get better business results. Granted, games sound like something extracurricular and silly—and business is serious stuff. But you can make life at work a lot more fun by bringing games into everyday activities, using them to improve the quality of food, service, workplace, finance or anything else that you do.

Part Two: Designing a Great Business
June 23, 2005
One day, as Becky Winkler was teaching the section of our ZingTrain MerchandiZing seminar that covers “Contrast, Composition, and Content,” it suddenly struck me. Although the approach was created to address graphic design issues, it’s applicable to all the other “design” work we do, whether that’s designing a business, a product or anything else of consequence.

Contrast, Composition, Content or Content, Composition, Contrast
May 10, 2005
You are probably familiar with this scenario. A person working the cheese counter runs up to the signmaker (the man or woman with the most artistic talent amongst your staff) and says, “I need a sign for that new cheddar. Can you do it by the end of the day?”

The Entrepreneurial Approach in Action
April 8, 2005
The Entrepreneurial Approach to Management is the opposite of the bureaucratic methods of memos and meetings. Essentially, it’s taking the same creative, free market, fun, energetic approach that you use to sell to customers and applying it to management.

The Entrepreneurial Approach to Management: Part 1
February 21, 2005
Editor’s Note: In this first of a two-part series, you will learn why an Entrepreneurial Approach will help you manage and motivate your staff. In Part 2, to be published in the April issue of Specialty Food Magazine, you will learn how to put this approach into practice.

The Value of Teaching
January 14, 2005
Not many in leadership roles are looking to add extra responsibilities. It’s a challenge just to keep up. Nevertheless, it is vital to find a way to actively and regularly teach classes for staff.

Working with the Press:
Five Steps to Build Rewarding Relationships
December 1, 2004
Any business would like to get more good press. A nice mention in the local newspaper, an enjoyable interview on a radio talk show, a quote in The New York Times or USA Today, a spot on a TV news piece about food—all generate positive exposure.

Recipes for Organizational Success
October 22, 2004
How can you apply the principles of good work at the stove to the work you do with staff?

It’s a challenge. People drawn to the lively, loveable chaos of the food business have an aversion to too much structure. It’s natural; we like the freedom of the food world because we don’t have to sit in offices or deal with large corporate structures.

The Importance of Repetitive Tasting
September 3, 2004
As an industry, we could all benefit from doing a lot more tasting. And as much as we taste at Zingerman’s, we never do it enough.

Tasting. I’m not talking about eating for pleasure. What I’m referring to is the systemic, repetitive, professional tasting of products to:
a) make sure they are up to quality standards;
b) know that we’re familiar enough to merchandise them effectively to staff and customers.

A Vision for Kitchen Greatness
July 6, 2004
Stas’ Kazmierski is one of the managing partners of ZingTrain, the training and consulting business at Zingerman’s. One of the best concepts I’ve ever learned from Stas’ is what he calls “a belated glimpse of the obvious,” or as we sometimes refer to it as a “BGO.” What’s a “belated glimpse of the obvious?” It’s when one of those light bulbs goes off and you realize something that suddenly seems so clear that you can’t believe you haven’t seen “it”—and been doing it—all along.

Optimizing Merchandising Energies
June 11, 2004
We have thousands of products to promote at Zingerman's. The better we merchandise them, the better sales will be. In my idealized world, we would have the time, money and people to merchandise all actively and equally. But that is not the reality of organizational life. Like most natural resources, those available for merchandising are—and always will be—limited.

A Guide to Good Forecasting: Part 2
April 29, 2004
“Forecasting” is something we do once a week. Quite simply, the forecast is the most up-to-date prediction of what our business or department’s performance results will be for a given period in the future. We usually forecast at least three to four weeks out; in some departments, six to eight, on key numbers. To use a sailing analogy, the annual plan is like charting an initial course before you leave port; the forecast is about checking current coordinates and then tacking effectively to end up at the agreed-upon destination.

A Guide to Good Forecasting: Part 1
March 31, 2004
We’re approaching our 22nd anniversary at Zingerman’s. If you had told me back in 1982 that, in 2004, we would have a staff of 400, sales of more than $20 million and that we’d be doing extensive and detailed planning and forecasting work, I’d have said that you must be confusing us with another Michigan company, General Motors. As a tiny startup, annual planning was not even on my radar. It’s what people did in big corporations.

The Mission Statement as Your North Star
February 27, 2004
In 1992, we called together a group of managers, staff, and owners and set out to put on paper a statement of what Zingerman’s is all about, to write what’s referred to in business books as a Mission Statement.

3 Steps to Great Finance
December 23, 2003
The more we develop and document clear, effective recipes at Zingerman’s, the more successful we are as an organization. This is obviously true of recipes in the kitchens at the Deli, at Zingerman’s Roadhouse, and in our Bakehouse where we prepare large quantities of full-flavored traditional food from scratch. But our use of recipes is not just limited to cooking.

Convenience Food, Specialty Style
October 31, 2003
Imagine the reader’s reaction if the name of this magazine was suddenly switched from Specialty Food to Convenience Food. You might wonder how your name had landed in the hands of a trade journal for flash-frozen French fries. When most Americans think of “convenience foods,” they think of fast food restaurants, breaded chicken fingers from the supermarket or reheating frozen prepared dinners in the microwave.

Part 2: How to Put Open Book Finance into Practice
October 6, 2003
Open Book Finance is not easy to implement. It takes a lot of effort from upper management to make it work. The leaders must have the willingness to fight through the inevitable resistance to change, and a determination to use a systemic approach to make the structure successful.

Part 1: An Introduction to Open Book Finance
August 20, 2003
It’s been nearly a decade since Zingerman’s made the move to open book finance. “Open book” basically means that we actively share all the financial information about our business with everyone who works with us. All in our organization—not just the bosses and the accountants—are responsible for the financial performance.

Customer Service 301: Breaking the Rules and Moments of Truth
June 18, 2003
There are two specific areas where the one-customer-at-a-time approach can make a significant impact on organizational success. At Zingerman’s, we focus on both of them because either has the potential to take a customer experience from poor to great by simple, though often not intuitive, action by an owner, manager or associate.

One Customer at a Time
May 29, 2003


A Guide to Good Saffron
May 1, 2003


Better Ingredients = Better Food
April 18, 2003
I write this piece with two outcomes in mind: one, to convince those who serve prepared foods to base their recipes on better ingredients, and secondly to help those of us who sell those ingredients—at both retail and wholesale—to do so more effectively.

The Elusive Caper
February 18, 2003
When we started Zingerman’s 20 years ago, capers were, without question, one of the then-exotic foods that you’d find in most every “specialty” shop. Back then, and even now, surprisingly few retail employees or customers seemed to know what capers really are, where they come from and—other than sprinkling them around salmon—how to use them. So, here’s some information to share with your employees and customers about one of the world’s steadiest and most enjoyable little specialty foods.

Protecting and Promoting Traditional Foods
January 7, 2003