judging the book

I'm frequently reminded how important appearance is in this business of mine. Just yesterday, a man came up to the ice cream counter, pointed at a bucket of ice cream (instead of reading the labels...but that is a whole other rant) and said "i'll take the strawberry". I grab my weapon and start toward the strawberry cheesecake ice cream. A side note: this ice cream happened to be sitting next to the one he was pointing at, but sometimes it can be really hard to tell where people are pointing through the glass.

"NO! I want that one!"
"Oh, this one is strawberry cheesecake...did you want the peppermint instead?"
"yes, please."

Lesson of the day kids: Customers only know what they want about 25% of the time. The rest is going by look and perception.

Another example:
We have pumpkin fudge. It's really good and has a pretty strong pumpkin flavor to it. However, most people only experience pumpkin through pumpkin pie. Most of the flavor and aroma from pumpkin pie comes from the spices...not the pumpkin itself. At least once a week, we'll get a customer who comes in and samples the pumpkin fudge and claims that it doesn't taste like pumpkin at all. Well, 10% of the loaf is pumpkin and it's a vanilla fudge so i'm pretty sure there's nothing overpowering the pumpkin flavor. I think they just don't realize what they're tasting.