Got Soul

An expedition to Kendal last week prompted thoughts on the way the world is going in terms of character, or lack of it. At lunchtime I went into a little cafe and sandwich bar where I got served immediately, enjoyed a nice piece of clearly homemade Bakewell tart at a very reasonable price, and was smiled at. There were only a couple of other customers. Next door was a soulless Caffe Nerobucks, charging pounds for (in my view) not great coffee, and silly money for plastic-wrapped snacks. It was packed.

From a marketing background I understand this - brand power, the knowledge that quality is never bad,though equally you'll never be surprised or delighted. But given the difference in price, how are they thriving in such times when cheaper independents struggle?

There are rays of hope. In my home city of Preston Bruccianis, an art deco-ish survival where food and  coffee are good, is generally full. It has soul. In Kendal I interviewed the manager of Farrer's, a tea-room and coffee house since 1819, the very walls imbued with coffee oils after two centuries of operation. They too were doing nicely, though not as well as the Starnero I saw later.

So it can be done, the little guy can stand up to the corporate bully. Even if the little guy is paying a far higher percentage of his turnover in tax than the giant backed by armies of tax specialists. From managerial days too there is another gleam of hope: such organisations tend to go through various predictable phases, one being departmental empire building. We can look forward to those tax accountants, process facilitators and internal consultants adding PAs (whatever happened to secretaries?), deputies, researchers, administrators, team leaders, IT support and so on until with the centre stuffed with staff black hole-like it implodes back into nothingness. The sooner the better.