• While the saying suggests a picture is worth a thousand words, for this picture I want to focus on just two.  Neither of them is cheese. Neither of them is scone.

A colleague suggested we grab a quick breakfast at Brickhouse after a rushed early morning.  The cheese scone was delicious, but the butter cube, wrapped up like a lolly, really made my day.  Instead of buying and serving prepackaged butter packets, the proprietor had cut and individually wrapped cubes.

The 2 words I want to focus on are delight and sustainability.

Maybe you’ve seen this before, but I hadn’t. Maybe the first time you saw it, you had the same reaction I did. It was such a nice surprise.

Whether the proprietor had come up with the idea themselves, or adopted something they’d seen elsewhere isn’t the point. Someone applied a bit of imagination to serving butter, avoiding plastic, and doing it in a novel, attractive and fun way.

Perhaps it even saved the business a bit of money? But with the labour involved, probably not. Rather than use ugly, plastic, over-packaged but very convenient butter packets, they had gone to the effort to do this, and brightened at least one customer’s day.

So my challenges to your business:

• What can you do to delight you customers? It doesn’t need to be huge or expensive. Sometimes just a small unexpected touch of something different and special is enough to create a big impression. It may take a bit of imagination and effort, but you and your team might find the process of coming up with ideas fun. Bonus.
• What things can you implement in your business to help improve the planet? Even small things count. One less plastic butter packet isn’t going to save the world, but every bit helps.  What can you do to reduce waste and make more sustainable choices?

By the way, Brickhouse on Symonds St, up the hill from Auckland University is a great place for a coffee and snack. The ‘old school’ technology on the wall was fun to look at. Cheese scones. Highly recommended.