Working Towards A Better Tomorrow
Today marks the inaugural day of the Spring 2006 semester. I am looking forward to what this semester brings forth. I had my three of my classes today: Introduction to Marketing, Beginning Swimming, and Network Fundamentals.
I believe that Introduction to Marketing will be quite the interesting experience. It will depart with the typical teaching method that I’m used to having with the majority of my classes which were all lectures for the most part. Nearly 35% of our grade will be based on classroom participation. Trying to hide in this class will clearly hurt ones grade. This leads me to a bit of an aside.
What is the deal with Boloco? Firstly, the glaring fact that they don’t serve burritos in the traditional sense. There offer could more be classified as a wrap. The name “The Wrap” just made more sense and had been around for a long time. It was a perfectly good brand name that went well with their product. Everyone knew what “The Wrap” was. It was a place where one could get a wrap and a smoothie. It just made sense. They are now pretty much starting over now. They have to try and reattract customers who didn’t know that The Wrap had changed their name to something less indicative of the actual product that is sold. They have to also try harder to attract new customers because it’s not clear what it is they sell. They clearly don’t sell “bolocos”. From a marketing perspective, it seems rather dumb. If they wanted a new logo, they should have just made a new logo. There was no need to change the company’s name.
All I can say is I hope I actually learn how to swim in Beginning Swimming. It’s rather sad. Out of the twenty or so people in the class, only two of us don’t actually know how to swim.
I believe that my Network Fundamentals class will be relatively easy. It’s mostly going over different interent protocols like HTTP, FTP, TCP, UDP, IP, Ethernet and what have you. So far the only thing I didn’t know in the class was little “o” notation. I had learned it in my Algorithms class and that was a year or so ago so it wasn’t really expected to sit around the bowels of my gray matter for too long. I think it’ll end up being cake, especially the programming assignments. <ego-stroke>I am a God among men.</ego-stroke>
I’ll tell you what my other two classes are like tomorrow.
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January 20th, 2006 at 9:50 pm
Stephen,
Every week or two I’ll google our name to see what comes up – this week I ran into your website and your post, and wanted to take a minute to answer your questions.
We know there are lots of skeptics out there, as well there should be. Changing our name from The Wrap after nearly 9 years was more difficult for us than I’m sure anyone might be able to imagine. Had we not had such compelling evidence after years of asking our customers questions, we would never have taken on such an endeavor.
In short, the word “wrap†truly meant to most people cold, relatively tasteless, ultra-healthy sandwiches in a pita roll or something to that effect. Certainly this is debatable, but I have more experience researching this than anyone on the planet, I believe… so you’ll have to trust me somewhat on this, even if your individual experience is different.
On another note, 30% of our sales have always been the Classic Burrito (yes, that one menu item alone). When we asked people what they considered our Teriyaki, or the Buffalo, and others that weren’t traditional Mexican, some suggested that since burritos were typically hot, also healthy, fresh off the grill, etc. that ours were more like Burritos yet not simply Mexican. That’s where the idea of Inspired Burritos came.
On the boring side, we simply couldn’t trademark the name “The Wrap†and for years our lawyers have said it would one day cause us trouble as we expanded. We wouldn’t have changed for this reason alone, but it added to the list. Trying to ask investors for hundreds of thousands of dollars to open restaurants that don’t have any name protection gets harder and harder, as you might imagine.
Anyhow, we liked Boloco (after looking at 20 other names) because it DOESN’T specifically mean anything (though it is derived from Boston Local Co., which we thought was pretty cool)… it doesn’t give people the false sense that they KNOW what we do… when we were The Wrap, they always assumed they did know, even if they really didn’t. (ie. I’ll have a ham and swiss on a pita roll… what? You don’t serve that?? How can you call yourselves “The Wrap�?!)
Well, hopefully that’s shed a little light. You are right that in many ways we are starting over. We knew that was the risk. Hopefully people will realize it’s us, still the same great food (if you liked the food in the first place, that is), and that we aren’t taking our name change quite as seriously as it may seem we are. We did feel it was the right thing to do, but we’ve also used it to reenergize our teams and that alone counts for a great deal! It’s not a corporate take-over, as many have wondered aloud, and it’s certainly not a gimmick to try to trick people into thinking we are something different than we have been. We changed almost nothing on the menu, and will continue to differentiate ourselves by our ingredients, our variety, and our speed, as we have since 1997.
If you happen to have a Boloco card, send me the 16 digit code on back and I’ll load it with some Burrito bucks for your next visit. Even if unintentional, your feedback was very much appreciated… having lunch on us is the least we can do! (if you don’t have a card, pick one up at your next visit and send me the 16 digits then… offer still stands)
One other suggestion… say the word Boloco 15 times in a row… it’s guaranteed to grow on you after you do!
Best,
John Pepper
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John Pepper | CEO and Co-Founder |
Stellar Restaurant Group | Boloco (formerly The Wrap)
http://www.boloco.com
January 21st, 2006 at 8:59 am
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