Hank
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Poster: Hank @ Sat Aug 01, 2009 2:36 am
[Bonus points for spotting a Latewirer in th' above photo by Joe Johnston aka @RealJoe !]
I'm so used to slouching in th' back of rooms, dissecting and criticizing what folks have to say, and scowling at presenters from behind my composition book that I'm generally unprepared to hear a talk from someone who is inarguably, scintillatingly awesome. This Wednesday, I was sulking around Gangplank as usual, prepping for another in a series of usually-pretty-darn-good lunch presentations on business, tech, and marketing. Somewhat bafflingly for me, on deck for that day's talk was Joe Johnston (real name!), an oldish guy that I'd heard of before, as the restauranteur behind Joe's Real BBQ, a place famous for giving away free BBQ sandwiches once every year. This guy, I knew, was also behind th' latest in-crowd hangout, Liberty Market.
Now, see, I respect successful businesspersons. I also have a basic, reactionary, but often-justified snobby attitude about "latest in-crowd hangouts" and other signifiers of hipster culture. Never having been to Liberty Market, and having been to Joe's real BBQ only once (and I have to admit, I still prefer Honey Bear's), I didn't have a clear idea about what sort of insight this old sandwich-slinger would have to offer a room full of bad-attitude tech goons and myself. His topic was "Social Media and the Third Place," which sounded pretty bog standard except I wasn't sure what any of this had to do with baseball. And, gee, social media advice is like bad debt : a lot of people have it and would love to pass it on to you.
As it turns out, Joe Johnston is a real interesting cat who puts a lot of thought into what he does. He's got a wide range of knowledge, a compelling story and some pretty darned neat ideas about how to run a real live brick-n-mortar business. He showed up wearing a breezy Hawaiian-style shirt and a straw porkpie hat (indoors, which is bad manners if you ask me, but hey, he's the millionaire). Here's the brief :
Joe Johnston is an old-school Arizonan who grew up on a family farm in Gilbert in the 1960s. He studied electrical engineering at Stanford and practiced that lucrative trade for several years, until a backlog of pleasant memories from his college coffeehouse haunting days and Ray Oldenburg's now-classic book "The Great Good Place" drove him to become heavily interested in and soon professionally involved with what Oldenburg called "Third Places."
According to Oldenburg, the "First Place" is the insular place where we live with our families, sleep, and play 'Scrabble.'. The "Second Place" is the workplace, a much more structured environment where we might spend even more time than we spend at home. The "Third Place" is a highly unstructured environment away from home where conversation is the main activity, ideas are exchanged, and culture is created. Classic examples of "Third Places" are pubs in Britain, cafes in France, barbershops, and coffeehouses in the 1960s USA. Phoenix has often been derided as being bereft of an indigenous urban culture; Joe figured it was high time he did something about it.
His first attempt at creating a "third place" began in 1989 when he and his pal Tim Peelen realized that there weren't any coffeehouses in metro Phoenix and decided to give it a shot. They started by developing what they believed to be a superior product -- good-quality "gourmet coffee," buying various raw bean varieties and test-roasting them in Joe's popcorn popper. When a few winners were ready, they opened up a joint on Mill Avenue in Tempe, right near ASU, and called it Coffee Plantation. To hear Joe tell it, it was a pretty good "third place" and the first coffeehouse of its kind in Tempe.
[ That last bit is funny to me, because by the time I got to ASU (after Joe and Tim had sold it to some business swine), Coffee Plantation was boring, stifling, had mediocre product, and was mobbed with lame folks at all times. Goes to show maybe how one person's persona can anchor a whole enterprise, and the whole thing can spin off into the choppy seas of wackitude when that person leaves).
Johnston and Peelen offloaded Coffee Plantation because it got too big. This is interesting and gives a little insight into what these guys are about. Joe said that after opening up a few more locations and a separate roasting facility, totaling over 150 people on the payroll, it stopped being fun and conceptual and started to turn into a real operations drag. Idea-guys don't like dealing with stacks of HR paperwork and worker's comp claims filed by reefer-sick baristas who burned themselves with cappuccino foam while chatting up fellow Phish fans on the other side of th' counter.
So, Johnston took a year-long sabbatical to travel around th' country eating delicious food. [Tough life huh] Like all non-alien humans, he has a special love for barbecue. He got an idea to start a BBQ of his own, and spent a lot of time in Texas sampling the local variations and looking for the best site designs and delivery / service systems. In 1998, he opened Joe's Real BBQ, which as I mentioned is pretty good. I give him definite props for developing his own distinctive sauce, which is worth a try.
That highly informal restaurant was a raging, hoot-n-hollering success, so Johnston figured he was on a roll and opened up Joe's Farm Grill, which uses fresh produce from his urban farm (more on this later), and then Liberty Market, the most abstract sort-of-restaurant of them all. With Liberty Market, Johnston unplugged completely from the heavy operations chores to focus on design, menu, and conceptual guidance. He seemed pretty stoked about it.
[fun fact : I realized after I'd spent a long time typing the previous section that this story had probably been typed out before, considering that this guy is like super famous. Sure nuff, I could have just cut-and-pasted from the 'About' pages on the restaurant Web sites]
After hipping the crowd to this background, Johnston ripped into a discussion of Oldenburg's "8 characteristics" that define the Third Place and what they mean for business. He also passed around nice handout sheets, which is something that I've never seen before at Gangplank but that was much appreciated :
[Note : despite all th' talk about class, I'm no Marxist and I doubt that Joe is either]
1) Neutral ground : the third place has no formal leader, is not 'hosted,' has no time constraints [e.g., no waitresses rushing you out of your table after the dinner], and is designed for maximum comfort level
-The key things here are the lack of hierarchical structure and lack of serious time constraints. Re : the latter : most places have to close sometime, but if you're only open 4 hours a day, that's not going to give people enough flexibility to get really comfortable)
2) Leveler : the experience is designed so that people from all walks of life feel comfortable; all socioeconomic classes are eligible to participate. This illustrates the idea of commonality and requires that the barriers to entry be reduced to the lowest levels possible.
- Low barrier to entry is vital here. At Liberty Market, Johnston sets the barrier at $1.66 -- the price of an espresso. He says he'll even work out deals with homeless people who have no cash (what about Pee-Wee Herman?). Of near-equal importance is that what staff there are don;t behave in a snobby way that turns people from certain classes off. This leveling concept is necessary for the exchange of ideas between classes that sparks creativity and interesting convos.
3) Conversation : This is necessarily the main activity at the "third place." The convo must be "lively, with lots of discussion, and lots of buzz," says Johnston. The idea here is to foster communication.
- Part of this is making sure that it's easy to converse in the space. This means tables put together to encourage groups to mix, and music that's not too loud. This last point is seriously overlooked by many establishments aspiring to be 'third places,' 78% of whom deem it essential to blast "Stir it Up" at 97 decibels while I'm trying to hear someone speak.
4) Accessibility -- this is related to #1 -- the place has to be accessible during a broad swath of time throughout the day. People need to be able to drift in and out according to their own natural schedules.
- In Johnston's example, Liberty Market opens at 7am and closes after a late dinner. Again, it's crucial that people not feel rushed.
5) Regulars : Any establishment wishing to be a "third place" needs to take care that its regulars are looked-after and that the stage is set for their enjoyment. The regulars foster conversation, draw in new participants, and provide the cultural spark of the place.
- The regulars set the cultural tone, so it's vital to recognize them and not tick them off.
6) Low-profile : The physical design of the space should be kind of plain (though inviting), utilitarian, and not over-wrought. it should just be a comfortable structure that allows focus to remain on the people and conversations.
-Gangplank is a good example of this. Th' place looks like a classroom and is inside an industrial space, but that 'blank' atmosphere is ideal for free-ranging thought development and unconstrained talk.
7) Playful mood : The overall vibe must not be serious, boring, annoying or pretentious.
-Instead, it should be upbeat, joking, and full of enjoyment. Overbearing atmosphere stifles conversation and culture, and will keep 'fresh' people far away.
8) Homelike : this means that the place should have an element of physical and psychological comfort that puts one at ease.
-In practice, this means having couches and other homey touches around, reading material, etc
A lot of places recognize the value of being a "third place" and aspire to be one, but they're not. Restaurants want to bundle you out of there as soon as your check's paid; Starbucks charges for Web access, Burger King feels like an Orwellian nightmare, etc. Neglect of any of the principles above can prevent the third-place culture incubator from forming.
How 'social media' relates to the "Third Place" concept :
-Twitter is kind of like a 'third place' online. Very low barrier to entry, all-inclusive, strictly conversation-based, etc. In practice, it's possible and advisable to 'leverage' this virtual 'third place' to promote the physical 'third place.' The place owner / organizer / idea person can use social media not only to generate word-of-mouth (and keep track of what the word is), but to directly keep in touch with customers. The latter is especially important when considering the vital nurturing of regulars that all 'third places' need to succeed. You can pass along special offers to them, get their invaluable feedback on potential changes and plans (from menu to construction ideas) and keep track of / thank them for their visits and reports. Social media helps you let the regulars know that they're relaly important.
- In social media interactions as well as those in 'meatspace,' it's advisable to hew close to the old rules of conversation as possible :
1) Remain silent your share of the time -- don't hog th' airspace
2) Be attentive while others are talking
3) Say what you think, but be careful
4) Avoid topics not of general interest. You might really really want to talk about how your toothbrush tasted funny this morning, but others likely give no hoot.
5) Say little or nothing about yourself, talk about others and their adventures and achievements ( note : some have suggested an 'eight-to-one' rule : for every comment you make about yourself, spend eight talk segments on others )
6) Speak in as low a voice as will allow others to hear.
In addition to these ideas and his business history, Johnston spoke briefly about his 'mid-century Modern' housing development, Agritopia, which also contains the sustainable, no-pesticide-or-herbicide farm he uses to supply his restaurants. This idea of a self-supporting urban agriculture community is radical and, while I wouldn't live there personally as a matter of lot size and loathing of HOAs, this idea probably represents a good model for future community development.
Johnston's focus on design, "third place" ideas, and self-reliance are seriously invigorating. Judging from the audience reaction, he inspired quite a few other folks to take a big-picture view with an eye for vital details and invest some energy into doing something right -- or as he says, "from the heart."
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