Fantasy Case Study: Jimmy John’s

Jimmy John’s.  Freaky Fast.  Completely delish.  Everybody in the whole world loves Jimmy John’s.

I have only three complaints about Jimmy John’s:

1. They take out a big hunk of the bread before they make the sandwich.  As a girthy, entitled, carb-loving American, I find this so offensive that I can hardly feel my face.  Yes, I’m aware you can order it with the full loaf still intact, but that’s not the default.  I am as offended by this as a redneck at a wine tasting.  Still delish, though.
2. They’ve got the whole Named Sandwich thing going – Beach Club, Turkey Tom, Big John – these are beautiful uses of the English language.  But then, they also have a numbering system going on, and my simple American carb-loving brain cannot reconcile these two things.  Ditch the numbers.  That’s what I’d do.  Totally irrelevant.  Ditch the numbers like an English Lit major at a liberal arts college.
3. Their group ordering function is so rad.  At least in theory.  If you want to order with a group, you go to their website, create an order, share the link via email, your group all uses the link to order, and you get your sandwiches Freaky Fast.  In theory.  Here’s the problem – people don’t use email.  I mean, people use the heck out of email, but also, they don’t really use email.

Here’s why I say that.  My goddess wife is named Wendy.  In addition to preaching the gospel of texting to the world and building RateNow, Wendy and I have a side hustle running the CenterPoint Academy, a performing arts school with about 500 students.  Recently, we had an all instructors meeting, wherein we met together, ate foods, and talked about changing the world through tap dancing, or something.

 

For this meeting, we decided to do Jimmy John’s group ordering. It was totally simple to setup and send the invites. So smooth. And then, FUBAR. A bunch of emails got caught in the Junk filter, a few of the instructors didn’t know what to do as they check their email as frequently as we elect a new Congress, and so my goddess wife ended up fielding, guess what, a couple dozen texts to take orders from people to place into the system.  It’s such an awesome idea, but she was, uh, frustrated by the kinks.

But there’s an easy fix – if JJ’s sent the invites through SMS, the whole thing would be easy street.  You know why?  Because everybody texts.  EVERYBODY TEXTS!!!  Same process, somebody visits the site, creates the group order, but the notifications go out via text instead of email. Done.  Everybody’s happy.  Everybody’s carby.  And everybody stays moderately overweight.

So, JJ’s corporate overlords, if you’re reading, which we assume you are, we would be happy to make this happen for you. You’ve got a beautiful thing, an awesome concept, and texting can make it better.  Also, we want to purchase a very large yacht, so if you pay us to do this we’ve got a total win-win.

Virtually every business needs to text with its people. Texting is a lot like Jimmy John’s – it’s freaky fast, everybody loves it, and, if it was a food, it would be completely delish.  Texting can make every business better.  The end.