That day at the Sunshine Shack, we’d done everything right.
Our friends Dan and Jess* had scored us beach chairs early.
Dan had put in our order as soon as the owner showed up to start basting his meat.
And yet, after watching everyone on the beach but us get their delicious-smelling ribs, Dan went to check on our lunch and came back with this news:
“They ran out of food.”
The Sunshine Shack had forgotten us.
We wouldn’t be getting our ribs for another 90 minutes. The owner had to go to the supermarket for more meat.
Hey, we’re on vacation, we said. No hurry, no worry, right?
“The ribs are no joke,” Dan promised. “Worth the wait.”
He’d been going to the Sunshine Shack for 5 or 6 years, every Christmas break. He wasn’t psyched about being forgotten. But what are you gonna do? That’s the Caribbean for you. Plus, we’d already planted ourselves there for the day. Paid for chairs and umbrellas. And there was nowhere else on that beach for good food.
(There was a place called Coconuts, but you didn’t want to go there.)
Over the next hours, I snuck honey-wheat pretzel sticks — which I didn’t bring enough of to share — into my mouth from a Ziploc baggie in my tote.
We watched a new round of ribs being made, plated with slaw and salad onto the styrofoam plates…and served to someone more important.
Finally, a waitresses came over and told us, “Grab a table. Your ribs are ready.”
As we eagerly shook up the hot sauce bottle, she plunked down two orders.
“You guys go ahead,” Jess and Dan said, sliding the food in front of us.
Steven and I were Sunshine Shack virgins. They wanted to watch us take our first bites.
“Do they know we ordered four?” I asked. I didn’t see them coming back with more.
Oh. They’d thought we wanted two. Would we like two orders of snapper instead?
That’s when it started to pour.
The wind blew. Everyone ran and crowded under the shack’s little tin roof.
Grab the Kindle. Grab the towels. Shit, our sandals. Go back, GET THEM!
We scurried to a partially-sheltered table with our two precious rib orders. In a gust of wind, the plate I put down promptly flew off the table and into the sand.
Steven cried out, “Laura! What did you DO?” as though I’d just killed a puppy.
A nearby man gasped, “OH NO!” and dove for his sandals to snatch them away from our barbecue mess.
Steven gathered up the sandy ribs while I stood stupidly.
Dan abandoned ship (or ribs), ran off to the warm water, and dove in.
Jess held down the one good plate of ribs, staring ahead with glazed eyes. Her spirit had left her body and gone someplace else.
Steven and I frantically ate ribs off the plate Jess held down, yelling at each other, “Stop eating the ribs! Save them for Jess and Dan!”
The waitress came, shouting over the wind that they were making us two orders of snapper.
“That’s fine,” Steven said. “We’ll eat that and Jess and Dan can have the ribs.” (The ribs that we were finishing.)
“I don’t care about the ribs” Jess kept saying, lifelessly.
She continued to hold down our plate of picked-clean bones while the rain drenched her back.
And then it was over. As the sun came out, Steven and I started on the sandy ribs from the ground.
The waitress brought us snapper. Steven and I ate that, too.
Jess and Dan said they’d get ribs somewhere else later.
We paid our lunch bill. 150 bucks. (The snapper costs extra.)
Two days later, we went back to try again.
The business lesson?
Honestly, the main lesson from this story is that Steven and I are animals who will eat sandy ribs.
But that’s not instructive for you. So here’s how our ribs-capades are relevant to your business:
If you want customers who’ll gladly wait all day for whatever you offer;
Who’ll take it even in a rain storm;
Who’ll come back for more even after you forgot about them, served everyone else before them, and then, instead of what they wanted, given them (and charged them for) fucking SNAPPER…
…Then you need to be the one place on the beach. And serve something that tastes and smells crazy delicious.
Not the one place? Not on the beach? Don’t have a barbecue scent that carries for miles on a warm Caribbean breeze?
OK, then be the one business people think of when they need the kind of thing you sell.
Want help doing that? Here are some ways:
Start with B-School to learn how to get your name out there and win loyal clients, customers and fans online.
If you’re ready to focus on copywriting that helps you stand out, sharpen your word skills with The Copy Cure (if it’s open for enrollment).
Or, we can work together. Maybe I’ll show you how to shoehorn a business lesson (and plug) into a story about eating ribs on the beach.
Now you.
Ever stayed loyal to a business that kept screwing you over, or forgetting about your ribs, because they were either that good or the only place to go, or both?
If you have a business, what could you do to make it that essential?
Would you eat ribs with sand on them?
TELL ME IN THE COMMENTS.
(* Friends’ names changed to protect me from going to the trouble to ask if they mind me using their real names.)
I’m new to Talking Shrimp. But I’ve noticed that you have a habit of finishing each other’s sentences. Is this something I should be alarmed about? Or is it just what makes you you and that even if you try you can’t really change what you are because it already just happened, magically so to speak?
I ate a hard-boiled egg that fell in the dirt. There was no urgency. I just wanted to eat it.
So my lesson to you is: either be the only place on the beach, or cater to people who will eat a dirt and leaf-litter covered egg that cracked when it hit the ground and may have even gotten some dirt into the yolk a little bit, i.e. me. Suck on that, business school.
Is it possible me and your Dad started our posts in exactly the same way?
That’s a sure sign, with all due respect, you would never have dated me.
Now I can put THAT fantasy to bed for good.
Not “to bed”–maybe behind the canned tomatoes are something with the rest of them.
“…or something…”
¿Sandy ribs?
I guess you can’t really chew them, right?
You were taking care of Jess (and maybe Dan, a little bit).
Notice, you’ve said nothing about how the ribs tasted. That’s a tell right there.
Getting charged 150 for ribs for four is outrageous, but it is the islands and why I don’t think they’re much of a much food-wise.
I tend to think these guys stay in business because they have a moat around their business. No one else within a day’s walk, right? It’s NOT because their ribs are so good.
Moats are most definitely powerful and an easy way to be “the best” at anything. “I’m not only the best. I’m the only!”
Not sure copywriting can build you a moat, but maybe. The Shrimp could probably do it. I’m not sure I could. “Come for the sun. Stay for the sandy ribs!”
(Personally, I think the Shrimp has remarkable powers that belie her shrimposity.)
The Sandy Rib could be a good name for the place. (Once knew a woman named Sandy who married a guy named Donald Dick. His friends called him Donald “Duck” Dick after the famous musician. Thereafter, she was known as Sandy Dick. Together, they were Donald and Sandy “Duck” Dick, which is how they were announced at the White House dinner.)
What else?
I think you only ate sandy ribs to make Jess feel better. Then you ate the snapper because Jess and Dan certainly didn’t want snapper–they had ordered un-sandy ribs–and you were still hungry. So now they know you and Steve will eat anything. Prepare yourself for some “amazing” meals from those two.
Now that I’ve gotten to know them better in my mind, I don’t like them. You and Steve are too good for them. They’re good candidates for your spring cleaning spree where you get rid of all the “dead wood” in your contacts. Out with them! Not that I’m telling you what to do, but I’ve developed protective feelings toward the Shrimp.
As Porky Pig used to say, “Th-th-That’s All Folks!”
Laura, you belong in the writer’s room on some insanely popular and sophisticated T.V. show. Or maybe writing for CK or Jerry or Larry. My honest and unbiased opinion. We’ll miss the Shrimp, but we’ll pause the T.V. when you’re credit rolls by.
Peter
Sandy Ribs? We dated for a while. Then I met your mother. You represent what a good
decision we made.
Love,
Cornball (also a food) Dad