Are you a Yipee or a Yikes?

Good news in my town yesterday.  The Boston Globe reported that Wegmans, the grocery retailer with a cult-like following, will open a store in Newton, MA.

There have been a lot of vacant storefronts around here, even in this privileged Boston suburb.  Every time we see a business preparing to open, we get a little excited.  Could something fun and wonderful be coming to town?

But it’s usually a bank. Yuck.  Another (bleep) bank, just what we need.

At best, a new bank branch will trigger a mild flicker of convenience for its current customers.  For the rest of us, it’s Opportunity Lost.  More same old.  More corporate blandeur.

Yipee!

The arrival of Wegmans is something to cheer. Already I can feel my future spending patterns shifting.  This isn’t the first time.

Over the years, living in various East Coast suburbs (NYC, DC, Boston) I’ve watched my own grocery shopping evolve.  At first it was just supermarkets, supplemented by a produce store if there was one.  Then Costco arrived.  (Yay!) Then the blessed day when Trader Joes moved East.  (Yipee!)  Then Whole Foods and its prior incarnations.  (Yay!)  Today relatively few of our grocery dollars go to a traditional supermarket these days, and we’re far from unique.

I’ve been to a Wegmans only a couple of times, and I think they’re nice but maybe a little overrated.  I’m thinking: Yay, if not quite Yipee.

Yikes!

Down the street from the new Wegmans site is a renovated Shaws supermarket.  Near other upscale shopping in tony Chestnut Hill, it opened with great fanfare a year or so ago.  To be sure, it’s a big improvement over the small, antiquated store it replaced.  But basically it’s a Yawn.

To Shaws, however, the advent of Wegmans is a definite Yikes!  Players like Shaws, whether products or services, individual brands or whole companies, live in fear of the Yays and Yipees.  With good reason.  They’re perfectly fine, until something compelling comes along.

What happens when you show up?

When you’re honest with yourself (rare enough in corporate life!), are people genuinely happy when you show up: on shelf, with a new product? With a new service or outlet?  If not, what would it take?

Left-brain thinking gets you efficiency and operational excellence.  It can make your numbers.  But right-brain thinking wins hearts.  You need both.  Don’t you want to be a Yay or a Yipee?  It’s imagination, empathy and inspiration that will get you there.  Don’t be a Yuck, Yawn or Yikes.