When Immediacy Culture Gets Delayed

Over the past century or so, corporate and industrial innovation has ushered in myriad benefits, along with a precarious culture in which people have become used to wanting things a certain way—and that way is immediate.

It’s how we want our news, our online purchases, our lattes and our dinner orders. Immediacy culture expects consumable products to show up instantaneously in our inboxes, on our doorsteps and even in our bellies.

We want what we want, and we want it now.

Culture shifts keep shifting.

However, as with all aspects of our culture, shift happens.

And our culture just shifted again, quite profoundly and immediately.

COVID and its endless ripples have affected global supply chains from just about every angle.

Manufacturers can’t keep up with demand. Labor is in short supply. Transportation is backed up or nonexistent. And when product does miraculously reach its intended distribution center, there aren’t enough people to unload it off the truck or deliver it to its final destination.

Our culture of immediacy has been delayed indefinitely.

Supply chains are coming up short.

Along with the rest of the foodservice industry, the Focus Brands family has been dramatically impacted by supply chain disruptions.

Things we never had to think about before have become significant pain points.

For example, what does a smoothie shop do when they run out of cups? Or try explaining to hungry customers that they can’t order your signature steak burrito because you have no steak.

In a culture of immediacy, people aren’t just disappointed when they can’t get what they want when they want it. Oftentimes, they get mad.

And then add in the fact that our brand restaurants are desperately trying to hire new employees to work in these conditions, which are far from ideal.

Next time you try to pop into your favorite foodservice location, you may see a note on the door saying they’re out of something, have limited hours or, worse, are closed completely.

The only thing worse than delayed gratification is no gratification.

Kindness and cooperation are readily available.

The bad news is supply chain woes are here to stay, at least for a while. Low inventories, labor shortages and transportation delays will most likely take some time to sort out.

The good news is people can and will be marvelous, often when things seem most grim.

In addition to the kindness and collaboration that’s been on the news and in our local communities, I’ve seen it with my own eyes here at Focus Brands.

I saw Geoff Henry, president of Jamba Juice, lead his team to organize smoothie drops for delivery personnel, postal service workers and first-line responders.

I saw Alex Williams, chief brand officer of Moe’s Southwest Grill, set up a makeshift distribution center in a parking lot to help connect franchisees with deliveries to be ready for Cinco de Mayo.

I’m seeing people throughout our organization be innovative, creative and downright scrappy, doing whatever needs to be done to get through this.

This attitude is exactly how crises are survived and how businesses, ultimately, change for the better.

Our own supply chain management division is experiencing this phenomenon firsthand.

Prioritization is critical.

When immediacy culture is rocking and rolling along, sometimes we forget to plan for the future. Who’s got the time?

Then, when the bottom drops out and roadblocks go up, we’re forced to stop and ask, “How did we get here?” This question is often quickly followed by “What could we have done differently?”

Over the past year and a half, our Focus Brands supply chain team has been doing work akin to keeping a 747 jumbo jet in the air, while changing out the engine mid-flight and suddenly finding out that half of the passengers have a severe peanut allergy.

This team is making changes on the fly, but some of these changes have been a long time coming.

As Anissa Mandell, our senior vice president of supply chain, adeptly puts it, “Sometimes we have to implode in order for something to change.”

And for us, what’s changed is a complete overhaul of our supply chain strategy, systems and even philosophy.

Direct relationships with a variety of suppliers have become both a necessity and a roadmap for the future.

Anissa and her team have also learned that prioritization is critical to navigating this storm of limited resources and endless decisions to be made.

There are only so many hours in a day, and you must prioritize in each moment what needs immediate attention.

Anissa’s incredible team has taken every curve ball that comes at them and knocked it out of the park.

So, in the win column, the pandemic underscored for Focus Brands the need to prioritize our supply chain management, and the company and our franchisees are reaping the benefits from this discipline.

And in times like these, it helps to look towards the wins and the learnings that arise amid the challenges.

The good, the bad and the Greatest Generation.

At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, I’ll borrow a line from Dickens to summarize the current global supply chain situation: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

For our culture of immediacy, this period has kind of been the worst.

We’ve built a system that caters to our wants in the here and now, stressing the now.

In a short amount of time, we’ve come to collectively living a lifestyle that is a far cry from the values our grandparents learned the hard way—resourcefulness, patience and sometimes happily doing without.

The Greatest Generation pretty much wrote the playbook on gracefully enduring hardships. And this pandemic really has been a time of hardship for so many.

On the other hand, in some ways it has been the best of times.

I’ve seen ordinary people doing extraordinary things to help each other out and to keep commerce moving.

I’ve seen my own organization pull together and innovate in the moment to passionately push our purpose forward. And if you’ve ever wondered what CEOs dream about, that’s pretty much it.

In many ways, this has been a beautiful time of collaboration and recalibration.

Play a positive role by learning to roll with it.

These wonderful moments as a whole, however, are not going to get this immediacy culture what it wants any faster. For the foreseeable future, delays are here to stay.

What can you do individually to help? Learn to roll with it, graciously.

I beg you, please try to be patient when things don’t go as planned with food service, deliveries or product availability.

Lots of people are trying—hard—to keep the jet flying. Getting your peanut-free peanuts may take a little longer than usual. In the meantime, give the flight attendant an understanding smile and use the extra time to enjoy the view.

Good luck up there and out there.

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