A series of fortunate events
A year ago this holiday season, Barbie Reid forwarded an email message from fellow Columbia resident Jan Thompson to the Old Southwest and Broadway neighborhood listserv on Yahoo, which I started and moderated.
"My good friend, Leigh Lockhart, the owner of Main Squeeze Cafe, is feeling the crunch of the economic downturn. This restaurant has been a favorite of mine and a mainstay of downtown Columbia for 10 years. But her business has been cut in half and she is toying with shutting down."
Calling it "a movement to un-squeeze the Main Squeeze," Reid asked listserv members to "pick up a smoothie or a meal soon." So continued a series of fortunate events that could be a business school case study in the power of branding, advertising, public relations, faith in a vision -- and angels at the door.
"One day later, thanks to your mentioning Main Squeeze, we had our best day in weeks.
Same thing the next day and the next. Who is this Angel Mike Martin, I ask?"
Beat Byte, Eat Bite
For four years and counting, I’ve run the Columbia Heart Beat, a hyper-local, online alternative newsweekly reporting on everything from nefarious public officials to the history of black Columbia. For the Heart Beat’s newswire cousin—Beat Byte—I wrote a brief take on the email campaign, Tough Economy Squeezes Main Squeeze.
To include a website, I Googled "main squeeze," hoping to find Columbia’s version buried in hundreds of thousands of hits on the popular phrase.
But a fortunate event happened in a flash: Our Main Squeeze Natural Foods Café is number one among 234,000 Google hits. A map, a menu, and the café's website sit atop songs by Lenny Kravitz and Teena Marie; a New York City-based all-girl accordion band; businesses, Facebooks, Myspaces, book titles, news stories, and love notes by the tens of thousands.
Talk about the power of a brand.
You’ve got appeal
Another fortunate event offered clues as to how Leigh Lockhart built her Google-topping business. Columbia Daily Tribune business editor Justin Willett picked up a story that often has an unfortunate end. "It seems that each week I note at least one business that has closed—usually a local restaurant," Willett wrote.
But the email appeal "picked up by local blogger Mike Martin and distributed far and wide," took Main Squeeze from the "slowest three-day sales period in its 10-year history" to an outpouring of support and affection that included donations, a $1,000 customer loan, employees offering to bypass a paycheck, and day after busy day.
All of which was "no surprise" to Willett.
"Leigh Lockhart genuinely cares about her customers, employees and the community," he wrote. "I know this because she gave me a chance when I was an unemployed college student. I felt good about being a part of the experiment, which Leigh explains on the café’s website as 'what happens when a love of food and a passion for sustainability meets a community filled with hungry, loving people.'"
.
Angels in America?
I’m not much for Christmas cards, but a hand-written note addressed to me at the Columbia Business Times—where I've written the Citizen Journalist column for two years—made my holiday season. A single Asian word—Korean, or maybe Chinese—adorned its papyrus-textured cover.
"Mike, I hope this note finds you, as it would be a shame if you never learned how your fair pen helped save Main Squeeze," Lockhart wrote. "It’s a great story of how my accountant sent an email to her friends, asking for their support during these tough times."
A third fortunate event: A caring accountant uses modern technology for an old-fashioned friendship.
I'm no angel, but I know them when I see them. And who doesn't love a Capra-esque tale about hard times and angels—friends, customers, accountants, employees, the owner herself—helping save a favorite enterprise, just in time for the Holidays, no less?
"I’ve garnered enough in community loans to get us thru the winter and the up tick in business you helped create is going to make everything all right," Lockhart wrote me.
As I closed the holiday card, I noticed a tiny English translation tucked beneath the ornate Asian word on its cover. It’s so small and non-descript, I had to hold it to the light. It was one simple word.
"Faith."
Have it, and when -- not if -- the angels come, you too will discover It’s a Wonderful Life.
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