For two local food businesses, Twitter has helped two local food businesses both raise and manage rising demand. One request for a breakfast wrap directed to Houston-based Coffee Groundz led to the first ever reported take-out order on Twitter, which are now taken on a regular basis. Meanwhile, the loyal following of the Kogi Korean BBQ-To-Go taco trucks in the Los Angeles area can see where they park next through the business’s Tweets.

And for the Queensboro Shirt Company in North Carolina, Twitter has become a way to reach out.

“Mainly we have been trying to work on finding the customers where they are, instead of trying to make them come to us,” said Kate Elzer-Peters, social media coordinator of the custom apparel company. In a phone interview, Elzer-Peters – who also updates the company’s blog, plus its Facebook and YouTube pages – explained to goWholesale how the work relationship with Twitter has developed since the account’s activation last October:

• First impressions: At first, Elzer-Peters did not know what to think. Though Twitter became a hot topic in a few marketing e-mails she received, she still had to wonder: why would you want to do that, honestly? But the more she read about the service, the more she saw the value in its conversations. “If you read the Tweets one at a time, they don’t always make a lot of sense,” she said. “But if you follow them for a while, you can start to see what their habits are like, what they like to do, what they are interested in – a more complete picture.”
• What it does: Elzer-Peters updates the Queensboro Twitter with sales promotions and responses to questions and feedback. She also regularly checks its feed, to get what she calls “a pulse of what people are thinking around the country.” With this, she can figure out which customers would crave fleece and which would want polos, in real time.
• How it helps: Since its operations are mostly online, Elzer-Peters has found that the company can develop customer relations via Twitter that it would not have been able to do otherwise. “Since we are an Internet business, we don’t interact a lot, especially face-to-face, with our customers,” she said. “But I’ve been Tweeting back and forth with some of them, and that can develop into more of a relationship.”
• Progress made: Elzer-Peters has garnered more than 450 followers, fielded a few hiring requests, and landed at least one purchase during a recent hat sale. (A Tweeted “thank you” serves as proof.) She hopes though to deliver more through Twitter in the near future and is encouraging use of her services in the meantime.” If we make a mistake with your order, we ALWAYS try to correct it, so make sure you let us know! Tweet at me for help!,” a recent update says.

Retailers: what are your thoughts on Twitter? What problems have you had or progress you made with the service?

Less than a month ago, after showing the weakest sales period in the company’s history, Starbucks announced that it will close 100 stores. This was shocking news considering in the 1990s the company was opening a new shop every workday – and the rapid growth continued well into the 2000s.

So what happened? Where did Starbucks go wrong?

Quite simply, Starbucks went from having a home-away-from-home feel to more of a corporate giant, selling music and Wi-Fi and putting the company’s bottom line in front of their customers. In addition, they stopped making their espressos by hand, switching to robot-like machines that make drinks with an assembly line-like feel.

Remember back when having a Starbucks in your town was something of an elite status? Now what town, rest stop, airport, Target, and Barnes & Nobel doesn’t have one? In fact, what two-block radius of any urban or suburban area isn’t armed with their own personal Starbucks? Comedian Lewis Black put it best when he said the end of the universe as we know it was in Houston, Texas, where there is indeed a Starbucks across the street from a Starbucks .

In a race to please stockholders and board members, Starbucks grew too fast. They put profits and efficiency first and lost sight of what their customers once found so darn endearing about them. Back in the day, every Starbucks store was run with the feel of an independent, local coffee shop. They sometimes had local musicians playing or weekly game nights. They had neighborhood postings on their corkboard and silly chalk drawings on their “Today’s Special” menu board. There were lots of big comfy chairs with magazines and newspapers scattered about and lots of chit chatting going on – even the baristas were fun and talkative with customers, and many even knew them by name.

Now take a walk into one of your many local Starbucks and you just won’t have that same sort of fun-loving, fuzzy-warm feeling. All those big comfy chairs? Well, you might see just one or two remaining – they needed the room for sales racks to sell CDs, iTunes gift cards and ground coffee. What about the neighborhood activities? It’s hard to cater to a neighborhood with three other Starbucks locations within walking distance of each other. With so many Starbucks to choose from, customers tended not to have a “favorite” store anymore, they just popped in whichever one was nearest when they needed a caffeine boost. As corporate pushed for efficiency, baristas had less time to chat and get to know their could-have-been-loyal customers, or even make drinks with the same quality Starbucks had become known for back in the day.

What happened to the customers?

You can bet that other coffee shop entrepreneurs learned from Starbucks’ early days and started running their own local shops like funky little coffeehouses, putting their customers and their coffee at the forefront. These local shops started to win the war against Starbucks, offering fresh roasted beans, handmade espresso drinks, and most of all an inviting and cozy atmosphere that surrounded customers with warmth and enjoyment. Just like it felt when you walked into the very first Starbucks in your town.

What growing small businesses can learn from Starbucks

If your business is doing wonderfully and you have plans to branch out and grow, it’s easy to try to streamline the processes that made your company so popular in the first place. Before you make any changes to the original framework of your company, think carefully about each. If you still believe that making a certain modification is the best thing to do, then test it first and see how the customers respond. It’s much easier to find out after a month that customers dislike the new change, then after investing thousands in making it permanent. Change can definitely be good, but change can also ruin what was once a very good thing.