What Restaurant Chains Can Learn from Haggis

It may be the most maligned food on the planet - and the least marketed: haggis, a strictly Scottish dish made of minced sheep organs and suet mixed with spices, bound together with oats and stuffed back into the stomach of the hapless ovine.

This offal-filled orb (which looks as if it might burst open at any moment to reveal a screeching baby Alien) is then boiled for three hours before being served.

To Americans, haggis is as foreign as food gets. Fish and chips, corned beef, bangers and mash, shepherd’s pie — we can get any of these British imports at the “authentic” English pub in town. But Haggis? Not so much.

Recently, a restaurant marketing colleague of mine took a trip to Scotland. Naturally, everyone wanted to know if she was planning to try haggis. Not wanting to be labeled a culinary coward, she vowed that she would.

Still, everyone was jut a little surprised when she returned and said that she had, indeed, tried haggis at The Dome restaurant in Edinburgh. We were ever more surprised when she said that it was actually pretty good.

She counted off three things that made for that successful experience: 1) The Dome offers haggis as an appetizer-sized (i.e., “safe”) portion; 2) the restaurant presents this appetizer in a fabulous golden-crispy phyllo shell; 3) they accompany it with an amazing whiskey sauce.

For my colleague, this was a culinary triple play. Without taking a huge risk, she discovered a tasty, “not at all grody” new dish. The Dome’s chef had made it easy for her to be adventurous.

Which brings us to the problem with floundering casual American restaurants.

Right now, they’re playing it too safe in their marketing and promotion strategies, having decided that Americans only want “familiar and comfortable” in a down economy. But this is true only to a point.

Even in belt-tightening times, most middle class Americans want to feel just a little more cosmopolitan than the schlub next door. They’re willing to take risks on new flavors — just not wild, expensive ones.

Instead, they’ll try familiar dishes with a fresh take on the flavor profile or a new style of presentation, interesting new appetizers that allow adventuring on a budget, new sauces or sides that update an entrée without reinventing it from scratch. This is exactly what the Dome did with haggis. And for them, it was an easy win.

For the casual American restaurant, incremental changes allow freshening of the menu without an expensive overhaul. They give customers a reason to sit up and take new interest. They get word of mouth promotion going. And they send a subtle message to all that this *&^%$#@ recession can’t go on forever.