I bring many people to O’Connaill’s if they’ve never been before. This Cork based chocolatier make the best hot chocolate around and come the good weather (July 22nd – 24th in 2008) they’ll also be doing amazing chocolate milkshakes. They only use couverture chocolate in their products which makes them really nice. So many people (inc Cork natives) don’t know about the O’Connaill’s store on French Church Street in Cork and I often feel they could advertise the place much better by just changing their cups. This is one of the cups they use:
They already have queues out the door most Saturdays but generally that’s because they don’t have enough staff perhaps. They have gorgeous chocolates, amazing hot chocolate and they do nice coffees and other bits and pieces too. But they could use the people that visit them to get word out even more. I wonder if they did something like specially coloured cup tops or even the coffee holders with their name or some design which would get attention, could they spread the word more? Not so much boutique cups and chocs, though they are luxury at a good price but something setting them apart. Or are they happy with the business they currently have?
Imagine a chocolatier where it’s not just the experience of the damned fine chocolate that makes them great but the kick of introducing new people to them too? Imagine any product being able to get customers to do that? Is this what Apple does in a way? Every iPhone buyer seems to be an evangelist, is every Vista buyer? Apart from an awesome product, how do you make it easy for a customer to be an evangelist for it?
