By David Van Seters, on December 18th, 2009%
An experience related to our rewards points program last week really put our corporate values to the test – and we almost failed it. As many of you know, we give our customers rewards points that can be redeemed for free groceries if their grocery order size is above a certain level. We even offer double and triple points for very large orders because it costs us the same to deliver a small order or a large order.
Last Thursday I received an email from a staff member indicating that our computer system had somehow given some of our Portland customers hundreds of thousands of extra rewards points back in July! It was also reported that those customers were, quite naturally, redeeming those unauthorized points and dramatically reducing their grocery order revenues.
I was initially skeptical that this could be true because our rewards points program had been working flawlessly for over seven years. I was even more skeptical that such an error could have gone unnoticed for over four months.
However, when I asked our programming staff to look into it they confirmed that a freak computer crash in July caused the computer to somehow give 244 Portland customers 10,000 times the number of points that they were supposed to get. There was one customer who routinely placed large orders that had been allocated 1.7 million points! As every 1000 points is worth $10 in free groceries, this customer had the potential to get $17,000 in free groceries!
Continue reading Rewards points mistake tests our company values
By David Van Seters, on December 5th, 2009%
Just before midnight, this past Wednesday I was working on my computer (as has become a pattern for me in these economically challenging times) when I got an email from my Director of Purchasing, Darren Stott, with an idea for a special holiday season offer for our customers.
The idea flowed from a conversation that our management team had had earlier in the day about how we could provide a special reward for all our terrific customers who had supported us throughout the year. Our Calgary general manager, Kevin Burbank, shared with the group a neat idea from a coffee company where you bring in a coupon and it entitles the person behind you in line to a free coffee. We bounced a couple of ideas around but couldn’t come up with anything exciting during the meeting.
But as I read Darren’s email, I could see that his mind had kept churning away on this idea until he had worked out something really exciting that would provide a big benefit to our customers and to us. By the way, this is a recurring pattern for Darren who has exhibited many similar bursts of creativity and inspiration over the years.
Darren with son James
In fact, it was Darren’s creativity that caused me to hire him in the first place over six years ago. A recent immigrant from the United Kingdom, he decided that he would only work for a company that he felt was going to make a positive difference in the world. He had done some homework on spud! and came to our first meeting with a full Powerpoint presentation of how he could help us grow our business and deepen our social impact. I was so impressed with his business skills and ideas that I hired him even though we didn’t have any open positions.
Continue reading Holiday season offer the result of inspiration and great teamwork
By David Van Seters, on June 30th, 2009%
We have long believed that our grocery delivery business model has a much lower environmental impact than people going to the grocery store. However, it was only very recently that we decided to more accurately calculate those differences. We were quite surprised by the results. Below we show the “eco-differences” between our grocery . . . → Read More: Eco-comparison of Grocery Stores vs. Home Delivery Yields Surprising Results
By David Van Seters, on June 27th, 2009%
It is the end of another school year and many kids are getting their report cards. At spud! we just got a report card of our own – one from you, our valued customers. Just last week, we added a new mini-survey on our website asking you how satisfied you were with your last . . . → Read More: We just got our report card and we're pretty happy with it
