Style Tile VR1: Havana Sandwich Company
Style Tile VR2: Havana Sandwich Company
Interview with Owner of Havana Sandwich Company
Who is your your typical customer? What type of person do you want to visit your site?
Regulars, keep coming back. Lunch people. Work in the area. They would each here during the week for lunch but come back in the weekends with the whole family. I don’t usually pay that much attention to the website.
Who are your competitors?
Places that open the whole day - wendy’s diners, fantastic diner, I also see my customers at 2 guns and blue butterfly the coffee places. It makes sense that they would go there sometimes, and they’d come here sometimes.
What differentiates you from your competition?
The prices, the service, consistent opening times, fast sercive.
Where does your product / service fit in to the market (e.g. is it the cheapest / most expensive / highest quality / most innovative, etc.)
We offer something you don’t get at other sandwich shops, unlike subway, our meet are cooked on premises, we cook our own plantain. lIke ropa vieja, the real cuban stuff.
What is important to your customers? (Try to get more than "a low price" - this is almost never the only important thing for an end user of any product or service).
The consistency - the food needs to taste the same all the time. Being open all the time, Sunday Easter, they ask me “why are you open?” well we are open - that keeps the customers coming back.
What action(s) do you want a visitor to your site to complete? (e.g. Sign up to a newsletter / buy a product / follow their Twitter account / etc.)
I’m not really up to the technology. If there is anything I want the customers to know it would be - I hope you enjoyed it (the experience at the restaurant), and if you didn’t, let me know personally instead of commenting on the reviews. I don’t have time to look at all the reviews. When I finish work and get home I just want to relax and not look at those. A lot of things you can explain personally very well, but on the reviews it’s hard. Like - why does the plantain taste different today? It’s sweeter sometimes and it’s not as sweet another time - it’s just the seasons that they are gorwn. Sometimes maybe a plaintain isn’t that good and we didn’t catch it before cooking it because we are in a hurry. Some would say: on the picture there are 4 plantains, how come I only got 2. Well if you talk to me I’ll give you 10 plantains - all the plantains.
If you could choose any celebrity to endorse your brand, who would they be? What about them reflects your brand / product / service?
Someone I know - Billy Cristal - I met him at the Jewish Deli he’s a friend of the owner. I worked there for 25 years. It was an old friends. He used to be a comedian. He’s a funny guy we used to banter about sports since he’s a Yankee fan and I’m an Angel fan.
If your product / service / brand was a brand of car, what would it be?
It’d be a 56’ chevvy. If a convertible I’ll take that! Haha no. I’d like it to be red with white stripes, or blue with black stripes. It’s a car that will make people look. They stop and say “woah!”. Mine is a 71’ chevy it’s blue. Sometimes I do wish it was red.
If your product / service was a person, what television shows would he/she watch? What music would he/she listen to?
Modern family - there is a girl on there from south American. Where is she from? The young girl (sofia vergara). She made a cuban movie about a catering truck that goes around selling cuban food. I haven’t finished it but I’m planning to. That’s the only movie I saw her in other than on Modern family.
If your product / service was a person, what sort of words would their best friend use to describe them? (e.g. "friendly", "strong"/, "funny", etc.)
“Chico” - that’s the word people use a lot in the Cuban market that used to be in Hawthorne now it’s a different ownership so they lost a lot of regulars. They’d say” different”, “a fun place” they say here it’s fun and casual because you don’t get table service, you can get just get whatever you need. People say when they come here it’s like at home.