The Ojai Post

Interestingly, they appear to be attempting to make a local connection. Yesterday's Ojai Valley News came with a coupon for a free JM sub with a $1 donation to Ojai Education Foundation or Ojai Valley Youth Foundation. And, funny about all the TM's, as Finding Ojai is soon be be, ha!

Yeah, I don't want to make them the villain. But they are the canary. Like I said, good for Jersey Mike's and the local owners, but the more successful they are, the more likely we'll have Starbucks and Subway in downtown Ojai.

Nobody likes to make anyone a villain. But at the same time, lets not be afraid to call something what it is. "Local connection" spin aside, Jersey Mikes' giveway of free food through one of the busiest weekends of the year evokes an image far less friendly than the cute little canary poking its beak into the coal mine. JM's ploy, supported by full page color inserts in the local newspapers, looks like textbook predatory pricing: The well-heeled competitor who comes in and gives away stuff below cost, until the locals are out of business. (Free even! That is brazen.) Customers flock in for the free stuff, taking a buying holiday from their usual haunts. Local businesses are forced to eat costs without customers until they are at best cash-crunched right when they most need cash to support marketing. To add to the injury, the predator times the giveaway on a big sales weekend, one that locals depend on to help carry through the slow times. By the time the free promotion is announced, the local businesses have already spent extra getting inventory for the big weekend - inventory they have to watch spoil.

Do these tactics work? They sure have in many towns, where the only things available are the inferior chain offerings that couponed and gave away their stuff until nobody else was left standing.

With lines out the door for free subs for four days straight, Jersey Mikes must have delivered thousands of those poor excuses for a sandwich. That could translate to a pretty big impact in a town that only has about 8,000 residents. How much business did our local independents lose as Jersey Mikes gave away sandwiches for free in its sneak coupon attack?

If our existing restaurants did see a significant drop off in business, I hope for Ojai's sake they will not just go quietly into the night. California has fairly strong laws in this area. If a responsible review shows JM broke the law, I hope local business stands up and makes them pay. How about it? Say, the approximately $7 menu price for each of those sandwiches given away, to go into a fund to be split among our local restaurants that suffered as a result? Might that make Jersey Mikes think twice about these kind of tactics?

All in all, I think JM is making themselves into the villain. If these gentlemen from Jersey get away with this, we can expect a stampede of the worst operators, couponing us into oblivion. That might be comfortable for JM, which is obviously ready to play that game. Is it what Ojai wants?

The canary analogy simply does not hold. Those canaries weren't down in those coal mines for profit. They were there for safety and to provide a warning. If you want to look for a "canary" to make the analogy work, try looking at Howie's(possibly ™ but I rather doubt it) or Los Caporales(ditto) or Antonio's or Georgio's or any of the many great independant lunch spots we're lucky enough to have here in. These places are not only locally owned, but locally grown, nurtured and invented. We better keep a close eye on these little canaries of ours; as soon as they start dying off, we'll know that the atmoshere in our still unique town has gone very bad.

I didn't go to JM this weekend, but I've gone to too many places just like it. If it's true that they gave away food all weekend long on a weekend that hosted The Ojai Music Festival AND the Ojai Studio Artists Tour, that has to have seriously hurt local business. I saw the line out the door, but I wasn't aware of the offer. Actually I was feeling a little depressed when I saw the line. I'd hoped that Ojai had a little more restraint and social awareness. The free food at least lends some reason. Of course. that's the same sort of move that WAL MART employes when it want's to eliminate competition. I think Jeff may be right, that's illegal. It would really be a sad thing if Ojai were overrun by huge corporate chains. This Jersey Mike's™ is no cute little canary. Now, if you're still looking for an analogy for the JM chain--why don't we try the Judas Goat.

Sean - great comment - the canary isn't quite the right analogy (although I think it gets the point across in general).

A couple others that might work: Harbinger of Doom

harbinger \HAR-bin-juhr\, noun:
1. (Archaic) One who provides lodgings; especially, the officer of the English royal household who formerly preceded the court when traveling, to provide and prepare lodgings.
2. A forerunner; a precursor; one that presages or foreshadows what is to come.

transitive verb:
1. To signal the approach of; to presage; to be a harbinger of.

Comets have been mistakenly interpreted by humans in times past as harbingers of doom, foretelling famine, plague, and destruction.
-- Walter Alvarez, T. Rex and the Crater of Doom

More than the steamboat, more than anything else, the railroads were the harbinger of the future, and the future was the Industrial Revolution.
-- Stephen E. Ambrose, Nothing Like It In the World

The airy draughts felt to him like the undoing of everything, the unfastening of ties, a harbinger of chaos.
-- Pauline Melville, The Ventriloquist's Tale

Or perhaps the Trojan Horse?

The term comes from the a Greek story of the Trojan War, in which the Greeks give a giant wooden horse to their foes, the Trojans, ostensibly as a peace offering. But after the Trojans drag the horse inside their city walls, Greek soldiers sneak out of the horse's hollow belly and open the city gates, allowing their compatriots to pour in and capture Troy.

Who is losing business? Nearly everyone I observed in line were teenagers armed with skateboards, dollar bills, cell phones, iPods and coupons!

i'm a solutions guy...

has anyone actually TALKED to this Dan (?)person who owns/runs the sub shop?

in a very real sense, what can we as citizens do to head off this epic calamity that we seem to see on the horizon (or, perhaps, at our castle gate) ? do we know what the laws are? should we be attending city council meetings now?

maybe i'm in a mood, but i just envision us wringing our hands (though not unjustifiably, and not wholly without action) until the next chain store comes in, at which point we simply wring our hands MORE. let's use this amazing tool (ojaipost) in conjunction with email and good old telephones to organize toward putting some safeguards in place if there arent any, or to point out and enforce them if there are.

power to the people, brothers and sisters...that's what i'm talkin about! :)

Education, education, education. I hope the owners ARE NOT informed about social responsible business practices, the obesity health issues that plague our children, and the environmental sustainability of organics, not to mention values that support a small community such as Ojai. Maybe they will want to have a larger perspective. If they are informed... may a higher order prevail. Every consumer choice we make these day make a difference. Our consumer dollar is the fuel that keeps the machine running.