5 Things I Love About Dorothy Lane Market

I spend far too lit­tle time telling peo­ple about busi­nesses that I love — too often opt­ing to only com­plain about those that dis­ap­point me.  So let me begin to rem­edy this by telling you about a busi­ness that I love — Dorothy Lane Mar­ket.  This small gro­cery retailer spe­cial­izes in pre­mium food items and excep­tional cus­tomer ser­vice.  Shop­ping there is a won­der­ful expe­ri­ence. While my fam­ily does not get all of our gro­ceries at DLM — opt­ing to pick up more stan­dard fare at Tar­get or Cub Foods — it is a place we fre­quent with plea­sure.   Here are 5 rea­sons why:

1. Cus­tomer Ser­vice — The cus­tomer is King, Queen, Czar, and Emperor at DLM.  Every employee goes the extra mile and then some to let you know that that truly appre­ci­ate your busi­ness.  The employ­ees actu­ally seem to enjoy their work, which stands in stark con­trast to most gro­cery stores I visit.  The peo­ple there always go the extra mile to make shop­ping at DLM enjoy­able.  Whether it is walk­ing you to the item you are look­ing for, look­ing you in the eye and smil­ing at you, actu­ally know­ing some­thing about the spe­cialty prod­ucts they carry, or offer­ing to help you carry your gro­ceries to the car — DLM’s peo­ple are remark­able.  Heck, if you want they will even cook you din­ner, which you can eat right upstairs in an open seat­ing area.

    

2. Qual­ity — If you are look­ing for top of the line culi­nary delights, look no fur­ther than DLM.  While it does not have the vari­ety of a Jun­gle Jim’s (who does?) every­thing the store car­ries is sure to be excep­tional.  Local pro­duce, exotic cheeses, spe­cialty wines and micro-brews, Killer Brown­ies, Fresh baked breads, Cole­man Beef, freshly made deli items, and on and on… I fre­quently see shop­pers in the park­ing lot, who appear to be headed to some gath­er­ing, emp­ty­ing out DLM deli con­tain­ers into their own tup­per­ware in an effort to take credit for prepar­ing some­thing so delicious.

    

3. Sam­ples — I don’t know if Seth Godin had this place in mind when he wrote “Free Prize Inside” but it could eas­ily serve as an exam­ple the power of giv­ing away some­thing remark­able for free.  Sure most gro­cery stores have some free sam­ples to give away to shop­pers on a Sat­ur­day — but New York Strip steak?  Fresh Buf­falo Moz­zarella?  Andouille Sausage?   You could go to DLM on a Sat­ur­day sim­ply to graze.  I assure you that you will not be dis­ap­pointed, and you won’t leave hun­gry.  Every aisle seems to have some new delight wait­ing for you to try, each more deli­cious than the last.  The hard part is decid­ing which of the many deli­cious sam­ples offered to buy because there are just so many. 

    

4. Inno­va­tion — Yeah they get the peo­ple thing right.  Yeah they get the prod­uct thing right.  Even more impres­sive is how the store incor­po­rates tech­nol­ogy into what they do.  DLM is always play­ing around with new ways to bet­ter serve the cus­tomer.  My favorite exam­ple of this is the deli kiosk.  This kiosk is a touch screen that enables you to select var­i­ous items from the deli, includ­ing meats and cheeses and place your order for every­thing all at once when you walk through the front doors of the store.  It elim­i­nates the need to take a num­ber, stand and wait to be called, order each item one at a time, and then get your stuff min­utes later as a crowd of peo­ple await the com­ple­tion of your seem­ingly end­less order.  Nope, with this sys­tem you can place the whole order in min­utes, shop the store for the other things you need, and then pick up your entire order from a bas­ket placed on a refrig­er­ated shelf at the deli counter.  This is a bril­liant use of tech­nol­ogy to improve the shop­ping experience. 

    

5. Integrity — This com­pany does it right.  The expe­ri­ence I had the one and only time I returned a food item I was unsat­is­fied with was so over­whelm­ingly pos­i­tive that it only made me love the place more.  There were no ques­tions, no inter­ro­ga­tions, and no has­sles.  They did not demand any­thing from me, offer­ing instead a very sin­cere apol­ogy that the prod­uct did not meet my expec­ta­tions.  They actu­ally said they were sorry to me — can you believe it?  I was blown away.  Then, they offered me my money back, which of course I imme­di­ately spent right there in the store — and have done so many times since. 
    

Dorothy Lane Mar­ket is a great exam­ple of pre­mium ser­vice done right.  When it comes to word of mouth mar­ket­ing, they take it to a whole new level.  Foodie or not, you could learn a lot from observ­ing how they oper­ate their busi­ness.  I encour­age you to visit them, enjoy a killer brownie and a cup of Boston Stoker cof­fee, and observe mas­ter­ful, cus­tomer cen­tric mar­ket­ing first hand.   Boy am I hungry.