I'm in Ohio today getting ready to visit my brother and his wife in Mt. Vernon in addition to Kari's grandma and aunt and uncle. I decided that no trip to Ohio would be complete without getting some Caribou Coffee since it's not very accessible in Indiana. So here I sit at Caribou with my Caramel Apple coffee drink, eating a sugar cookie. The cookie is the real reason for this post, believe it or not. Last night I spent some time hunting down a bakery in Newark, Ohio called R & M Bakery. I don't remember ever going there growing up (I'm from Granville, Ohio, which is a neighbor to Newark). However, I had their cookies all the time because our local butcher sold them. I called my parents and got directions, and Kari and I ventured to this whole in the wall bakery. It's in a rough area of town, and as we pulled in, a junker from the 70's was pulling out of the parking lot. The place is run down, and by looking at the storefront, one might come to the conclusion that this dilapidated bakery is out of business. Such a conclusion, however, would be very wrong. We went inside, and the dirty glass cases were mostly empty with a few stacks of cookies here and there. Much to my dismay, the famed sugar cookies were not present. That was until I asked the nice lady at the counter if they still had them. I ordered a dozen pumpkin-shaped cookies, selected two others, and was on my way. I got the car and ate one of the triple-chip cookies immediately. It was incredibly good. Then when we got to Caribou, Kari and I each had a sugar cookie. Amazing. It's hard to believe that such a good cookie could come from such a run down bakery! Here are a few things I thought about as a result:
- Looks can be deceiving… we can't judge things prematurely
- People will keep a business in business if it provides something they like… namely, really good sugar cookies
- The aesthetics of a place enhance the experience, but they are only secondary to the product being sold – that is, people will put up with a beat up building if the food is good more than they will put up with a beautiful building where the food is terrible… it's the food that matters in the end
In the church, I think we can learn some lessons from this. What are your thoughts?
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