I once heard Wing Lam introduced as the "coolest CEO on the planet" and having met him, I have to agree. The CEO and co-founder of Wahoo's Fish Taco truly represents the essence of The Entrepreneur. Wing and his brothers Ed and Mingo came up with the idea for the restaurant while on a surfing trip in Mexico. Borrowing $30,000 from their parents, they opened the first Wahoo's in 1988. The brothers combined the influence of their Chinese parents (also restauranteurs) their childhood in Brazil and their surfing lifestyle into the atmosphere and the food of their first Wahoo's. They now have restaurants all over the U.S. serving Baja fresh taco's in a fun, funky surfer/snowboarder-esque environment. David (the cinematographer and my partner in PerfectBusiness crime) and I interviewed Wing Lam at their newest Wahoo location. He arrived after a morning of surfing in shorts, flip flops and orange Oakley sunglasses. After the interview he bought us lunch at the restaurant and talked about how making personal connections, giving without demanding anything in return and being genuine are the best ways to succeed in business. With a full belly and a new friend, I had to agree.
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Wednesday, April 9, 2008
"THE COOLEST CEO ON THE PLANET"
Posted by Alexa Asjes at 10:01 AM
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2 comments:
Weh its very cool.
Forming An Llc
Wahoo CEO sets low standard for customer service.
My wife and I paid over $800 to have Wahoo's cater our July 4th Party. When we opened up the various containers we realized that all of the carnitas meat (1/3 of the meat that we ordered) was missing! It was an embarrassing situation to occur in front of 100+ guests and we were not able to fully feed our guests.
To add insult to injury, when we complained about the situation to Wahoo's they acted like they did nothing wrong and treated us like we made the whole thing up! In fairness to them, someone at corporate offered us a $150 credit toward a future catering order. We very politely wrote back saying we should be refunded on a pro-rata basis for what we didn't receive and perhaps some consideration for our inconvenience and embarrassment.
Two weeks later, after no response, I reached out to the CEO of Wahoo's via Linkedin. He responded as follows:
I have spoken to Ellen Orbe , my best franchise operator about the incident. she personally took care of your order , made sure that everything was delivered , gave out her cell and email for contact purpose and no one ever reached out to her about the incident . She is my right hand person for the last 5 years , we just did the California Junior Lifeguard Championships ( 2500 kids ) and are catering the Irvine Company annual meeting for 1,500 employees . she has never missed a single catering with or without me , and her father who is in charge of franchising has already given you some compensation , which is way more than I would offer . so please let me know if you need any further assistance
Wow! Where did this CEO learn about customer service? Apparently his people are so good that they never make mistakes. In fact, what little they did offer us in compensation is way more than he would have offered!
His facts are in error as Ms. Orbe did not deliver our order nor did she provide her cell phone. My wife only met with her one time when she was originally exploring having Wahoo's cater our event. She placed the order at a later date with an employee named Zack. We had no way to get in touch with anyone on the day of the delivery (July 4th) as the local Wahoo's store was closed. Roger (who delivered the order) never gave us his cell phone. We brought this matter to his attention the very next day when we returned the catering boxes to Wahoo's and he wrote down our name and phone number for follow up.
Given our experience, the poor response, and the attitude that somehow we're wrong about this situation doesn't really incentivize us to consider using Wahoo's for future catering. For us, it's not about the money, it's the principle. We expected to be treated fairly and that there might be some ownership and consideration for the fact that we were unable to fully feed our guests which would be upsetting for any customer.
Organizations typically set the standard for customer service from the top down. To have a CEO respond to a customer complaint this way is indeed shameful. Moral to the story - make sure you open up all the food containers before allowing the delivery person to leave the scene and don't count on companies to understand what good customer service is all about.
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