Well, after 15 years of marriage and 4 kids, Phyllis and I are finally at a place in our lives where we are actually able to have regular weekly date nights. For us, that night is Sunday. We drop all 4 kids off at Awanas (just a half mile from the house) and then it’s two hours of “us time.” This typically means dinner and shopping/browsing. And even though we are now living in a small town, we are trying to mix it up each week.
This week we ate at a New York style pizzeria called Divinos on the extreme north end of town where all the new stuff is going up. We’ve heard good things about the food and there’s a connection between the owner of the pizzeria and a couple other biz partners we’ve connected to in town. I had a sausage and spinach roll (sort of like a calzone). Quite yummy.
After dinner, Phyllis and I decided to take a walk next door to Season’s Harvest, a new “frou-frou” grocery store in the same plaza. The store is gorgeous, carries a really unique variety of products and has a very friendly and helpful staff. Oh, and there’s this huge variety of global cheeses. Yeah, I know. I am easily amused. Anyway, I’ve never met a cheese I didn’t like, so I was pleasantly surprised when the employee offered to let me sample ANY of the cheeses! Here’s what I tried:
Blueberry Fayre
Take some creamy White Stilton (straight from Long Clawson Dairy in England), throw in some whole blueberries and you have a cheese that basically tastes like a blue-cheese cheesecake. Amazing.
Tine Ekte Gjetost
This Scandanavian goat cheese has a sweet, caramel flavor that you have to taste to believe.
The cheese was wonderful (if you are a cheese lover). But we would NEVER had known or even really noticed had the Season’s Harvest employee not been willing to do whatever it took to make sure we had a pleasant and memorable experience in the store. Reminds me of the mantra that Scott McKain has drilled into my brain through his book (All Business is Show Business) and blog: If you want customers to become loyal fans, create Ultimate Customer Experiences for them.
Season’s Harvest gave us a UCE. We were so impressed that we’ve decided it might actually be very cool to have one of those fancy wine and cheese affairs–sans the wine..at least for us (maybe we could drink some exotic juices instead). And when we get ready to throw our shin-dig, we will be paying a visit to the friendly, knowledgable folks at Season’s Harvest. Besides, they’ve already offered to put together a variety tray of any cheese we want…even if they have to make special orders from around the globe!
