The Triumph Of The Niche

Ubiquity

Running late between clients last week, I ducked into a fast food franchise, more to use the restroom than for any desire for food, honestly. Acting on my sense of personal integrity over actual hunger, I ordered a small burger from my childhood, rather than use the facilities without being a patron, and consumed it without too much thought.

It tasted like, well, what it has always tasted like; more cheese than beef, more bread than both, with the ketchup and pickles and dried onion overpowering any of that. In a half dozen bites and a couple of minutes it was gone, and the best that I have to say about it is that it didn't seem to do any real damage later (if you catch my unseemly drift), it was cheap, and I didn't regret the choice.

Doesn't sound like much of a business model, does it?

I don't mean to deman an American colossus, honestly. I'm far from the target demographic for any quick service restaurant, I'm not influencing the choices of others, and I don't patronize either this business, or its competitors, very often. They know their business far better than I do, or ever will. But I do know this...

From what I read in my monitoring of newsletters, they aren't in the growth area of the market. That's for niche quality players with names that have only cropped up in the last decade or so. Those players also make food that translates to social media imagery much, much better than what I've just posted above. (By the way, side note about food porn? It describes much of what we refer to as classical art from past centuries; the fact that lots of people photogragh their food probably says more about how imaging is now ubiquitous, rather than anything about the person doing the photographing. But let's get back to the burger.)

The merits of the mass market burger are obvious. Economics, consistency, speed. You can order one from just about any location, anywhere, and get pretty much the same thing...

But does any of that sound like something you can put in an ad?

The same phenomenon -- tried and true business model, supplemented by a more esoterically appealing niche play -- goes beyond burgers. Consider the recent change in market conditions for such staples as the circus, the hundreds of streaming programming options fracturing the collective consciousness, and in all likelihood, your very favorite comedian, musician, writer and so on.

And, more darkly, possibly your religious or political beliefs.

Continuing the thread into still more negative tones, and you might be led to believe that we are ungovernable, not really a nation so much as a collection of strangers, that we all need everything our own way. That cities are unlike suburbs, suburbs unlike rural, with nothing to stitch us together again.

Or, more positively, that we are no longer willing to settle for comfort, that the system of capitalism and innovation is working to provide more options and improve lives and experiences, and that your story about this depends on, well, you.

Who is, of course, the ultimate in niche audiences.

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