I first saw livestock slaughtered at the movies. It was the crescendo of Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse Now: An ox was virtually halved by a machete in a tribal rite that seared an image in my mind that I’ve never been able to shake.

When the movie was over, a bunch of us grabbed some burgers and fries and talked about Coppola’s brilliant use of music and light and the futility of war. Talk about an ethics lesson.

Truth is, just because you chow down on sirloin doesn’t mean you support the cruel or inhumane treatment of animals. Whether it’s Coppola’s unfortunate art, meatpacking as chronicled in Schlosser’s best selling Fast Food Nation, or YouTube videos featuring vicious displays of animal cruelty, the very fact that this exposure exists at all reminds us that when it comes to barbarianism on display, we’re all carnivores.

But if this is truly a debate about whether it’s ethical to kill a cow for a cheeseburger, then the real question is whether it’s ethical to destroy anything when it’s not needed for survival. A sockeye salmon, suffocating in a gillnet after being plucked from its Bristol Bay spawning ground – later to be served on a cedar plank at Freddy’s Fish Shack – certainly “suffers” more than a cow executed by bolt pistol. And if survival is the rub, the cedar tree should be spared as well lest the environment suffer. (I shall never see a BLT as lovely as a tree).

A world of scared cows means no buttons (from cow horns), nothing to extinguish fires (hooves are used for fire fighting foam), less cardiac care (some heart patients benefit from pig valves) and plenty more. And the beef from a single steer equals 720 quarter-pound hamburgers, enough for a family of 4 to enjoy burgers each day for nearly 6 months. For some populations in this world, how ethical is starving to death instead?

The real absurdity of discussing ethics and red meat is the implication that 95% of the U.S. population, for instance – those 296 million Americans who are not vegetarians, don’t have any ethics in the first place. As if not feeling guilty about cutting into a slab of filet mignon or gnawing on a rack of baby back ribs means we’re all dishonorable, perhaps victims of mass hypnosis. Are we really all that twisted? What happened to the wisdom of crowds?

Finally, consider that there is not a nutritionist worth their salt who doesn’t first and foremost prescribe to the concept of a “balanced” diet. Nor is there an economist who is ready to bid adieu to the $74 billion cattle industry, a rancher who is proud of pink slime, or a psychologist who recommends strict deprivation instead of moderation. This is about understanding that red meat is but one food we consume, not a defining act or our only choice. Devouring a pastrami sandwich doesn’t preclude us from enjoying steamed broccoli or sharing butternut squash. Munching on the occasional strip of bacon doesn’t mean we stand up for the rights of nitrates everywhere.

By all means, serve some quinoa with your meatballs. Support the ASPCA and (at the least the left wing of) PETA. No animal should suffer an inhumane fate, be pumped with hormones or raised in conditions that don’t hold up to scrutiny, let alone sautéed in anything less than real butter. But don’t lose any sleep over the occasional pot roast. It’s no more unethical than eating just about anything. And besides, a baseball game without a hot-dog… now that’s unethical. 

Today’s impenetrable retailers always have two things in common: One, beyond service alone they understand that a brand is a promise wrapped in an experience. And two, that people, whether they be called associates, cast members, employees or even geniuses, remain the single most important variable in brining that retail experience to life. Do these brands deliver scalable and sustainable profitability? Sure. But stakeholder value is the key measurement here and the more constituents you examine, the more you see the value that these brands deliver and deliver big.

Apple Store: Any and all lists of best retailers starts with The Apple Store: $7,500 per square foot in an average location, with one store (5^th Avenue and 59^th Street in NYC) doing $35,000 per square foot which in that store’s case amounts to $35MM in revenue per year. Yowza. Also the number one employer in the country, was first to embrace to end of the cash register, displays no inventory, encourages play and interaction, and hires geniuses to help. From the beginning, Apple brand built on design and innovation, never more on display than in its brick and mortars… Apple Stores are more than a store… they are a retail event on a daily basis.

Virgin: This airline makes long distance air travel aspirational without aspirational pricing: Richard Branson’s approach of dogma heresy means putting every sensory element of airline travel up for debate and scrutiny and building from there. And while the lights, the sounds, the technology all contribute, it’s the people that make the difference:  From a 250 question screening survey to a gauntlet of interviews and 5.5 weeks of paid training, Virgin sets a very high bar when it comes to choosing the people who will deliver its brand on a daily basis. Today, like Steve Jobs, a good question when evaluating your retail experience is asking, “What would Richard do?”

Southwest Airlines: A second airline but a forever worthy addition to the list based on a model that to this day other airlines, especially the majors, can’t seem to replicate. Built on love, not fear; built on being humane, not glib; democratizing flying in America, and was Fortune’s top rated employer for so many years, it finally opted out of the list. Still offering no food, assigned seating, TVs or other perks, Southwest proves that being a low coast provider can be fun, welcoming, and after all these years and with other options, the more desired choice.

Zappos: While dozens of book on successful retailing practices preach the people – service – profits hierarchy of principals, few companies can commit. But show us a successful retailer like Zappos (now owned by Amazon), and we’ll show you a company that puts its people first, or has a disproportionate commitment to preparing its people to provide an unbeatable experience. Specifically, Zappos provides up to seven weeks of associate training on how to make the customer happy: “Insane” and “fanatical” about how it treats customers, and like Nordstrom’s, Zappos never agues about returns, and accordingly has a hugely loyal customer base.

Costco: The concept of bulk-packaged goods in a warehouse would sound exclusively like a one-sided value proposition, but Costco has truly transcended that model as the brand is now known for sampling, experience, and incredible loyalty: More than 60 million members and renewal rate greater than 87 percent. While growing their private label Kirkland brand (named after its founding hometown of Kirkland, Washington), Costco is also spending $1,3 billion in new and renovated stores. And although this great American brand has “beer drinker” segment written all of it, Costco is America’s number one wine retailer, with deep expertise and a truly entrepreneurial culture.

Amazon:  Dominating and only getting stronger: More than their peerless regression model that allows them to continue to customize the user experience, their compression of media as product mix, now down top 40%, means more people signing up for Amazon Prime and ordering dog food, cameras, cereal, eye wash, and everything else that allows Amazon to take 10% of all ecommerce dollars off the table for everyone else. Add wish lists, instant video, and the Kindle, and plans to probably open their first brick & mortar this year, and Jeff Bezos continues to prove that Amazon is one of the most world’s most visionary companies.

Dollar General/Dollar Tree/Family Dollar: Just as Walmart continues to push value over price (Save Money. Live Better. v. Always Low Prices), these three exploding retail plays solidify the dollar store economy: Honoring the mother of all table stakes, convenience, they take the closest 7-10k Sq. Ft. to a Walmart or Target and steal share in a hurry. Surprise: 22% of their customers earn $70k per year or more, and it’s their fastest growing segment. Look for more than 2,000 additional dollar stores in the US in 2012 – that’s easily 15,000 new jobs, as the march of the dollars stores continues to roll.

Papa John’s: The world didn’t need another pizza chain when John Schnatter opened his first restaurant in Louisville in 1984, but in the past ten years they’ve gone from owning 1.9% of the market to 7.9% despite being out spent by at least 3:1 by Domino’s and Pizza Hut and with only 20% of the footprint. From a loyalty program that in 28 months went from having 50 thousand members to 4 million today – customers who order more and spend more – Papa John’s amazing success speaks to world-class marketing to match peerless merchandising. At this point, very few industry analysts doubt that Papa John’s will eventually be America’s number one pizza maker.

Disney Parks: Two of the top ten retailers use a variation of pixy dust as secret sauce. In this case, it’s beyond magic or characters or thrills: In a world where retailers strive for operational excellence, Disney often achieves operation flawlessness. Cast members perfectly on cue, world’s class incremental lift from licensed merchandise, and operations that seamlessly hide the logistical challenges of handling more than 130,000 visitors a day in Orlando’s four parks alone. Disney reminds us that sometimes disruption doesn’t work, and a winning formula means one foot planted firmly in the past and the other in Neverland.

Ollivanders: Is a fictional retailer still a retailer? Let’s put it this way… the money they collect at this (barely) 1,500 sq.ft. one off is very real indeed. Sure, Ollivanders is located in the very target rich acreage known as Universal’s Wizzarding World of Harry Potter, but still, the store conservatively generates close to $20,000 per square foot. Moreover, it’s the margins that make us believe in wizards: Ollivanders is basically selling sticks of wood, a.k.a. magic wands for between $40 and $70 a pop. Not every store is built on magic and folklore or cross-generational best selling books, but the power of an Ollivanders or even a Disney must serve to remind us that every great brand tells a story

Here’s the thing about a pendulum: It’s gonna swing.

Today’s lesson in gravity and momentum starts with the simple acceptance that while the world of media started with analog (facial expressions, cave drawings, smoke signals), digital media is not the end game. Instead, it’s merely another dot on the continuum, another swing of the pendulum.

Print begat outdoor which begat broadcasting, which turned into narrowcasting which swung to guerrilla and buzz before shifting to social and mobile. (Consider that the history of advertising media in 23 words).

Now as ad budgets pour into digital, let’s remember that the world we see and consume on a daily basis can’t be relegated to the screen in your pocket: It’s a tableau of spaces and sounds, both big and small, subtle or obtrusive, but all have one thing in common. Every single one is… for… sale.

Coming off the heels of Morgan Spurlock’s revealing documentary The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, where we saw Broward County, Florida school buses being fitted for transit posters, the Dallas Morning News now reports that cash-strapped Dallas area schools will start selling ads on buses, scoreboards, as well as parent newsletters.

Elizabeth Ben-Ishai, the author of an analysis released last month by Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer interest group, speaks for the opposition: “Schools should be a place where students grow into critical thinkers and develop skills that enable them to question established ideas.”

Thanks Elizabeth…may I introduce you to the 21^st century?

Here’s the reality: Not only will ads on school busses continue to sprout like weeds (or flowers when done right), ads on classroom walls are merely months away. They may not feature a garish BOGO or QR code for Budweiser – we’ll start slowly with a sponsored mural or PSA – but this is gonna happen.

It all serves as a reminder that media ROI trumps principles, clutter, or noise: Every space, every airway, everybody is buyable: To prove the point, as yourself this… if Anheuser-Busch paid you a million dollars, would you change your name to Bud for one year?

So knowing that your very identity is for sale, what makes you think that your local hospital wouldn’t sell it’s birthing ward’s naming rights to Gerber? Or the towel your newborn is wrapped in? Or the delivery room? Why is it so hard to accept that the wall in your kid’s English class will soon be sponsored by Amazon’s Kindle? If it buys better educational facilities do you really care? Especially since children are better prepared than ever to filter out advertising’s BS vs. worthy content.

When it comes to ad budgets, digital as media is hot and digital as medium is cool: We get it. But just as broadcast advertising is still the best way drive to site, those who look at the world and see analog opportunities – space that transcends the phone, pad and laptop layered with digital media will drive greater ROI.

It’s just the nature of the pendulum… understanding that it’s not just very screen you’re reading this on that’s for sale, but the desk it’s sitting on as well. Because when the price is right, we're all swingers.

 For retailers, every conversation will continue to start and end with analytics-based e-tailing: How to convert us into loyalty members and digital device shoppers, leverage emotional membership and functional points, earn mobile access, capture facebook follows, activate shopping apps, pump laser targeted price and items, and generally optimize the signal-to-noise ratio on a million and one BOGOs. Say hello to my little regression analysis. 

 The payoff for consumers will revolve around the one attribute to rule them all… convenience. The last word in table-stakes, convenience means Amazon exponentially building on their already ten percent of all North American ecommerce through their five new million plus square feet super centers. It means Walmart's more than 140 million customers per week gobbling up $125 million in groceries to avoid an extra stop. It means packing-up-the-family-car trumps waiting-for-the-delivery truck (IKEA v. Ready to Assemble Furniture). It means curbside service expanding beyond the restaurant sector. It means Walgreens, CVS and Duane Reed preparing to carry quick and easy meals along with more perishables. It means gas stations continuing to expand their footprint and meal offerings, using their locations to negate the need for longer trips to the market. And as gas prices threaten to climb into painful $5 per gallon levels, convenience means more moms, a.k.a. the home’s Chief Spending Officer who is already in the car more than 22 hours per week, searching for more ways to drive less. (Already we see gas station mini markets offering at-the-pump discounts when you buy inside the store.) 

 While convenience is glacial, slowly but surely flowing across the landscape, wiping out all retailers who under staff or can’t adapt fast enough, these next four trends are disrupting our very definition of retail at a much faster clip:

1) It’s Ringing, It’s Vibrating… It’s Your Wallet:  Smartphone enabled Google Wallet, Isis and retail brand quick-pay apps will finally allow us to carry no cash and change the way retailers engineer their POS systems: The data that retailers collect alone will drive all the ROI they’ll ever need to justify the tech upgrade. From Starbucks’ mobile payment app, which is linked to their loyalty program and already available at 7,000 locations, to restaurants like Jamba Juice and Jack-In-The-Box (both testing Google Wallet in multiple locations), to Walmart and Target and two dozen other retailers who have joined forces to develop a mobile payment system, the end of cash is near. RIP ATMs.

2) The Rise of The Everywhere Store: Just as both best-of-class brick and mortars continue to benefit from their unbeatable combination of instant gratification and tactile experience, and top ecommerce pure plays take more consumer spending off the table through (what else) convenience, the big winners will be cross-platform retailers as they push themselves into multiple and integrated consumer touch points. The best of these will orchestrate advertising, media, and operations to form a value proposition that succeeds on a multitude of layers.

Imagine: You’re watching a football game and a consumer electronics retailer using drive-to-site broadcast – knowing that 86 percent of all smart device users are “on” while watching TV – hits you with a compelling offer. A quick visit to the retailer’s site or app on your iPad and you find that the content of retail offer ties directly into the game you’re watching. Cool. The call to action is a one-click purchase that also enters you into their loyalty program. This all happens while watching the 1:00 p.m. game in 2D knowing that the new 3D TV will be delivered from the local store or distribution center by the 4:00 p.m. kick-off (for a premium). A follow-up text asks how the delivery experience was as a bonus service touch point and way to collect even more data. Broadcast to iPad, iPad to the cloud, cloud to the store, store to your den, one more mobile ping from the cloud and all of it cataloged in the database. Somewhere Pavlov is smiling. 

3) Cloud, say hello to gravity: While the emphasis has been the rush to e-tailing and social and digital integration, even the best ecommerce pure plays still understand the need to offer live shopping experiences to model the poster child for retail destination brands… Apple stores and their mind-blowing 7,000 per square foot juggernaut.

Amazon will likely open their first store in Seattle as speculated and highlight high-margin items, act as a fresh portal for the brand, offer Kindle support, and enable 24-hour delivery when you swipe your Amazon Prime app. eBay already had a pop-up store in London’s West End last December, and other top ten web sites could soon morph themselves into straight up retailers. Think Twitter Café – a virtual third place, or the YouTube store, 4,000 square feet dedicated to helping users set up their personalized YouTube pages and manage their content (and perhaps unwittingly see a few third party ads while there.) It’s the era of the small box.

4) Pop Goes The Retail Lease: The ultimate pop-up sensation of 2011 – Food Trucks – will also continue to roll. And although Food Trucks accounted for only about $1 billion in sales last year, perhaps a mere pittance compared to the restaurant industry’s $620B+ in total sales, they seemed as omnipresent as Jeremy Lin T-shirts and combined the ultimate in convenience with the best of the restaurant industry’s love of new, fast concepts. 2011 Favorites? Schnitzel & Things, Baby’s Badass Burgers, and Me So Hungry.

Don’t look now, but mall and strip center real estate merchants are going to have to get used to the high-margin short term lease as “pop up” blows up in 2012: Think of the already $6.8 billion in Halloween dollars flowing through more than 2,100 temporary outlets, or the neighborhood Christmas Tree center. Now imagine a $22 billion in Back-to-School dollars being spent at stripped down Back-to-School outlets. And given that Black Friday now hits the radar almost seven weeks early (Cyber Monday ads for Target began last September) and extends into December, The Black Friday store will no doubt show up in 2012 to claim a piece of the holiday’s $10.68 billion in revenue. 

Retail experts and brand pundits like to spend their time evaluating what’s come before, always believing that perhaps the great retail shake-ups are behind us. But not so fast buckaroos. This is it. Right now. Technology is becoming more than just an enabler, and instead retail superglue… a limitless digital bonding agent for consumers and retailers. And as retailers tweak their value propositions to keep up… more for less, quality for less, speed for less, better for less, ad nauseum, the winning retail propositions will be built on convenience, enabled through technology, delivered to our fingertips, available to touch in store, but to purchase anywhere in the world. And all of it creating consumer digital footprints that are more reliable than DNA and more valuable than A+ real estate.

Yes, the ground below us shifting. And it's going to keep shifting until the earth is no longer two thirds water and instead 100% retail.  Hold on.

Ever wonder what Albert Pujols would do in a neighborhood softball game? Or the kind of tree house Frank Lloyd Wright would build for his son? How about Danica Patrick in a car pool lane?

Yes, it’s always nice to fantasize about the masters tackling the chores of us mere mortals. Even better is when you can see (or in this case taste) the results for yourself.

Enter Danny Meyer into the world of (relatively) fast food. Fast in this case only in that from counter to first bite is not the event meal of relaxed luxury that you’d find at Danny’s Union Square Café or Gramercy Tavern.

To a degree, Shake Shack is a story about timing. And in the restaurant world, good timing means everything.

Panera’s foundation may be foolproof, but the recession-led “drive to the middle of the category” sure didn’t hurt.

Red Lobster’s greatest comp gains correlated with America’s seafood wake-up call, along with shrimp passing tuna like it was treading water as the suddenly most populous fish in America. (There may be no more shrimp in Thailand, but a quick look at the menus of Olive Garden, Red Lobster and Chilis would suggest that we’re not even close to farmed out).

Yet even as McDonalds now serves more chicken than beef, the pendulum has once again swooped across the restaurant landscape and better burgers are all the rage, led in numbers by cinco amigos, i.e. Five Guys.

But the best of the betters is not one of the “heads of state”, a mom and pop, hidden one off or regional favorite like Whataburger or BurgerFi. The fact is, the best burger is specifically designed to be the best burger by those who – when it comes to food for sale – generally bat 1000% right out of the kitchen.

The best burger right now is Danny Meyers’ Shake Shack.

In the same way that if Apple said it was designing a pair of headphones, when Danny Meyer and company open their first official Shake Shack in 2004, the industry buzz was indeed palpable and for good reason. Aside from Shake Shack's winning physical, emotional and spiritual design, created to deliver on the promise of Joe Pine’s Experience Economy, the star is still what’s on the tray. And in this case, it is, yes, the best-testing, scalable burger on the planet. Smother it in toppings if you will, lick up the Shake sauce, add extra cheese or too much catsup it will still delight to no end. But fresh toppings aside, one taste of even the Shack’s naked patty on a plate is all you need to acknowledge the quality and culinary artistry of the USHG (Union Square Hospitality Group) that runs the Shack.

According to August’s New York Times cover story on the Missouri magic man himself, Meyer’s attention to the beef is profound:

The meat comes from Pat LaFrieda, a third-generation butcher who produces a blend of sirloin, chuck and brisket designed by Richard Coraine, former general manager of Wolfgang Puck’s Postrio in San Francisco and now one of Meyer’s partners. As Meyer put it: “There are a zillion variables to a hamburger. What part of the animal went into it. What coarseness. What temperature.” Coraine spent months “tasting and modifying the blend to hit the right chord.”

Sure, there are plenty of reasons to love the Shake Shack model… the focus on interns, the off-the-menu offerings, the dog bowls, allergen information, the imaginative and mouthwatering frozen custards, the beer and wine menu, etc. But the category isn’t called better extras. It’s all about the beef.

I’m sure the folks at USHG want to think of themselves as beyond categorization, lest they be clumped with a deep and getting deeper bench of inferior category players. But consumers who may be unaware of category designations like “fast casual” and “QSR” certainly know how much money they have in their pockets and how many options populate the restaurant map.

Which brings us to the Shack’s value proposition: Just as Papa John’s gets its unfair market share in the form of a significant premium through quality in a category where quality never mattered, there are hordes of new citizens enlisting in Foodie Nation every day: Two Whoppers for three dollars in a dirty restaurant that has a 50% chance of getting your order wrong is far less appealing than a single Shack Burger at twice the price. When the food and experience is this exceptional, the price is always right.

But of course this is about far more than beef for the buck. This is about a psychographic. Apple users. Mini Cooper drivers. Cult like devotion en masse to a brand that is indeed worthy. It’s the new and improved In-N-Out... one for a new generation.

Danny Meyers’ (still less than a dozen) Shake Shacks already constitute one-third of USHG’s revenue. And while the “F” word (franchising) may be far off or in never never land, I say the more Shacks the better. Because if as Danny implies better burgers makes for happier people, then the question is, can the best burgers, burgers this good bring us world peace? Maybe, maybe not. But it’s a thought certainly worth chewing on.

There are soulless retailers in this world. Stores and companies for whom the term being in the black reflects the state of their heart, not just their bottom line.

These are monstrous places that suck in hapless shoppers by the truckloads, leaving them no choice but to surrender their will, their loyalty, and their cash.

We dare not speak their names. For they are… necessary evil.

This evil takes many forms. Some less obvious then the next.  Perhaps they’re right up the street, like your corner convenience store, a.k.a. your go-to gas station or filling station, which while hard to believe, used to be called a service station.

In my case, by virtue of its location, the station that handles my car's weekly uh-oh-won’t-make-it-to-work pit stop is a BP (British Petroleum). So even during the heart of 2010’s oil spill, I found myself with no choice but to watch them gore my wallet. The ultimate convenience-based succubus.

This is not an attack on America’s fossil fuel politics, or an assault on the minimum wage zombies who grunt as they ring up 42-ounce slushies, I’m talking about the gas station function itself. Not only can’t you think of a single innovation these multi-pump hydras have instituted in the past ten years, they can be dirty, slow, perpetually crowded, out of gas, and of course dismally mechanical and yet we remain powerless to flee.

Nobody expects a gas station to be Nordstrom’s, but given that Americans spend well over a trillion dollars a year on gasoline – up to 11% of our overall retail purchases – this is quietly one of the most necessary evils in America, haunting us at almost 200,000 locations from cost to cost.

Where’s the loyalty reward? The free bottle of water? The traffic update? The actual person to pump my gas sans surcharge?

I fear we may never escape the gas station’s torturous grasp.

Like watching a mutant T-Rex save you from King Kong, there are some evils that become tamed not just by us, but also by other lumbering giants out to rule the safe turf.

Witness the beast of Bentonville, Walmart: Not today’s 2.0-brand version with gentler blue font, sunny mark and value proposition end line. Instead think about Walmart 5-10 years ago when they stomped into peaceful towns and hamlets to kill the local bookshop and toy store (pure evil on the march): 100,000 SKUs and nary an associate in sight, a mindless, a witless corporate Cyclops with its only eye focused on the bottom line. Focus group after focus group after focus group called them… yes… “necessary evil”. A place where the always low prices demanded that mom and dad kneel before this heartless box creature.

Not able to tame them alone, help finally arrived in the form of dollar stores nipping at their base and Target luring away their top end shopper: Walmart focused on green, an enhanced in-store environment and signage, fresh aforementioned brand cues and a greater focus on associate promotion and retention. And only a few short years after we sharpened our pitchforks and starting killing their new store initiatives at town halls across the land, Walmart continues to mutate from necessary evil to “My Walmart,” changing its trajectory from merchandiser to marketer, great to greater revenue generator, and from horror show to exorcised demon.

There are other unspeakable evils the world. Far worse. Far scarier. Necessary evil that isn’t just “out there,” but lurking inside our very own homes… inside our TVs, phones, and internet service. I shudder at the name… Comcast.

In this case, necessary evil gives way to pure evil. A company that inspires emptiness, not a shred of support, not even from the town’s forgiving and unbiased blind man with the gentle fireplace and warm bowl of soup. Because even when they get it right, this is a case of Dr. Heckel and Jeckel and Mr. Hyde.

The very thought of calling Comcast when the service goes down can trigger facial tics in those of us who usually work the system with ease. This particular odyssey to hell is followed by a meet and greet with the eighth deadly sin … waiting for Comcast to show up at your door within the dreaded six-hour window.

(For the love of God can someone tell me why hasn’t Steven King written a three-part series about this holy terror?)

With Comcast, it’s not just about what’s coming through the pipe – all similar services have occasional outages: It’s the complete, unapologetic treatment of their victims, i.e. customers. If you want to imagine the CEO of Comcast and his executive team at a consumer strategy meeting, think Joker and henchmen in a dark lair, cackling and plotting on how to destroy Gotham.

Time and time again, Comcast sucks the life out of everything in its path, leaving a wake of the blood drained and destroyed, preserved only for the next deadly encounter on another day soon.

Evil exists in this world. Those services that have our loyalty for all the wrong reasons. But whatever urchin like store or organization is your particular nemesis, know that in the same way a vampire is pervious to the sun, these misbegotten retailers wilt in the bright light of the new and improved, the differentiated shopper-friendly environment.

Indeed, there is sanctuary and salvation, places that give us permission to shun the beast, finally lay down our pitchforks, and in the end, make evil not just unwanted, but unnecessary for all mankind.

It's generally considered bad form to burry something while it’s still alive. Even if the grim reaper is waiting by the back door, collection notice in hand, bank note out of patience.

But the restaurant landscape is no place for an identity crisis and a report from The Wall Street Journal Thursday said Friendly Ice Cream Corp., the parent to the 500-unit Friendly’s family-dining chain, could seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as early as next week, and hold an auction to sell the chain. 

Friendly’s first opened in 1935 selling double dip 5-cent cones when five cents was a lot for a scoop of ice cream. But it was darn good. And with a name like Friendly’s, the value proposition was elegantly simple and the American retail landscape had a good reason to smile. 

Unable to fight what appeared to be a deadly crisis of confidence, Friendly’s Ice Cream put entrees on the front burner, and ice cream became formally known as their…. wait for it… happy ending.

If only it were true.

Over its final decade, Friendly’s followed every trend it could find from artesian salads and sandwiches to Angus burgers, burying its lead further and further down stream. A VC swooped in. A PR grab in the form of a heart-attack-on-a-plate sandwich – the Grilled Cheese Burgermelt – came and went. Three new CEOs appeared in the last four years, a couple of new CMOs, all with their own agendas for cutting costs and righting the ship. But this was one leaking hull that suffered from two fatal hits:

1) The aforementioned manic loss of focus. The apparent chase after anything but their own DNA. Americans haven’t stopped eating ice cream (180,000,000 gallons consumed last year), but that didn’t prevent Friendly’s from a nasty case of Panera envy.

2) What murders any restaurant brand in its path: Dirty stores and unreasonably slow service. In 2008 Friendly’s was rated one of the slowest and dirtiest restaurants in America, with Consumer Reports flat out ranking it last out of 23 other casual dining establishments. A new COO resorting to the classic “white glove” and flashlight shtick didn’t move the needle enough.

Slow and dirty doesn’t work for American diners, especially when the home’s Chief Meal Officer plans on going out for dinner an estimated 55% less this year.

And while Friendly’s tried their hand at a leaner, cleaner, faster concept over the past few years (Friendly’s Express), there remains just too many of their larger brick and mortars to languish away in Fast Casual’s shadow.

Yes, Americans love the new… (Five Guys, Pink Berry, Firehouse Subs, etc.), but our heritage brands (Denny’s, White Castle, Friendly’s, etc.) needs us too and we need them. They’ve just got to find away to balance the need to stay fresh and relevant with the understanding that DNA matters.

Goodbye Friendly’s. Welcome to the world of Howard Johnsons. A world where we know you’re out there, perhaps even dirtier, left for dead, but open for (somebody’s) business. We’ll always remember your Monster Mash and Jim Dandy and your one of a kind Supermelt. But given the new restaurant world of a hundred and one cleaner, newer, more relevant options, it’ll only be Friendly’s most loyal and ardent fans who will truly miss it.

The Fribble is dead. The Fribble is dead. Long live the Fribble.

The masters of retail value something even greater than profit, and that’s sustainable and scalable profit.

In the case of Russ & Daughters, the sustainable is legendary, but the scalable is heresy.

We’re talking about (just under) 100 years of serving smoked fish, caviar, cream cheese, Jewish soul food, and all associated wisdom out of 400 wall-to-wall square feet on Houston Street on New York’s gritty frozen-in-time lower East side.

A bagel with caviar cream cheese is painstakingly wrapped in heavier-than necessary grade of wax paper. The fish is sublime, the bagel itself okay, but the experience 100% bona fide unique.

In a world where retail experience wins, the old world experience of Russ & Daughters wins hands down, mouth watering, and stomach smiling.

Could fourth generation owner Josh Russ Tupper turn pickled herring into a chain worthy phenomenon? Who knows and who cares. The very fact that Russ & Daughters is such a rare bird/fish is what makes it so rewarding. And in the same way that a single Five Guys in town is an attraction, but when the supply is equal to McDonalds the demand flattens out, this single Russ & Daughters location has more authenticity in its refuse than an iHop contains in a thousand and one pancakes.

Probably the best mass retailer at scaling (inauthentic) authenticity is Anthropologie: Planned randomness yes, but so well planned that each store feels like it houses a series of one offs, unique finds, and all that is eclectic but worthy. But for the most part, true authenticity is extremely hard to scale. And so while we accept the Cracker Barrel's general store as a logical extension of the brand, we well know there’s another one exactly like it 60 miles up the highway, and that fact diminishes the very experience they so painstakingly created.

In Russ & Daughters, New Yorker’s find the pickled herring capital in the western hemisphere. And a reminder by virtue of New York's originals... Junior’s, Katz’s, Serendipity, and Carnegie Deli that a retail establishment that mirrors the neighborhood where it resides becomes part of that city’s vibrant living body, not an artificial limb. 

May Russ & Daughters never succumb to the gravitation pull of scale, the Vegas or Miami one off (small scale is still scale). May it never carry wraps and egg whites. May it never sell smoothies are frozen yougart and fruit. May it never carry breakfast wraps and egg whites. May it never attract a cool Indy crowd.

May Russ & Daughter’s sustain forever.

And another cult bites and another cult bites and another cult bites the dust...

Is it possible that jetBlue suddenly feels a bit old? Now that Virgin has re-set the bar, JB’s stone leather seats and dish TV are, well, they’re okay. But the passenger engagement that once saw the dish TV click on to a message that said "don't tell anyone but you're our favorite customer", has given way to the new JB end line – you above all – directed followed by a series of commercial messages (AOL, etc.). More like revenue above all.

Amy Curtis-McIntyre, jetBlue’s inaugural Chief Marketing Officer, helped craft the brand through such pearls as “You need to over-stress your most basic brand DNA every day.” And her four step process for success: (1) Create a great product (2) Market it right (3) Take really good care of it and (4) Repeat before necessary.”

But Amy is long gone, now at Old Navy. And David Neeleman, who piloted JB's creation with a hefty serving of his Southwest secret sauce is now running Azul Brazilian Air.

And so the future of jetBlue, while not necessarily up in the air, is certainly more pervious to innovative competitors.

JB’s flight attendants get the job done, but the snap in their step is gone, gratified merely for employment perhaps, and certainly no longer enamored with the once shiniest penny at 30,000 feet.

Interesting is that when Jim Collins delivered Good to Great, he surmised that it was far more interesting to examine not those companies like jetBlue that exploded out of the box, great from day one, but rather the organizations who were at parity in their field before taking the quantified steps that propelled them to category leadership.

But thinking about jetBlue's case, a new phenomenon warrants closer study: Great to greater. Think Walmart, from brand clumsy category killer to brand smart good corporate citizen. Apple, from software magician to hardware legend. Bono, from $250M rock phenomenon to cause ambassador. Las Vegas, from successful gambling and drinking vacation to sex and secrets destination. These are brands that opened big and just kept ratcheting up.

What will become of wunder-brands like Zappos? Five Guys? Jersey Shore? Will they keep climbing, re-inventing, paranoid to the core, value going from great to greater? Or will they almost imperceptibly become tired, frayed, or potentially irrelevant when our backs are tuned? Like jetBlue.

In JB's case, it’s true that on any day you can fly out of their state-of-the-art terminal at New York’s JFK airport, get a good seat and all is well. But is there any doubt that something new is waiting to happen in the airline business? An airline that stows your carry ons for you – facilitating boarding. An airline that segments flights for business and families. An airline that downscales the Virgin model for short-hop corridors like LGA to FLL, or ORD to EWR,

None of us frequent flyers and brand pundits are ready to bury jetBlue just yet, but Chairman Joel Peterson and team are just not paranoid enough, and now focused on managing the bottom line without inspiring elevation on the top line. Consequently the buzz and cult has died down, along with the once fresh ideas that Neeleman and McIntyre pioneered – TVs “to keep the kids quiet", no first class to avoid the coach flyer’s “walk of shame” et.al.

Good to great brands remain go-to lessons in decomoditization and pack-busting strategies. But the great to greater brands, the ones that never stop building or innovating remain the most compelling cases of all. They may or may not be the fastest flyers, they never stop climbing.