Popular Articles

Sweet marketing music

Tanner Montague came to town from Seattle having never owned his own music venue before. He’s a musician himself, so he has a pretty good sense of good music, but he also wandered into a crowded music scene filled with concert venues large and small.But the owner of Green Room thinks he found a void in the market. It’s lacking, he says, in places serving between 200 and 500 people, a sweet spot he thinks could be a draw for both some national acts not quite big enough yet for arena gigs and local acts looking for a launching pad.“I felt that size would do well in the city to offer more options,” he says. “My goal was to A, bring another option for national acts but then, B, have a great spot for local bands to start.”Right or wrong, something seems to be working, he says. He’s got a full calendar of concerts booked out several months. How did he, as a newcomer to the market in an industry filled with competition, get the attention of the local concertgoer?

read more
by Andrew Tellijohn
June/July 2007

Related Article

Retail

Read more

Case study: Building a reputation

CASE STUDY :: BUILDING A REPUTATION

Fairer fares
Rainbow Taxi?s owners keep driver
and passenger top of mind


by Mark Connor

IT'S NOT EASY to forge a reputation for excellent customer service in a business marred by late arrivals and inconsiderate drivers. But that?s what Rainbow Taxi Corp.?s husband-and-wife partners Zack and Andrea Williams are working to do.

They joined with Zack?s father, Larry Williams, to grow the business from a four-car operation into its current size of 53 cars with a large base of loyal customers.

In the fast-paced, dangerous and highly competitive world of taxi service, they say they rely on an approach that keeps both passenger and driver first.

The company was founded in 1983 by four owner-operators from Yellow Taxi after Minneapolis city regulation allowed drivers to break affiliation with large companies. Rainbow Taxi began building business based on solid customer service and word-of-mouth referrals.

Shortly after Larry, a veteran owner-operator, became a partner in 1985, Zack began driving Larry?s cab on the weekends while attending the University of Minnesota. After Zack and Andrea were married and Andrea graduated from the College of St. Catherine with a marketing degree, she took over Rainbow?s marketing.

They eventually bought all shares of the business, making Zack CEO and Andrea president. With a commitment to thoroughly training drivers and treating them with respect, they?ve minimized turnover and maintained a large number of corporate accounts that keep business flowing when hotel, restaurant and flag-down activity is slow.

?From day one,? Zack Williams says, ?the one thing Rainbow always cared about was whether the customers got their cabs. And I wouldn?t be here today, where I am, if any other major cab company had cared about that.?

It?s a harsh criticism of most cab companies, but he insists that it?s the one piece to the puzzle that anyone with the will to do so could have put in place. Rainbow came up with a simple but strategically designed dispatch system that he says not only serves the customer better, but also spreads the longer, higher-paying trips around to all the drivers.

Most companies work on a zone system, dispatching orders by geographical area and relying on drivers to be in the neighborhood where an order is placed. If no driver is near the customer, the order waits until someone is near or is willing to pick it up.

Rainbow, however, has drivers check on what is called the long list for orders that will meter over $20, and a short list for ones that meter for less. So drivers will go to any part of the city when an order is given, and if they refuse to take orders they will not be allowed to drive Rainbow cars.

The private contracting structure of the taxi business is probably why the normal system exists, but Zack also believes many companies would lack that customer concern anyway.

Drivers are customers
What most people don?t understand about the cab business, says Mark Shields, Rainbow?s operations manager, is that the taxi driver is actually a customer of the company, paying a lease to drive under the company?s name with its dispatch services.

?One thing Larry always pushed is that our job is to broker the interests of both sets of customers. One set of customers is cab drivers, and the other set are people calling to get the cabs. So we?re brokering those interests and trying to be fair to both.?

Evidence of Rainbow Taxi?s service, as well as an explanation for its financial success, is found in the testimony of its corporate clients.

Chris Hawley, who owns an American Family Insurance office in St. Paul, uses Rainbow Taxi for himself and clients. ?If I?m going to the airport from my house for travel, I can have them at my house at 4:30 a.m. or 5 a.m. and don?t have to worry about it,? he says. ?The fact that I?ve kept working with them for 10 years is a testament in and of itself. The best aspect of it is reliability.?

Jacque Parker of Greyhound Bus, which uses an account with Rainbow for bus drivers laying over while on a route and customers who?ve missed connections because of delays, also praises their service. ?I think it?s great,? she says. ?The drivers are good, and a lot of the dispatchers know me by name, so when I call them they get somebody here as soon as possible.?

While Rainbow Taxi has large corporate accounts such as WCCO, Morgan-Stanley and departments of the University of Minnesota, Andrea says they primarily seek smaller ones. ?The bulk of our business is smaller corporate accounts,? she says, explaining that it is important to have a significant number of customers so the hypothetical loss of a larger one doesn?t unduly dent business. She adds that most of Rainbow?s business is with corporate accounts. It?s important enough that she will market corporate accounts aggressively if business is slow.

?I will sometimes hand out free rides to different companies,? she says. “Really, that?s the best marketing I can do. Get them in the cab; let them see our service, let them see the car, let them experience the driver. Once they realize when they call a cab the cab comes and we don?t fudge on our time, that?s the best selling point.?

Service addition
A major addition to the logistical support for the company came with Rainbow Taxi?s 1998 purchase of Keller?s Auto Service at 3400 42 Ave. S. The acquisition greatly increased its ability to keep cars on the road. No longer needing to outsource car maintenance, it was suddenly easier to increase the number of company-owned cars because a driver can decide at any time to have them worked upon.

Although Zack didn?t give an exact number of company cars in relation to owner-operated vehicles, he said that roughly one-third of them are Rainbow owned.

?I can get my cars done if they break immediately,? says Andrea. ?So if a driver is sensing something?s wrong with the cab, he can immediately drive over to my garage and have it looked at.?

If drivers were unable to do that, she says, they might finish a shift and leave a possibly unsafe car for the next driver. Rainbow also tries to accommodate drivers for missed time in the garage, granting credit on the lease for that shift.

Among the 53 cars in the Rainbow Taxi fleet, six of them are licensed for the suburbs, one in St. Paul and the rest in Minneapolis. Revenue is about $1 million.

When drivers begin, Zack Williams says he gives them a talk about how many of them are from different backgrounds, but ?the only color we see here is green. Leave the politics and religion at home and we?ll all make money.?

Zack asserts that conflicts are minimal and no refusal of reasonably behaved customers is tolerated. Drivers originate from a multitude of places, including lifelong Minnesotans as well as Eritrean, Somali and Ethiopian immigrants.

[contact] Chris Hawley, American Family Insurance: 651.696.9096; chawle1@amfam.com; www.amfam.com. Jacque Parker, Greyhound Bus: 612.371.3325. Mark Shields, Andrea Williams, Zack Williams, Rainbow Taxi Corp.: 612.729.4243