Unexpected Ingredients 

A few weeks ago, I went to an “Italian” restaurant and ordered the gluten-free pasta with Alfredo sauce. You can imagine my surprise when they came back to the table to tell me that the Alfredo wasn’t gluten-free—they thicken their Alfredo with flour. 

I was shocked. I’ve never heard of someone using flour to thicken Alfredo, and the fact that their kitchen didn’t have the ingredients to whip up a serving without flour blew my mind as someone who regularly makes Alfredo sauce from scratch, not using any flour. 

It got me thinking about business, though. How often are you hiding ingredients in your services that your buyers don’t know about?

Maybe you’re outsourcing work to people your customers might not be thrilled about. 

Maybe you’re using AI in ways that are not transparent. 

Whatever it is, if it would be shocking and appalling to your customer, maybe you need to rethink it. 

Behind the curtain matters. The systems (recipe) you put in place should be ethical. If you don’t want your customer to watch how you do the work, perhaps you should get busy finding a better way to do it. 

While I appreciate that the restaurant advised me of the non-gluten-free Alfredo, knowing this helped me to know other things about how they operate, which are not exactly tasteful to my pallet. 

You shouldn’t market yourself as an authentic Italian restaurant if you’re buying mass-made, flour-thickened sauces. 

And you shouldn’t market yourself as an expert if you lack that expertise.

Want to hear more? Tune into my podcast She Talks Business so that you can learn how to master, market, and monetize your business.