If you’ve wandered in from the depths of the internet and found this post from what is ostensibly a website about education, you’re probably wondering what this has to do with BBQ.
In my adopted home of Markham, Ontario my go-to takeout meal is the Three kinds of BBQ with rice; it is sold by two BBQ stalls which are situated right beside each other in the food court of a Markham strip mall. Selling what appears to be the exact same meal for approximately the exact same price (there’s a coffee chain joke somewhere in here). One we’ll call “Standard BBQ” (not the actual name) and the other “Extra BBQ” (the actual name). Both stalls are adorned with the old school, slightly tacky and unmistakable backlit signs reminiscent of Chinatowns everywhere and both feature the familiar smorgasbord of BBQed animal carcasses in the window display.
Standard BBQ has been around as long as I can remember; it was there the first time I came to Markham some 20 years ago and has probably been around for longer. So when Extra BBQ decided to open right next door nearly a decade ago I thought they were crazy. What is the point of selling the exact same thing next to a mainstay of the community? I was convinced they would be out of business within the year.
I had resisted the urge to even try Extra BBQ at first, preferring to stick with the tried and true. But, one day I was in a hurry and the line at Standard felt like they were extending into eternity and suddenly the complete lack of a line at the stall next door tempted me to try Extra for the first time. In hindsight this was a sign.
Probably due to their inexperience with sanitation procedures at the time I found myself desperately searching for a bathroom an hour after my meal. Hopelessly stuck in afternoon Toronto traffic the seconds felt like hours. I vowed to never go back. But soon enough we would be reunited, by long lines and tight schedules. This time was different no stomach grumbles, no mad dash to the bathroom clenching my cheeks and the food was actually good! The skin crispier, the meat more evenly seasoned and juicier than their Standard neighbour’s. Extra seemed to be learning from their complete lack of customers while Standard, next door, dealt with 30-minute waits.
With a grand sample size of two visits, it was too soon to judge so I started a little personal experiment. I would eat at each stall until I had a bad experience; overcooked food, missing utensils and the occasional explosive diarrhea (It never did happen again). And so back and forth it went, until one day I realized that I had been eating at Extra for months, then years. Today I contemplated writing this post while in the line at Extra, the line at Standard was a grand total of zero. After nearly a decade the continuous small improvements had made an impact, the old diehards have switched and the fortunes of the stalls reversed. The customers in the end, could always tell the difference in quality.
Here in Canada we are particularly proud of our education tradition and its reputation globally. While there are hundreds of educational service providers out there, our focus at Trondle Education is on the fundamental quality of the services we provide. By working with the best teachers to come out of the Canadian Education System, our services are grounded in the slowly but surely evolving Canadian education landscape and we hope to share those improvements in quality with our students. Bringing everyone together and moving toward a teacher-student focused model fit for the 21st century. One day, we hope to get a little lineup outside our stall window too.
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