As I write this, I’m sitting in a record/cocktail lounge sipping a negroni. One of the owners, who makes the best cocktails west of the Mississippi and dresses like the guys from Wayne’s World, was sponsored by Buc-ee’s, and I was chatting about the comings and goings of the city’s food scene. In town we have a wonderful thing called the Beer-muda Triangle: three craft breweries offering live music and a welcome change from Busch Light and Stag. The owners and brewmasters of these breweries are here with us in conversation. The topic of the day: how to best support the city’s monthly First Friday, a kind of pub crawl-meets-art exhibition.
These guys working together is nothing new; they will collaborate with other companies and with each other to introduce new ideas. For example, two of these breweries do not have a catering permit. To cut costs, they stock the menus from a number of restaurants and you can order directly through them, add it to your tab and have the food delivered a few doors away. Talk about a win-win-win! The brewery doesn’t have to pay the costs and liability of a kitchen, and they get to keep you going. I don’t have to go out to get food and I only have one bill to process. The restaurant does not have to pay the costs and liability of a liquor license and they can continue to sell their food to people who are not even on the premises! These types of collaborations are great ways to compete yet complement each other.
Competition is often seen as cutthroat. Companies can use the political process to protect themselves from competition or target their competitors. For example The Wright Amendment of 1979. Repealed in 2014, the Wright Amendment was a federal law that regulated traffic at Love Field in Dallas. It was implemented following Southwest Airlines’ refusal to leave Love for Dallas-Fort Worth Airport and banned any airline from operating transport category aircraft with more than 56 seats to places outside Texas and surrounding states. (American Airlines, a major competitor to Southwest and also based in the DFW area, was of course grandfathered in.)
As I sit sipping my cocktail, I ponder these ideas in my head. Who said competition has to be cutthroat and hostile? Ultimately, everyone around me is competing for my hard-earned entertainment dollar. Yet here they are, fully aware of their competition and trying to create their own niche. It seems counterintuitive that they would be here, effectively undermining their competitive advantage; However, these guys understand the environment in which they operate. They cannot compete with the macro breweries and restaurant chains on price, but they can compete on variety. This extra variation creates more prosperity; not only for the Beer-Muda triangle, but also for all of us. We have a wealth of choices and new experiences at our disposal to spend our entertainment dollars on. Working together, but with their own interests at heart, these guys compete, collaborate and create. In a world where open and fair competition is in short supply, it is encouraging to see that the utter cynicism of the world around us, at least in our own microcosm, has not yet taken hold.