One night, while I was out of town, I ordered some sushi for dinner. I’d never heard of the place before, but I did a quick google search before placing my order and saw it had 4.7 stars, and that was good enough for me.👌
Well, let me back up…
The first reason I ordered is because of their name.
The restaurant is called “KazuNori: The Original Hand Roll Bar.”
Immediately, that intrigued me. I thought “Damn, these guys invented the hand roll? Okay, well I gotta try it.”🤔
Then I googled the restaurant and it had 4.7 stars (with a lot of reviews).⭐
Next, there was the price point.
It seemed pretty reasonable. A 16-piece box was $18. If you wanted sashimi, it was $28. I went with the sashimi option.
Now, once my order was delivered, I was immediately impressed with the presentation.
The box was sturdy, high quality, and visually pleasing. The little “compartments” might not seem like a big deal, but I loved them. I loved how there was a separate place for my tray, the containers, the sashimi, and the cut rolls. It felt ordered and neat, like all was well in the universe.🤩
I immediately trusted the restaurant and instantly believed that the quality of the food would be very high.✅
And then, as I sat there eating my sushi, I read the story that was printed on the box.
Here’s the gist of it:
Chef Nozawa introduced the hand roll to the United States 40 years ago, and they were consistently one of the most popular dishes at his namesake restaurant, Sushi Nozawa. In 2014, the Sushi Nozawa Group opened the first KazuNori: The Original Hand Roll Bar in Downtown Los Angeles.
Now I’ll just go ahead and type out the next part straight from the box:
“To prepare the temaki, we begin with extraordinarily high-grade nori made specifically for our hand rolls. Nozawa’s signature warm, loose rice is added to the seaweed and is then topped with carefully selected and prepared fish. The crispness of the nori contrasts with the delicate fish and rice, resulting in a perfect balance of textures and flavors in each bite.
The chefs serve the hand rolls to guests just seconds after they are prepared for an authentic experience where seaweed stays warm and crispy. Because we believe that hand rolls are best enjoyed just after they’re prepared, we serve them only in our restaurants. For our to-go guests, we instead offer cut rolls made with the same rice and fish as our hand rolls but with seaweed produced specifically for our cut rolls.”
Damn.
This is so good.
Not the sushi (that’s good too), but the descriptions and storytelling.
I texted my wife, Laura, a picture of the box, and she immediately was like “ooh what is that.”
I then went on to tell her the name of the restaurant, how the chef created the original hand roll, and how much I was enjoying it.
In addition to that, I mentioned something else, which is probably the most genius part:
I told Laura how they will only serve the hand rolls fresh in their restaurants, and that’s why I got the cut rolls instead. Then I said the magic words:
“So now I really want to go eat at one of their restaurants so I can try the hand rolls!”
See, that’s so brilliant…
The delivery boxes are describing something amazing and saying “you can’t have this though unless you come into the restaurant.”
To me (and I’d bet it’s the same for a lot of people), that immediately creates an urge to visit the restaurant in person.
So basically, instead of getting me as a customer once, now they’re getting me at least twice.
And realistically, if I lived near one of these places, I would absolutely order delivery regularly, especially given the presentation and experi
ence.
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I hope you can see all the lessons in here about copywriting, marketing, storytelling, pricing, positioning, and more. I could explicate all of them for you, but we’ll save that for another blog post!
– SPG
P.S. This post originally came from an email I sent to my private list. If you want to see more stuff like this from me, you can apply to join my list using this link