Tag Archives: food

Mates Rates – the fairest deal in the world

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Is everyone familiar with the term ‘mates rates’?  Its the idea that you give your friends a special deal on whatever you are selling/service you are providing because they are your mate (colloquial for friend).

I think that on the surface there is a lot of positive feeling behind this concept, the idea that you will give someone a really good deal because of your friendship – because you always want to help out your friends right?  and thats a good thing.

I’d like to take a little bit of a deeper look at this idea though and how it fits in with the Give Freely Receive Freely Concept.

Who is my friend?

How do we decide who our friends are, or who to be friendly to?  Personally I prefer to be friends and friendly with everyone.  If I truly am friends with everyone, how then do I choose who to give a ‘mates rates’ deal to?  Shouldn’t I be giving mates rates, or a great deal to everyone?

This reminds me of something that happened to me awhile ago.  I went to a friends shop (where I had visited him a number of times before), I chatted for a bit and then told him I had come to check out one of his products I was interested in buying.  There was an instant subtle change to our interaction.  It was obvious to me that in that moment in his eyes I went from being a friend to being a customer and he changed into a salesman.  He was trying to make a sale and get money from me.  I did end up buying something from him, but the whole thing made me feel a bit uncomfortable and our relationship has always seemed a bit different since then.

I don’t hold it against him, he was just trying to run his business the best way he knew how and this included him introducing an element of distance and coldness between him and a customer so that he can make the money he needs.  But isn’t there a better way, a way that would allow him to interact with friends and customers in the same warm way? (and have his friends as customers and customers as friends).

Business Owners Are Always Wealthy

I think part of the problem is entrenched in the idea that the business owner is always in a position to discount, and a true friend should get a deal that means the business owner is making no or very little money from them.

Anyone who has owned a business will tell you that they are not always able to discount.  There are many costs in running a business that are not obvious to an outsider or someone who has not run a similar business.  You can only run a business at break even or a loss for so long before you are no longer able to operate.  And if you were to give everyone such a deep discount that you don’t make money off them how would you pay your expenses?  how would you be able to feed yourself and your family?

I think this is one reason why business people feel the need to create distance between themselves and customers.  They feel uncomfortable profiting from friends, so they create a distinction between friends and customers so that they can profit and have the money they need to run their business and live.  In fact I think this affects all of us to some extent in our dealings with money, even with friends and family (theres even research to back this up, I mentioned it in a previous blog post here).

The Less Expressed Side of Mates Rates

I think the solution comes in the other less expressed side of the mates rates equations. I had never heard this other side of the equation until a few years ago.  It was after I had written and published my first book (you can see it here 🙂 ).  A friend said that he would like to buy a copy, and during that conversation he told me that “you don’t support a brother by asking for a discount, you support a brother by paying full price”.  He did buy a copy of my book, and he did pay full price – which I appreciated, but I think I appreciated even more this new idea he gave me in that conversation.  The idea that it is not always about getting a cheaper price because you are a friend, but sometimes the effect of the friendship flows the other way in paying full price because the buyer wants to support a friend.

Give Freely Receive Freely

I think that GFRF elegantly combines both sides of the ‘mates rates’ equation.  If a friend does not have a lot of money or other resources, the business owner gives it to them at a rate they can afford (decided by them).  On the other hand if the friend has plenty of money or other resources they can pay the business owner what would be “full price” or even more if they choose to support them in their efforts.  Price ceases to be a barrier and there is no need to create emotional distance between you and your customers.  Everyone becomes your ‘mate’, as you are treating each other the way a true friend would.

I know that for me, the relationship I have with customers and clients that pay on a GFRF basis feels different than the relationship I have with customers and clients that pay on a fixed price basis.  It is a closer and friendlier relationship.  I like this way of dealing with people better.  As I’ve mentioned before in this blog, I would like to have all my business dealings with people on this basis, I’m just figuring out how to do it as the idea is unusual for most people.  I am trying to figure out how to do it in step by step way so people can get used to it and so that my business will not collapse due to unfamiliarity or other reasons – as that wouldn’t help anyone.

Already I offer quite a lot of what I do on this basis, but I have quite a way to go before offering everything this way.  Its been an interesting process so far.  I have learned a lot, and I know that there is still a huge amount to learn yet.  I hope you’ll continue to follow this blog as I write about my experiences along the way.

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On a side note related to this, I recently went to a vegetarian food outlet (the term restaurant would probably be a bit of a stretch in this case) and really enjoyed the food, so much so that I am already planning on going back there.  Well this morning in my email was a deal for meals at this place at less than half price.

My first instinct was to buy several of these deals to use with my friends.  But as I thought about it more, I didn’t really feel good about that.  I know how these deal sites work – the food outlet would end up receiving even less than the already extremely cheap deal.  Even at half price it would still be too cheap, they would probably be giving me my meal at a loss to them.

I was already planning on going back there… and after thinking about it, I would rather pay full price.  I don’t know them personally as a ‘friend’ but I like what they are doing and would rather support that by paying a fair amount for my meal.  I would like even more to be able to pay on a Give Freely Receive Freely basis… but theres not that many of us operating this way yet.  I’m not sure how much I would pay when left to figure out the value for myself, but I would try to make sure it was fair and reflected my appreciation of what they are doing.

 

China – no fixed price

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I have just got back from my trip to China.  My purpose in going was mainly for my kung fu and qigong teaching, to check out the schools there, gain ideas and inspiration, and prepare for when groups from my school may make trips there.  But I also found that I had a lot of experiences and saw a lot of things that gave me food for thought about the ‘give freely receive freely’ concept.

The Great Wall of China

One thing that was particularly relevant was that in China there is no fixed price on almost anything.  Almost everything is negotiable and the locals expect there to be some haggling before a final price is established at which an exchange will take place.  At one of the major markets the vendors will typically ask in the region of 10 times what they will actually accept for what they are selling.  Then a drawn out negotiation begins during which they will act like whatever price you suggest is ridiculous, tell you how other people they would normally quote a higher price for but for you they quoted a reasonable price, they will try and show you inferior products and suggest that maybe you could buy one of them instead, they will suggest a price not much lower than they initially offered, you walk away and then they call after you with a better price, they may act sad, angry etc and then eventually you come to a price you a both happy with.

Inside a market in Shanghai

The process can be entertaining I suppose, but also takes quite a bit of time.  On the two occasions when I tried to shorten the process and get to a price I was happy with faster (and KNEW I could get from experience with other stallholders), they wouldn’t sell to me.  It seems like in order to get a reasonable price I HAD to go through the charade, even though getting to a price we both new was reasonable faster would have saved both of us a lot of time and energy.  After awhile I began to avoid the markets because I didn’t want to put so much time and effort into a simple transaction, although I suppose I would still go there if there was something I really needed.

But it doesn’t stop there, even in the big flash department stores with marked prices on everything, apparently things are still negotiable.  It became very difficult to know what price to really expect for things.

The bright lights of East Nanjing Road, lots of upmarket big brand shopping.

The one exception was food.  I had a long conversation about this with a Chinese lady who  made sure to let me know that I should negotiate on absolutely EVERYTHING in China with the only exception being food, for food the price was the price.  She probably wasn’t aware that there was a slight proviso to that, the price is the price as long as you are CHINESE.  Probably 90% of the time or more I think the people selling me food just charged me the same price as they would anyone else, but there were a couple of occasions at fruit shops where I was charged far more than I should have been.  At one of these I know I was charged 10 times the price of a local, because I saw what a local was charged for the same items.  I could have entered into negotiations at this point to get a better price, but was quite bemused by the whole thing at the time so just paid the money and left.  But while I may have had more money than some of the locals, I certainly did not have enough that I would have been able to afford that price for food on a regular basis, so if I had been staying in the area I never would have bought from that shop again.

A fruit and vegetable stall at Deng Feng (not one of the ones I was ripped off at)

So how does this all tie in to the ‘give freely, receive freely’ concept?  Well for a start in many ways I liked there not being a fixed price, it provided a mechanism by which those with more could pay more and those with less could pay less.  A lot of the time I am sure that even with some hard bargaining I still paid considerably more than a local would, and I don’t mind that, because it was a price I could afford and was happy with.  The bargaining to reach a price though became tedious and time consuming.  So much energy was put into the transaction by both sides to make sure they got as much (or gave as little) as possible in the deal.  Surely we all would be better off if this energy was put into other productive things.  With give freely receive freely, no energy is expended on negotiation, meaning we all have more time and energy for the things we really want and need in life.

It is very hard for us to know the circumstances of everyone we deal with.  Sometimes the initial price quoted by a vendor would be so high it seemed ridiculous even to a westerner used to paying more in their home country.  They really seemed to have little conception of what would seem like a reasonable price to us.  On the other hand, for a foreigner it was very hard to tell where the true local price point was, because many things were so cheap that you could pay two or three times what a local would and still feel like you got a pretty good price.  Using a give freely receive freely approach means that we do not judge the circumstances of another but let them give according to what they can.  I wonder how some of the stall holders might have fared under such a system.  I know there were times when I would have gladly paid more for something, but the whole mindset of bargaining sets you up to try and get as low a price as you possibly can (or have the time and patience to bargain for).

I also respected the fact that for food at least the price was usually the price.  I think there is a basic human understanding  that there are certain things we need to survive so at least for those things we should deal fairly with each other.  While it was possible to pay a lot for food in China, there seemed to always be very cheap options as well, even in the big cities, that I think even the poor would have been able to afford.  For the most part I think I was treated decently by the people selling food in China, and I appreciated that.  Maybe the exceptions with the fruit could be due to fruit being viewed as a luxury?  I’m not sure about that.

Yummy noodles in Deng Feng, apparently the Henan province noodles are quite famous.

When we deal unfairly with someone in our community, it may make us a short term profit, but ultimately in the long run do us harm.  In the case of the fruit stands that charged excessively for what I bought from them, they would have really lost out if I had stayed in the area.  I eat quite a lot of fruit, but having been ripped of once, I would not go back to that shop, I would find somewhere that charged me fairly and they would get all my business.  I am sure this also has wider implications that will affect those involved even if they manage to only overcharge those who would not be returning to their shop anyway.  The world is all interconnected and our actions tend to have ripple effects.  Others would observe how the shop owner treated foreigners, and this in turn would shape their view of the shop owner and how they interact with them, I’m sure in the end there would be some effect even if not immediately – a bit like the concept of karma.

So all up China was an interesting and thought provoking experience.  There were many other things I saw or experienced while I was there that have a bearing on ‘give freely, receive freely’ too, but I think I will write about those more when I get to writing about various specific topics.