Give me back my cookies!

People are creatures of habit. I have always believed that the pickiest, most particular parts of people's lives are what they eat, how they dress and how they wear their hair. It gots to be the big 3 consistent-don't mess with areas of our lives. Which is why being in the food business is challenging. So I recently lost my cookie vendor of some awesome batter.
(ok, let me put out a disclaimer: Yes, We chefs can make cookies and make them great but why not capitalize on a Brand that makes them perfect & thats all they do. We outsource this stuff otherwise we are rolling out dough at 4 in the morning. Do that once and you'll be flipping through the order guides searching for a vendor.)

So I used a replacement cookie batter, somewhat generic from another vendor.
I know, I know...You don't mess with the cookies-I found out real fast.
You see, cookies are part of the waking up in the morning routine. Got to have the same coffee, same cup, same snack in the same way. Change one part and it is impossible to handle for most people. You see this when you can look at the sleepless masses 'zombeeing' for their morning coffee and cookie. I will get the original batter back. English Bay Batter.
http://www.englishbaycookies.com/

Good thing is that I can feel confident about my English Bay Cookies. They must be good. Now I can really merchandise the product more than ever.

So then, "How do you change a product in the restaurant without all this fuss?". Very good question, very basic but believe it or not, so many chefs have no clue on how to do this. They walk in and start changing things just to change things because its how they did it before, or in school, or they just think it should be like this or that and so forth. Well, all is great for intuitiveness and iniative but in balance with the reality of a profit driven business. We'll tone down the ego, manage our pride, be humble and step back and look at the big picture on down to details. So what if we wanted to change cookies.

#1. Keep the current cookies going. Same way. Same price. Same stuff.
#2 Introduce a special, or whatever you want to call it-New Cookie!
#3 Walk & Talk it out with your customers, your guest. Listen to your
staff. Get feedback.
#4 What do you hope to achieve out of a cookie change or is there an
alternative, option or other consideration you haven't thought of.
What is the general practice in the area. "What are they doing?"
#5 So maybe you decide to keep the regular cookie, add a new one thus
increasing variety/selection and maybe even going a step further to
capture other demographics such as offering a sugar free cookie, a
'no nuts (alergy)' cookie, or even gluten free.
#6 Best case scenario, you keep your customers, build more customers,
strenghten your product line, increase profitability. It just takes
organized, thought out execution. The best changes that I have made ]
were changes that no one was aware of. Think about that.....