Harder to delight once they expect it

There is a small breakfast place in Dubai that people used to find by accident. The pancakes were unusually good, the owner came out to ask how they were, and the surprise of it was half of what people took home. They told friends because nobody had warned them.

Now everyone has been warned. There is a queue on weekend mornings, a dozen videos of the same stack, and a reputation that walks through the door before the customer does.

Expectation and delight pull against each other. Set expectations too low and nobody comes; there is never a chance to please anyone. Set them high enough and the room for surprise shrinks to nothing. The pancakes are as good as they ever were. They are now exactly as good as promised, which is a different feeling.

This is the odd cost of doing well. The more people hear about you, the harder it becomes to give them something they did not see coming. Success raises the floor, and delight lives above it.

Something else often moves in to fill the gap. People who have waited forty minutes are reluctant to say it was only fine. They have spent the morning, paid the bill, posted the photograph. So they announce that it was wonderful, partly to themselves, and partly because it seems to be what one is supposed to say. That is not delight. It is people protecting their own decision.

From the outside the two look identical, and a business can live on the second kind for a long while without noticing the first has gone.