Cora’s is a most-of-the-day breakfast restaurant. The logo is a hand-drawn smiling sun. If you go to Cora’s during peak dining time, there are lineups. If you go a half hour before closing on Sunday, it’s still busy. If you go half an hour before closing during the week, there are lots of empty tables, but the covered dish of complimentary fudge near the cash register looks like a pack of grizzly bears went through it.

Cora’s has simple decor. There are a couple of rows of booths and a few rows of plain wooden tables. The kitchen runs most of the length of the space, which is longer than it is wide. The place is spotless. The tables are bussed quickly and efficiently. The walls are decorated with groovy hand-drawn pictures of some of the menu items, which mirrors the style of the menu. The service is fast, the coffee is hot, and the food is pretty darn good.

I can’t say the food  is extraordinary, because I’ve been spoiled by farmers’ market gourmet sausages (meat and spices with no filler) and made-from-scratch Hollandaise sauce. That kind of food comes with a longer wait time and higher price, and Cora’s doesn’t pretend to be a gourmet restaurant. I get the sausages and Hollandaise I expect from a place that charges about $10 to $15 per entree.

One of the things I like best is the food that lands in front of me bears a striking resemblance to the picture on the menu. There’s no bait and switch, what you get is what you expect. In other words, Cora’s keeps her promise.

These two photos, by the way, are used with the gracious permission of Sharon Yeo. Sharon has a great blog called Only Here for the Food. She wrote about her own experience at Cora’s a few weeks ago. I found her blog as I was looking at restaurant reviews while preparing this post. There are more pictures there, including a couple of the restaurant interior. If you like food in general, I highly recommend you take a look at Sharon’s blog. Her photographs alone are worth the visit.

So let’s talk about the brand exercise. Wait—let me back up one step. When I say, “brand,” do you immediately think of something slick and corporate, like Apple Computer or Volkswagen? If that word is a stumbling block, you can replace it with “style” or “business identity” if that helps you think of the exercise in terms of small businesses or solo endeavours. Marketing uber-meister Seth Godin defines a brand as “[Prediction of what to expect] times [emotional power of that expectation].” That definition can be applied to businesses of all shapes and sizes.

Prediction and expectation produced a couple of interesting comments on part one of our virtual field trip. Cora’s website doesn’t quite measure up to the in-person experience. The right elements are there, but the site could use a little polish (this isn’t wildly surprising—there are a whole lot of businesses that stumble when it comes to their websites). The drawings turned a couple of people off, but when you’re in the restaurant itself, they make sense. The atmosphere is something of a cross between an old-fashioned diner and, well, your Aunt Cora’s kitchen. The style of the menu is homemade. The style of the food is homemade—it’s comfort food. Unlike the other breakfast places I’ve visited, Cora’s serves up fresh fruit with most of the dishes. It’s presented well, and you have a sense that the kitchen staff care about it. Those hand-drawn pictures remind you there’s a real person behind the business who loves what she does.

Was it fair to ask you to analyze the brand based solely on the website? Given the criteria-the total experience a customer has with a business, product or service—you might say no. But if you haven’t been to Cora’s in person, your total experience is the website.

Which is exactly what happens to your audience when they visit you online.

Wherever we go, we take our expectations, preconceptions, and personal preferences along for the ride. If you’re of the opinion that branding is for big business and better left for corporate types, this exercise might cause you to reconsider. It’s well worth spending some time thinking about how you introduce yourself to your prospective customers and how you set and meet their expectations.

If you feel overwhelmed by the idea of developing your own brand (or style, or business identity), consider Cora’s. It isn’t the best restaurant on the planet. It’s not trying to be. The goal is to be the best breakfast place in its niche—geographically as well as price-wise. Cora’s serves up great food in a cheerful atmosphere at a reasonable price. She sets herself apart with her personal style and interesting menu items (it’s worth noting the French Canadian cultural influence in the food and graphic design). The brand isn’t slick and corporate. She simply shows you what she does and how she does it, and keeps her promise.

So was that an eye-opener? Has your opinion of Cora’s changed? Did you come up with questions about branding? Are you looking at your own brand with a more objective mindset? What’s your favourite breakfast eatery?