Category Archives: food

October 4, 2013 · 10:23 am

The Name On The Door

Today’s Foodie Friday Fun is about the business side of food, a restaurant, so if you’re here today for cooking tips I apologize. You probably know chef Gordon Ramsay from his incessant TV appearances and, if so, you’re aware of his obsession with quality and high standards. What’s happened here in New York to his Gordon Ramsay at The London restaurant is a great lesson for any business.

Ramsay at BBC Gardeners' World Live 2008

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The restaurant opened in 2006 and soon thereafter won two Michelin stars. For any of you non-foodies, suffice it to say that there are currently only 14 places in NY that are two or three stars – they’re hard to win.  Unlike the Zagat ratings, these are all done by professional inspectors who are totally anonymous.  That was 2008.  In 2009 Ramsay sold the restaurant to the hotel (he needed the money – that’s another story) and licensed his name as part of the deal.

Fast forward.  The new guide came out and both stars are gone.  In a year (he had the two stars last year).  That’s pretty unheard of and shows a significant decline in quality and standards.  The chef’s response (via Eater)?

“Gordon Ramsay is not involved in the day-to-day running of the restaurants or kitchens, as this is a licensing agreement, but is in communication regarding updates and changes at the restaurant.”

In other words, although my name is on the door I’m not involved.   We heard something similar out of Donald Trump when the Trump casinos went bankrupt (how the heck do you lose money running a casino?!?!):

“Other than the fact that it has my name on it – which I’m not thrilled about – I have nothing to do with the company.”

I’ve done licensing agreements and one thing that is always a part of them are the product standards.  Since it’s your name, you always have the right to examine the product and if it’s not up to your standards, to demand that it’s fixed or not sold.  You might shrug and say well, that’s the restaurant business but it’s your business as well.  If the quality of whatever product or service you’re providing – even through a third party – isn’t up to snuff, it’s your name and reputation, not the third party’s.  Given that many of Ramsay’s other places – where he is more hands-on apparently – have held on to their stars – his place in London has three! – it’s clearly not that the chef has lost his touch.  It that he was out of touch with the New York place.

If your name is on the product, you need to be involved and maintain the standards that warranted your name on it in the first place.  When people knock on your door, they see you, not the landlord, not the builder, not the cleaning crew, not even the people who actually do the work.  You.  I’m all for meeting the customer expectations that my name engenders.  Aren’t we all?

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September 27, 2013 · 9:02 am

Fooled Again

Foodie Friday! The subject today isn’t actually food itself but the places in which it’s served. You probably how competitive the restaurant space is – just think about how hard it is for you to decide where to go eat when you go out. Which cuisine? How far to go? Is this new place any good? We’ve all been there.
More often than not these days, people turn to review sites such as Yelp for information.

English: 0

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s not news to any of us that some of the reviews on Yelp (and other review sites) are fake. Great ones may have been posted by the restaurant, bad ones could come from a competitor. Yelp has an algorithm that is supposed to spot and eliminate those issues to a great extent.  The folks at Harvard B-School released a study about it.  What they found is interesting but not terribly surprising:

First, roughly 16 percent of restaurant reviews on Yelp are identified as fraudulent, and tend to be more extreme (favorable or unfavorable) than other reviews. Second, a restaurant is more likely to commit review fraud when its reputation is weak, i.e., when it has few reviews, or it has recently received bad reviews. Third, chain restaurants – which benefit  less from Yelp – are also less likely to commit review fraud. Fourth, when restaurants face increased competition, they become more likely to leave unfavorable reviews for competitors. Taken in aggregate, these findings highlight the extent of review fraud and suggest that a business’s decision to commit review fraud respond to competition and reputation incentives rather than simply the restaurant’s ethics.

They looked at 316,415 reviews of 3,625 restaurants so it’s not a small study. That said, this doesn’t even address an individual who had a nice meal with good service but maybe had a run in with another customer and decides to blame the restaurant with an inaccurate review – I’d call that just as fake as the others.

The NY Attorney General cracked down on businesses that were writing fake reviews.  It’s a problem for anyone who relies on the internet for research.  So don’t.

What?

Yes.  I wrote that.  Instead, use the web to find out about available options and use trusted sites with paid, professional reviewers.  Then put down the device and ask a friend or coworker or family member.  There’s an expression in computing – GIGO – garbage in, garbage out.  That’s what many review sites are like despite their best efforts (and I mean that they try to weed out fake stuff sincerely).  Some of it is the blind leading the rest of us – who knows how educated and daring the palates are of most amateurs?  A bunch of it is fraud.  The problem is we don’t know which is which.

Or maybe we just need not to be afraid to be “wrong” about the choices we make and go and enjoy an evening out with someone?

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September 20, 2013 · 8:35 am

Skirt Steak

It’s Foodie Friday and I want to blog a bit about skirt steak.

English: uploaded for an infobox

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m a big fan of it and have been for a very long time. So long, in fact, that I remember when it was hard to find because it was so inexpensive and so underused that most butchers put it in with the trimmings from other cuts to make ground beef. Then again, many of them took the skirt steak home for supper which is how it came to be known as a butcher’s cut. Other steaks of which you might be aware – the hanger steak, the tri-tip, and flap meat (which they sell as sirloin tip here) used to be hard to find and very inexpensive.

Then the fajita craze hit. Skirt steak – the best cut of meat for fajitas – became more in demand.  What was once a downright cheap, delicious protein became as expensive as all but the high-end steaks such as porterhouse and rib eye.  While it remains so, one other thing has happened.  There are two parts to the part of the steer that’s skirt steak (the plate).  One (the outside plate) was rarely sold since it’s chewier and less tasty.  With the increase in demand, suddenly stores would have sales of skirt that was the lesser cut, confusing consumers and offering a lesser experience.  Consumers moved on.

It’s happened with fish too, as we can see with the monkfish.  Once a “trash fish” and known as the poor man’s lobster, it grew popular because it was tasty and inexpensive.  That led to it becoming very expensive and overfished.  In some cases, other fish were sold as monk that weren’t.  Consumers moved on.

The business point is pretty simple.  People are drawn to high-quality, low-cost products, whether they’re proteins or electronics or services.  The ebb and flow of the market will make some price increases happen and demand will support that up to a point.  What the market won’t support is a changed, lesser product or a price point that makes other products viable options.  I’d rather eat a porterhouse that’s on sale for what it costs for skirt, as an example.

We need to be cognizant of why people came to our products in the first place and not undercut those fundamental reasons.  That’s business suicide.  Thoughts?

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