Category Archives: food

March 15, 2013 · 8:32 am

The Charcoal Experience

Foodie Friday Fun time! With the start of daylight saving time last weekend, my thoughts turn to a food-related topic: grilling. It’s hard to go outside in the winter to fire up the grill when it’s dark by the time you need to cook dinner. While I own a little miner’s lamp I can wear to see the grill surface in the dim light, it’s certainly not as easy as when the sun is till shining. Then there is the fact that it’s 35 degrees…

English: Preparing grill for grilling, grill w...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We have an indoor gas grill and we put it to use over the winter, but there’s nothing like grilling over hot coals. Which spurred a thought about technology, of course.

Lots of people I know own gas grills they use outdoors. There’s no question that this little bit of technology has made their lives easier, just as the high-powered vents that allow us to use our indoor gas grill do. But the technology hasn’t made the food any better. In fact, I think most things cooked on a gas grill taste flat – they lack the grilled flavor that charcoal imparts. Or worse – they have an artificial taste that comes from the gas.  Better technology but a worse experience.

Think about how that same principle translates into other things. There’s no question email has made communication easier in business but I think the “flavor” of the communication is worse. It lacks nuance and a personal touch.  Like the gas grill it’s faster, easier, and more convenient.  But better?  I don’t think so.

Getting lost in the “newness” of something can blind us to the fact that it’s delivering a lesser experience.   There’s new technology every day, it seems, and I worry that a good deal of it will just pull us further apart from reality even as it enhances our ability to communicate what’s going on around us.  The next time you’re at a concert or a school play, take note of how many people are “experiencing” the moment through a video screen instead of paying attention to the reality that’s in front of them.   They’re keeping a better record of the experience thanks to the technology but do they have a better memory?

Give me charcoal – a technology that’s been around for centuries – any time.  You?

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March 1, 2013 · 11:53 am

Mobile meals

I’m delinquent in sharing today’s bit of Foodie Friday Fun since it revolves around a study done in January.  The IAB  and Viddle looked into how people are using their mobile devices to order food and the results are instructive for most businesses, not just restaurants.

English: This is actually Tom's Restaurant, NY...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

According to the “Mealtime Goes Mobile” survey, 60% of us order takeout food or delivery once a week (yes, even those of us who love to cook sometimes can’t make the time!).  In fact, 2% identify themselves as doing so every day, although I’m sure I good portion of that involves lunch.  As one might expect, pizza, chinese food, and sandwiches and burgers head the list of the types of food ordered most often.

This is where it gets instructive   44% of people use mobile devices to check phone numbers (“mobile devices” includes tablets and we know most tablet use is in the home).  Significant numbers also use them to find locations, check menus, and to find coupons.  Obviously, incentives such as coupons are a big driver of business, but so is ease of use.  In fact, over a third expressed an interest in an app that remembered past orders.

What’s instructive is this – any restaurant that hasn’t done a few things is clearly missing out on a huge potential market.  A website not optimized for mobile is a big problem.  Since half of consumers have installed at least one restaurant app and 15% have three or more installed, investing in app development is another factor that restaurants should be planning as part of their marketing budgets.  The same points probably apply to your business, but unless you’ve taken the time to check your analytics, how would you know?  Using the segmentation ability to check bounce rates and user habits within the mobile segment and comparing it to the web segment makes sense.  Integrating non-digital behaviors with those report is possible, although harder (and a much longer explanation than you or I would like on a Friday!).

As we all know, consumer behaviors are changing a lot.  Are we changing our businesses along with them?

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February 22, 2013 · 10:06 am

Immersion Blenders

Do you own an immersion blender? They’re the Foodie Friday Fun topic this week.

This is a wand blender (also known as a stick ...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Maybe you call it a wand blender or a stick blender or maybe you call it the “boat motor” as do a few TV chefs. Whatever you call it, the tool is a sharp blade at the end of a stick that a cook uses to blend food in a pot or bowl. Soups, whipped cream, mayonnaise, and pesto are all things for which I’ve used mine.  Restaurants use much larger versions in their kitchens and they’re really useful to have in the home kitchen.

There was an article on them called “Bandages Not Included” in the NY Times two months ago.  One thing that happens fairly often in the home kitchen is that cooks try to clean food off of them while they’re still plugged in.  The blade is very sharp.  The on/off switch is under your thumb by design.  What could possibly go wrong?   While I’ve been fortunate never to have pureed a finger into a stew I was thickening, the article got me thinking about business.

A lot of firms use the business equivalent of an immersion blender: social media.  Like the stick blender, the tool seems very simple and is easy to use.  A business can also cut off a finger pretty easily.  In the last year, KitchenAid, McDonalds, StubHub and others have been in the spotlight for doing exactly that.  Personal tweets sent from a company account, commercial messages tied to trending topics without understanding why they were trending, and “set and forget” use of automated tools have caused brands massive headaches and public black eyes.

Companies perform the  social equivalent of cleaning off the blender blade without unplugging it first every day.  Simple tools often lull us into a sense of complacency and that’s dangerous whether we’re in the kitchen or on the Internet.  That’s why your business’ social media activity needs to be managed just as professionally as the rest of your business and not by an unsupervised intern or someone unfamiliar with each medium’s particular potential pitfalls.  These tools are dangerous even though they’re incredibly useful.  Like the immersion blender they can be the best way to accomplish a branding task.  Provided, of course, you do so and hang on to all your fingers.

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