Category Archives: food

April 22, 2016 · 11:58 am

Box Wine

Foodie Friday, and this week our focus is on wine. Like many of you, I enjoy a glass or two of wine with dinner. Over time, that can add up in terms of keeping the cellar stocked, so I try to find inexpensive, well-made bottles. I’ve found it’s not hard to find quite a few that retail for under $12. Some of the better wine I’ve been drinking lately actually doesn’t come in a bottle at all – it comes in a box.

This image shows a red wine glass.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you’ve never tried box wine, you’re not alone. Box wine represents less than 5% of all wine sold here in the USA. Compare that to 20% in Europe and nearly half in Austrailia. What do they know that we don’t? Maybe that each box is generally the equivalent of 4 bottles and it will stay fresh for 3-4 weeks after you open it due to the vacuum sealed bags that are in each box. Unless you drink a typical bottle in a day or two, it oxidizes and the taste can become funky, no matter how well you reseal it.  But there is a broader business lesson here as well.

Box wine is a win-win for both the wineries and the consumer. The numbers I can find say that the cost to produce the box is less than the equivalent 4 bottles and the carbon footprint is less than half. It is way more convenient (try to carry 8 bottles vs. 2 boxes to your car).  Obviously, it moves more wine while providing a great value.  Why hasn’t it caught on here?  Maybe because some producers focus on making the wine as cheap as possible which often results in an inferior product.  As a great article from Food52 said on the topic:

In the U.S., boxed wine is plagued by associations with Franzia and college drinking games; when the technology first came out, cheap brands seized upon the budget vessel and filled it with contents that fully deserved the terrible reputation they gained. And the reputation has stuck.

We all need to think about the “bad actors” in our business segment.  How are they screwing it up for the rest of us?  Sure, it’s easy to say “well, they make the rest of us look good by comparison,” but the reality is that a significant percentage of consumers paint with a very wide brush.  While I think we all know great, honest lawyers, auto mechanics, advertising professionals, etc, those businesses have terrible reputations.

Consumers now assume box wine is low quality and won’t buy it, and because they won’t buy it, producers hesitate to make it.  It’s too bad that what is an obvious win-win becomes everyone’s loss due to a few bad actors.

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April 15, 2016 · 9:09 am

Mirror, Mirror

This Foodie Friday let’s take a good look in the mirror.  What follows is a sad look at some of the deceptive business practices discovered by investigative reporters in two cities.  It might be easy to write them off as some aberrant behavior on the part of a badly-run business except that the investigations found that the practices were widespread.  One can only wonder if rather than being deviant behavior these practices are the norm, and if they’re occurring in your town.  There is a broader business point as well. 

The first of these stories came out of San Diego last summer. You can read the entire article here, which describes how many chefs in the “farm to table” movement are deceiving customers:

Like any good movement, farm-to-table has now been severely co-opted. The stories of restaurants deceiving their customers—or flat-out lying to them—have increased. Multiple San Diego restaurants claim to serve Respected Local, Organic, Sustainable Farm X when in fact they’re serving nameless commodity produce that could be from Chile, for all they know.

Call it farm-to-fable.

So the chefs claim to be using locally-sourced, organic ingredients but are using the same jetted-in, pesticide-laden stuff as your local diner.  One can only wonder how their customers, who pay a premium for these ingredients and to protect their health, felt when they read this.  It is happening in Tampa too, as this piece from the Tampa Bay Times found.  They also explained the rationale behind the deception:

People want “local,” and they’re willing to pay. Local promises food that is fresher and tastes better; it means better food safety; it yields a smaller carbon footprint while preserving genetic diversity; it builds community.

Scummy? You bet.  I’d call it fraud, and one can only hope that each and every place named in these two pieces is out of business shortly.  But as I started today’s screed: we should each look in the mirror.  What are we doing that is at best a bit of hyperbole in our marketing, a little white lie that attracts customers or at worst outright fraud as committed by these restaurants?  What do we tell our customers and is it really what we’re giving them?  Do we use words like “unique” or “hand-made” when our product is neither?

It might be farm-to-fable in the food business but just maybe there is a similar tale being told in yours?

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April 8, 2016 · 9:42 am

Waste Not

Foodie Friday, and the topic this week is a better bottom line. I went out for breakfast this morning. As I ordered, the server asked me if cinnamon toast was OK. I replied that I didn’t care for any toast at all, thanks. When my breakfast showed up a few minutes later, the toast was parked right on the plate along with some apple butter. I’m sure it would have been delicious but it went uneaten.

Toast, toasted

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The obvious business point is that food – and therefore margin – was wasted. No business can afford to throw resources away. There are some less obvious points as well. I looked at the check – there was no notation on it to hold the toast, so clearly the blame lies with the server and not with the kitchen. Was the server paying attention? What if the customer had expressed a concern about a food allergy and that concern wasn’t passed along to the kitchen?  While my server was quite attentive, refilling the coffee as it disappeared and providing milk as requested instead of the prepackaged cream, she didn’t handle the single most important part of her job – getting the order right.

I don’t mean to blow what is a relatively minor error into an indictment of this server.  I do want to use it as an example of how minor errors can have an impact on the bottom line if they persist.  Wasted resources, inattentive sales reps, and unhappy customers are the kiss of death in any business.  Who knows how many other orders of toast or grits or potatoes went out of the kitchen, only to come back untouched and tossed.  How often does something similar happen in your business?

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