Foodie Friday, and our topic today is bacon. I’d encourage vegetarians and vegans to come back Monday because this is about to cause you to sound like Colonel Kurtz: “the horror, the horror…”
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I was making supper last night, and as I was rummaging through the fridge I noticed an abundance of bacon. That’s neither unusual for me nor bad, but I guess these unopened packs had been sitting around for a while and the expiration dates were approaching. I had planned some shrimp and mushrooms but good cooking is nothing if not adjusting on the fly, so the shrimp were dry-brined and wrapped in bacon. The mushrooms became stuffed with a cheese and bacon mixture. What’s one to do when he finds a pile of cheese and bacon left? Poppers, of course, since there were some jalapeños sitting in the veggie drawer (yes, I do have one of those).
Somehow, two pounds of bacon got used up. The shrimp and mushrooms, which would have been fine regardless, were way better because of the bacon. It reminded me of the time my crew went to a rodizio for lunch and were stuffed to the gills on meat when yet another server came by. We asked what he had – “turkey.” No takers. “Wrapped in bacon.” Everyone had some.
What does this have to do with business? Simple. What’s your bacon? What are you adding to everything you do to make it even better? Where is the value-added that represents you going the extra mile and doing something special? Wired and Food Network did a little study in which they
compared the ratings of all the recipes that fit a certain description-—sandwiches, for example. Then, we calculated the average rating for those foods if they did not include the word “bacon.” We ran the numbers again using only recipes that did include bacon. The results were pretty great. Of all the foods we analyzed, bacon lends the most improvement to sandwiches.
The addition of that one special thing made the reviewers feel more positively about the product. So what’s your bacon?
Consult Keith 