For our Foodie Friday Fun today I want to share an article about wooden spoons from Fine Cooking magazine.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Really edgy, I know, but since we discussed a simple kitchen implement that can kill you yesterday I thought today we’d lighten up. The article reviews why a lot of chefs prefer wooden spoons in their kitchens and it got me thinking about business at the same time.
These are the main reasons chefs like them:
- It’s strong – it can stir thick things without breaking
- It’s soft – it’s not going to scratch the finish of your cookware;
- It’s insulated
- It has a high heat tolerance
- It’s wood – it looks nice, and also that it feels nice in the hand
I’d add it’s a natural material although obviously it’s pretty old – probably among the first materials used to make cooking tools. Which is the business point.
There’s a tendency to throw away older tools and technologies just because they’re old (let’s include tossing some older people in that thinking too). Often overlooked is that these older solutions might have some significant advantages over newer inventions. Plastic spoons break or melt even though they’re easier to clean and might release chemicals into your food. Metal spoons can scratch your pans and need a lot of insulation – leave one in a pot sometime and then pick it up – ouch.
Many businesses get caught up in the rush to the latest shiny object – social media, mobile apps – without thinking about their business goals or the ability of the new thing to do the job without causing other problems. They toss away the perfectly good wooden spoons they’ve been using only to find that their cooking – branding, marketing – suffers.
We’ve got a lot of wooden spoons along here in the kitchen along with metal, plastic, and silicone. We also have a dozen different types of knife and various sizes and shapes of pots and pans. Some are pretty old and some we’ve bought in the last year. We try to use the one that’s best suited for the task. That’s how I approach business too – figure out the business objective and work with the tools best suited to accomplish that goal.
Make sense?
Consult Keith 