Tag Archives: Food

June 20, 2014 · 9:11 am

Why Cook?

Foodie Friday (finally) and this week’s food screed is about cooking. I’m always surprised that many people – younger people in particular – can’t cook.

Cooking Knifes

(Photo credit: nickwheeleroz)

Oh sure, they can heat up something in the microwave and say they’ve “cooked” supper, but since food is one of life’s necessities, one would think that everyone would take the time to learn to prepare it.  There are some basic business points in my thinking as well (you knew THAT was coming…).

I can hear the naysayers among you: “Cooking takes time and I don’t have any.”  Not true.  Once you’ve learned a few basic skills, you can have really good dishes on the table in under 30 minutes.  That’s not longer than it takes to heat a frozen meal up in the oven and while the microwave might cut that time down, there is no comparison to the quality (plus you’ll generally have some leftover for the next day).

Other reasons to learn to cook:  you know what you’re eating.  I guarantee you can pronounce the names of everything you put in a dish – read a frozen food package and see if you can say the same.  The ingredients are healthier too.  Ordering in?  Besides being more expensive than doing it yourself (even factoring in the cost of your time), you have no clue how much salt or fat was used, no clue if everything was as scrupulously clean as you would make it, and no idea if the food will arrive hot (ever had a pizza arrive with a steamed crust – yuck).  Finally, cooking is fun.  OK, maybe not so much when it doesn’t go well, but for me it’s almost a form of meditation.  It takes you away from the rest of your world and forces your focus elsewhere.  So why this rant on why you should learn to cook?

Like the non-cooks, many businesses haven’t learned some of the basic skills they need, thinking they can outsource them or buy an off-the shelf solution.  In some cases it makes sense – it’s like going out to eat every so often.But take, as an example, a web business that outsources all of its coding and design.  That firm is at the mercy of the developer. They can’t “cook” for themselves.  Obviously I’m a “dine out”solution for my clients so you know I’m a fan of looking outside for some tasks.  But mission-critical skills – which will vary by business – should be acquired and available, just like cooking.

Your take?

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June 13, 2014 · 10:13 am

Cooking Trolls.

Our Foodie Friday Fun this week deals with cooking trolls.

English: Troll Federlandese

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Of course I don’t mean actually cooking them but then again those evil creatures don’t actually exist either.  Restaurants – and every other business – have to deal with negative reviews in social and other media.  Sometimes they’re warranted and sometimes they drift over into troll-dom.  Today’s screed is about how one restaurant owner handled a troll and hopefully we can all learn a little something from his method.

As the folks at ABC reported:

After a customer posted a review on UrbanSpoon — which has since been deleted — requesting that the servers show more skin, owner Daniel McCawley took matters into his own hands.

“It was brutish. I was upset. I’m a father of a 12-year-old girl and I’ve got five sisters,” McCawley said. “The way that women are treated is pretty personal as far as I’m concerned.”

He did show more skin by offering a potato skin special. 100% of the proceeds will go directly to the West Virginia Foundation for Rape Information Services.  Clever, non-confrontational, and it generated a ton of positive buzz for his business.  That’s the right way to handle this sort of thing.  Suing the trolls (if you can find out their real identities), forcing review sites to delete the negative reviews, or responding in kind with defamatory comments about the poster do nothing but make you appear small.  My lawyer friends would tell you that it also opens you up to a series of legal issues when you start making allegations.

We forget sometime that if we serve 10,000 people and make 99.99% of them happy, there is still one unhappy customer.  In fact, some people who post these reviews had a great experience but, like the idiot above, find something about which to complain.  You can ignore it (which is probably what I would have done in this case) or use it to do something smart to cook the troll (which is where the owner proves he’s smarter than me!) or choose to jump down into the mud with them.  Your call.

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June 6, 2014 · 8:41 am

Meatballs

For our Foodie Friday Fun I’d like to challenge you.

A batch of Danish meatballs, also known as &qu...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Name a culture that doesn’t have a meatball on the menu. Chinese? Got a lot of them. German? Not even Klopse (see what I did there?). No, they’re pretty common everywhere, and why not? They’re a wonderful way to stretch meat as well as to make use of the scraps left when trimming larger cuts.

In most cultures, the meat is ground or finely chopped and some sort of panade – a moistened mass of bread – or breadcrumbs are added both for moisture and lightness.  The herbs and other seasonings are added, as is a binder such as egg.  The mixture is rolled into balls and then fried, steamed, boiled, or cooked in some combination of those methods.  Of course meat is optional.  Once can make excellent meatballs with beans and vegetables and bind them with soaked ground flax-seed in place of eggs to keep them vegan.  What does this have to do with business?

A lot.  First, meatballs are the common food across cultures.  NYC is the crossroads of the world.  Is it a coincidence that a place called The Meatball Shop has done really well here?  If I’m creating a product that I want to sell around the world, or at least to a diverse customer base, I look to the ubiquity of the meatball as a guide.  What do this culture’s meatballs have to do with other with respect to methods and materials?  How can that guide me from a product and marketing perspective (I’m looking for affinities here, not for the types of spice they prefer.  Are they more in tune with, say, England than with Denmark?).

Next, I look to the meatball to remind me that there is no one way to do anything.  Most meatballs are relatively simple although they’re equally simple to screw up by making them too dry or under-seasoned.  Keeping things simple prevents errors, as does clean instruction and detailed recipes.  That said, allowing people to do things their way and to build a better ball can move the business forward.  Embrace their mistakes and help them feel free to make them.

Finally, meatballs can be a bonus product created from the detritus of the main dish.  What can be made from the by-products of what you do every day?

Amazing what we can learn from something so simple, isn’t it?

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