Tag Archives: Food industry

June 29, 2018 · 9:50 am

Eating At Mom’s

This Foodie Friday, I’d like you to think of your favorite restaurants. How many of them are national chains and how many of them are family-owned? How many of them serve “fancy” food and how many of them serve great versions of something you might find on your grandmother’s table? I’m willing to bet that most of your favorites are local and cook what your Italian or Chinese or Jewish grandmother might make.

Independent restaurants are growing twice as fast as chains, and there are reasons for this, according to Pentallect a research firm. Consumers rate independent restaurants as more superior on 12 of 15 attributes studied. Consumers see the independents as sharing consumers’ values and offering quality food and better service. They’re special, community-oriented and offering personalized service.

There’s a breakfast joint I go to. It’s a little cafe in the small downtown area here. Yes, there are franchised diners, Waffle Houses, and the breakfast offerings of many chains around, but you’ll find me eating at this place for precisely the reasons found in the study. Two visits and from then on I’ve been greeted as if I’ve lived here forever. I’m asked about my golf game and Michigan Football. The food is quite good but not at all fancy. What does this have to do with your business?

Unless they’re going out for a big, fancy meal, I think people like to feel as if they’re eating at Mom’s. It’s nice when you’re traveling that you can count on a chain to offer you exactly the same experience no matter what but the food is usually bland, a dumbed-down example of the good stuff. Pastrami at Subway? No thanks. You need to convey both the authenticity and good feeling one gets when pulling up a chair at a great local joint. It’s not fancy, it’s just good. You’re welcomed as family and not with some script developed back at corporate. Let your customers take their time. I find I’m rarely rushed at a local place while the chains are focused on “turns.” Would Mom kick you away from the table?

How does your business make customers feel like family? How are your products different from what the big guys offer? How are they better? Those are the things that I’ll bet make the local joint you thought of when I asked the question your favorite. How can you be that for your customers?

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June 22, 2018 · 9:38 am

Old Bay Bacon

It’s Foodie Friday! A friend of mine made some bacon a while back that might have been the best bacon I’ve ever had. It wasn’t so much that it was a nice thick cut nor that it had been perfectly cooked although both were true. Something had been added to the bacon that enhanced its overall porkiness (bacon fans know what I mean) and threw in some extra flavors for good measure. I was smitten.

I asked what was done and the answer was Old Bay. Yes, that Old Bay, the one you have hiding in the back of your spice rack to add to the shrimp and crabs you never quite get around to boiling. While the chef used the same technique I do for bacon (400-degree oven, bacon on a sheet pan for 20 minutes or so, maybe on a rack if you’re feeling ambitious about clean-up), they had sprinkled the raw bacon with Old Bay. It was transformative.

You might not be familiar with Old Bay if you don’t live here in the eastern U.S. It’s a spice blend long associated with Baltimore. Invented in 1940 by a German immigrant fleeing the Nazis, it became ubiquitous in the Chesapeake area and is one of my favorite spice blends. Celery salt, mustard, pepper, bay leaves, cloves, pimento, ginger, mace, cardamom, cinnamon, and paprika – 18 spices in all – make up this magic dust.

There’s a business point or two to be made here. First, we can’t be afraid to try new uses for old products or people. I would never have thought to put Old Bay on bacon but it’s magic. Maybe you haven’t asked a senior member of your staff to do UX testing on your new digital presence, but why wouldn’t you? If someone who, in theory, is less adept at the digital world can appreciate what you’ve done, odds are that your real target will like it as well. Or take an old product like a tape that was invented to keep ammo cases dry, change the color, and voila! Duct tape. Or maybe a heart medicine that had an unusual side effect in many men and suddenly, Viagra.

Second, to my knowledge, Old Bay’s recipe has never been changed. There’s always a tendency out there to tinker with successful products through line extensions or even wholesale revamps of the product. Resist it. Look at Craig’s List – it’s still pretty much the same as it was when it launched 23 years ago. No bells and whistles, no streaming video, just classifieds and a whole lot of success. Create new things but don’t dilute the brand and don’t ever jeopardize the cash cow. There is Old Bay flavoring in many products, but the core product – the spice blend – has never changed.

Sprinkle a little Old Bay on something – bacon, a Bloody Mary, popcorn, almost anything – and remind yourself that greatness can endure even as we find new ways to incorporate it into our businesses.

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June 8, 2018 · 11:02 am

Bourdain

This is a tough way to end our week with a food-related post here on Foodie Friday. As you’ve probably heard by now, Anthony Bourdain committed suicide in his Paris hotel room yesterday. For those of us who loved his use of food as a way to explore and understand this world of ours, it’s a massive loss. Sure, there are other programs that attempt to do what he did, but none as literate nor as beautifully executed.

The question to which we’ll never have an answer is “why.” Here is a person who seemingly “had it all” despite rough patches in his life: drug addiction and failed marriages among them. His successes should have outweighed his failures and yet something inside him made him end it all.

I’ve written before on suicide. Back in 2015, a friend of mine killed himself. His life had spiraled downhill physically, financially, and personally. It was a lot easier to grasp why he did what he did than it is with Bourdain. In that post, I quoted something I had written 2 years prior and I want to state it again:

We all know a person who displays symptoms of things not being right in their lives. Those symptoms could come in the form of substance abuse or a big weight gain. Maybe their personality has changed – gone from light to dark. If you care about that person, you probably think about a way to say something that asks about what’s going on. It’s hard – people have feelings, after all and they are probably just as aware as you are of what they’re doing. Probably more so.  The ensuing discussion can be hard for both of you.  Sometimes it can derail a friendship.  More often, it begins a healing process, but only if you care enough to say something.

I don’t know if those closest to Tony knew he had a darkness overcoming his light. Maybe you do know someone who has that issue. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is  1-800-273-8255. They also have live chat. Help your friend get help.

I’ll miss Bourdain’s acerbic insights. I’ll miss the snarky personality that contrasted with his big heart. Both came through loud and clear in his work. What didn’t, neither in his work nor, it seems, in his friendships, was something fundamentally wrong that drove him to something this desperate. He once said:

“We ask very simple questions: What makes you happy? What do you eat? What do you like to cook? And everywhere in the world we go and ask these very simple questions,” he said, “we tend to get some really astonishing answers.”

Maybe someone should have asked him, particularly the first one.

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