Tag Archives: Food industry

January 26, 2018 · 1:16 pm

I Love This Bar

Happy Foodie Friday! Actually, it’s more like Boozie Friday since our topic today revolves around a bar. Not just any bar: my bar. No, I don’t own it, but I feel as if a little part of it is mine. Let me explain and why this has a lot to do with your business.

Over a year ago on a Friday afternoon, I wandered into a bar I had passed a number of times. It’s not part of some chain. It’s part of a vanishing species: the local watering hole. Vanishing? Yes. As one trade publication points out:

The number of what the U.S. Department of Labor Statistics calls “drinking places” — a subcategory of restaurants that is focused just on sales of alcohol — have seen a multi-year decline in number. The number of privately-owned locations dropped by nearly 4 percent between 2013 and 2016, from 44,599 to 42,961 establishments. Nielsen data from 2015 paints an even starker picture, stating that one out of every six neighborhood bars closed between 2004 and 2014.

My bar may or may not be a “drinking place” since they do serve food (much of which is quite good), but it seems as though every Friday each person who passes through the door is greeted by name as they approach the bartenders who already seem to know what they’re having. Yes, it’s the epitome of the “Cheers” experience: a place where everybody knows your name.

In many places, particularly outside of big cities, neighborhood bars are being replaced by what I’ll call chain bars although technically they’re probably called casual dining establishments. You know what I mean – Buffalo Wild Wings, TGIFridays, and their other corporately-run brethren. It’s a shame, and it’s not because they don’t have the same drinks and maybe even better food. What they don’t have is the atmosphere. I’m sure they believe they are in the hospitality business but it’s just not the same.

A great neighborhood bar – my bar – feels like an extension of drinking in someone’s home. It has a unique vibe to it. You’re among friends, not just among other customers. That sort of feeling is something that I think any business can and should try to precipitate and instill in everyone who comes in contact with it: customers, staff, vendors, and the community as a whole. That changes a “like” into a “love,” and who can’t always use a little more of that?

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January 19, 2018 · 12:01 pm

Deglazing

This Foodie Friday I want to talk about deglazing. It’s a very basic technique for sauce-making but it’s also a word that scares a lot of people when they see it in a recipe. As it turns out, it also has something to do with business.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, deglazing is nothing more than using some sort of liquid to loosen the bits leftover in a pan (called fond) after you’ve cooked something in that pan. Say, for example, you’ve made a roast and after you pour out the accumulated fat and juices, you see a lot of crispy bits clinging to the pan. You would deglaze the pan by heating it and pouring in a liquid. It can be as basic as water but wine or stock is preferable because you’re going to use the resulting liquid as the foundation for a sauce or gravy. You’re doing yourself a great disservice if you don’t deglaze your pans!

I suspect some of you out there just toss the fond – you scrape the remnants into the trash. Well, as the saying goes, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and that’s where the business thought comes in. How many businesses have been built around taking what someone has discarded and finding a new or better use for it? The entire recycling industry is built around that notion. While we’ve been recycling things for centuries, especially during shortages of raw materials created by war, the modern industry is just about 50 years old and is a $500 billion enterprise.

The point today is to get you to ask yourself what might be incredibly useful and productive in your business that you might be discarding. It could be a person, it could be a product that’s underperforming because it’s not sexy and no one wants to work on it, or it could be an unexplored portion of the data you gather. These things might just be fond, and with a little deglazing they can be transformed. What do you think?

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January 12, 2018 · 4:48 pm

Looking For The Truffles

This Foodie Friday I’m going to run the risk that I’m going to burst a balloon. If you received some truffle oil as a holiday gift, the odds are overwhelming that there isn’t any truffle in your truffle oil. That’s right: much like true extra virgin olive oil, which is generally often neither “virgin” nor “olive oil,” truffle oil is generally some sort of oil infused with something called 2,4-dithiapentane. Sounds yummy, no? As Tony Bourdain said, truffle oil is “not even food! About as edible as Astroglide and made out of the same material.”

Norcia black truffles.

Norcia black truffles. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I should not really be the real bearer of bad news here. As far back as 2003, publications were reporting on this and the NY Times did a piece last September on it that was widely read in foodie circles. You might think I’m going to use this as the jumping off point for another rant about deceptive advertising, and as appealing a thought as that is, I’m heading in another direction. Much like the “Where’s The Beef” question, seeing truffle oil on a grocery shelf (heck, even Walmart sells EVOO with “truffle aroma”) makes me wonder where exactly the truffles are. Real truffles in oil don’t last long, you know, so they’re probably not in things that sit on a shelf.

Come to think of it, vanilla extract has the same issue. Much of what you see in the stores isn’t real vanilla and there’s no vanilla in most vanilla things, but vanillin, a chemical compound. Unlike truffles, you probably can buy the real thing at your local store but it’s not 98 cents a bottle, believe me.

What does this have to do with your business, other than making you feel as you did when you found out there isn’t a Santa Claus or Easter Bunny? More than you’d think, actually. When you put up a sign or create a website that announces you as a service provider of some sort, people have an expectation that you can, in fact, provide said service. When you advertise a product, customers expect that the product will do what you say it will. They don’t want to have to look for the truffles nor do they expect that what they’ll find will be fake or something that mimics the real thing. If you’re selling your expertise, have some, even if it’s narrow. I’m surprised sometimes when I speak with people who claim to know something about a piece of this crazy business world how little they actually do know. They might have read a book and can fake their competence, but there really isn’t a truffle there.

A vanilla-flavored extract isn’t the same as vanilla extract. Truffle flavored oil assuredly has no truffles. Make sure there is validity in whatever you’re claiming to be or much like olive oil brands and truffle oil distributors are being sued (there were “four class-action lawsuits filed in New York and California accusing Trader Joe’s, Urbani Truffles, Sabatino and Monini of fraud of ‘false, misleading, and deceptive misbranding’ of its truffle oil products'” you’re heading for big trouble.

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