Tag Archives: Foodie

May 23, 2014 · 10:24 am

Sick Reviews

Today’s Foodie Friday Fun finds us at the intersection of food, data, and social media.

New York Skyline

(Photo credit: CJ Isherwood)

Yes I know we’ve been here before but today’s tidbit concerns an article in the NY Times the other day. The NYC Health Department conducted a pilot study using Yelp reviews to see if they could identify unreported outbreaks of food-borne illness.  Despite what some may think, not everyone calls the city to let them know they got sick eating someplace.  What many folks do, however, is post something on social media.  Since Yelp is the go-to site on dining out, it would make sense to start here.  One can easily see the effort expanding to other likely places – Twitter, Trip Advisor, etc.

So what did they find?

Using a software program developed by Columbia University, city researchers combed through 294,000 Yelp reviews for restaurants in the city over a period of nine months in 2012 and 2013, searching for words like “sick,” “vomit” and “diarrhea” along with other details. After investigating those reports, the researchers substantiated three instances when 16 people had been sickened.

Doesn’t sound like much but it’s a start.  Maybe you’re aware that Google tried something similar to help spot flu outbreaks.  There is a bigger business point here.  What the city is doing is growing big ears.  They’re learning to use the vast amount of self-reported data to eliminate problems in some cases before they’re actually reported via the official channels.  The three instances they found were open for business with no complaints on the official record.  Inspections turned up unclean conditions at all of them.

The real question is how are you going to do something similar in your business?  Maybe you’re watching your Facebook page for negative comments or responding to people pinging your brand account on Twitter.  What are you doing to get beyond those quasi-official channels?

I wrote the other day about the need to improve data quality.  Sure – in theory a bunch of vindictive people could trigger a health department visit by writing up negative posts containing keywords or phrases.  In theory, I could win the U.S. Senior Open.  Neither is likely to happen.  What is likely to occur, however, is that your competition will find new ways to seek out and use information to drive their businesses forward.  Will you be there with them?

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May 16, 2014 · 10:52 am

Reviewing Reviewers

I’ve got criticism on the brain this Foodie Friday, not because I’ve been the subject of any but I read a restaurant review and it got me to thinking.

Workers in the kitchen at Delmonico's Restaura...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There are certain elements to a restaurant review that are certainly objective.  The silverware either was or was not clean, the water glasses were or were not refilled on a regular basis.  Much of what one would talk about, however, is very much subjective.  What is good to the reviewer might not be very good to you at all.

At least with a professional reviewer, one can hope that in addition to a palate that’s been educated a bit they would demonstrate fairness and honesty and not just try to write a clever rip job for the sake of doing so.  The good ones have an appreciation that they are not in an objective field but they know that the critic’s job is to educate and illuminate and to give you a comprehensive view of the dining experience, hopefully making multiple visits to the eatery to form an opinion.  Today, of course, everyone is a critic – just spend 5 minutes on Yelp.  The standards I just mentioned don’t apply.

This would drive me crazy if I were a chef.  Then again, I think there’s a business point in it which can be helpful to all of us.  The smart cooks just go to work and present the best possible quality food every day and enjoy themselves while doing it.  They acknowledge that they’re being evaluated each time they present their product but they don’t let the criticism overwhelm them.  It’s a tool to help them measure themselves and improve and some is more accurate and valuable than others.  They review the reviewers in the context of their own skills and standards.

We forget that in business sometimes.  Satisfying 99.9% of 1,000 customers means someone is unhappy.  If they’re a loyal, long-term buyer then that review is based on multiple visits and is an informed opinion.  Listen and learn.   More importantly, ask if you put out your best product.  Have you set your standards high enough and commiserate with your abilities or are you slacking?  When your year-end review isn’t as good as you expect, is it an objective, fact-based listing of where you’ve come up short or is it a subjective rant?  Review the reviewer but don’t dismiss a bad one out of hand if it’s accurate.

We’re all evaluated each time we produce a product.  Listen and learn and present your best product.  When you do so with high standards, the reviews will be fine.  So will your sanity.

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May 9, 2014 · 8:46 am

Another Way

Like many people these days, I eschew carbs, or at least simple carbs.

Shrimp & grits, Commander's Palace restaurant,...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Those are the ones generally found in white foods – pasta, potatoes, and rice, for example. I also avoid corn since it packs a carbohydrate punch. Which brings us to our Foodie Friday Fun this week.

One of my favorite dishes is shrimp and grits. For the non-Southerners among you, grits are ground hominy which is corn treated with alkali. They may be the official food of Georgia but they’re definitely not on my diet.  The dish was one of the things I truly missed when I changed my diet.  The combination of the cheese-infused grits and spiced shrimp, bacon, peppers and shallots is high on my list of great dishes.  But since there was no way to make the dish without a forbidden food, all I could savor were the memories.

A dear friend, knowing of my gastronomic dismay, sent along a recipe called “low-carb shrimp and grits.”  Mentally, I dismissed it immediately, think it an oxymoron.  However, there were no grits in the dish.  Instead, equal amounts of boiling water and almond flour are mixed together with a pinch of salt, simmered until thick, and enriched with cheese.  The end result were far better than I had anticipated, almost indistinguishable from the corn-based version.  Which leads to our business thought today.

Too often we forget that there is usually another way.  When our solution to a problem doesn’t work, we neglect to get outside of our own narrow thinking to formulate others.  We make decisions in a vacuum, failing to gather and organize the information that relates to the questions at hand.  I knew there were many types of nut flours (did you know, for example, macadamia nut flour makes great vegan icing in lieu of buttercream?) but didn’t even consider them as a possible course of action.

We need to get data, to organize information, and to be creative, brainstorming every weird solution to surface another way to solve the problem if the way we see in the moment just won’t work.  The results just might be as delicious as what you wanted in the first place.

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