Tag Archives: Foodie

September 27, 2013 · 9:02 am

Fooled Again

Foodie Friday! The subject today isn’t actually food itself but the places in which it’s served. You probably how competitive the restaurant space is – just think about how hard it is for you to decide where to go eat when you go out. Which cuisine? How far to go? Is this new place any good? We’ve all been there.
More often than not these days, people turn to review sites such as Yelp for information.

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It’s not news to any of us that some of the reviews on Yelp (and other review sites) are fake. Great ones may have been posted by the restaurant, bad ones could come from a competitor. Yelp has an algorithm that is supposed to spot and eliminate those issues to a great extent.  The folks at Harvard B-School released a study about it.  What they found is interesting but not terribly surprising:

First, roughly 16 percent of restaurant reviews on Yelp are identified as fraudulent, and tend to be more extreme (favorable or unfavorable) than other reviews. Second, a restaurant is more likely to commit review fraud when its reputation is weak, i.e., when it has few reviews, or it has recently received bad reviews. Third, chain restaurants – which benefit  less from Yelp – are also less likely to commit review fraud. Fourth, when restaurants face increased competition, they become more likely to leave unfavorable reviews for competitors. Taken in aggregate, these findings highlight the extent of review fraud and suggest that a business’s decision to commit review fraud respond to competition and reputation incentives rather than simply the restaurant’s ethics.

They looked at 316,415 reviews of 3,625 restaurants so it’s not a small study. That said, this doesn’t even address an individual who had a nice meal with good service but maybe had a run in with another customer and decides to blame the restaurant with an inaccurate review – I’d call that just as fake as the others.

The NY Attorney General cracked down on businesses that were writing fake reviews.  It’s a problem for anyone who relies on the internet for research.  So don’t.

What?

Yes.  I wrote that.  Instead, use the web to find out about available options and use trusted sites with paid, professional reviewers.  Then put down the device and ask a friend or coworker or family member.  There’s an expression in computing – GIGO – garbage in, garbage out.  That’s what many review sites are like despite their best efforts (and I mean that they try to weed out fake stuff sincerely).  Some of it is the blind leading the rest of us – who knows how educated and daring the palates are of most amateurs?  A bunch of it is fraud.  The problem is we don’t know which is which.

Or maybe we just need not to be afraid to be “wrong” about the choices we make and go and enjoy an evening out with someone?

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September 20, 2013 · 8:35 am

Skirt Steak

It’s Foodie Friday and I want to blog a bit about skirt steak.

English: uploaded for an infobox

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I’m a big fan of it and have been for a very long time. So long, in fact, that I remember when it was hard to find because it was so inexpensive and so underused that most butchers put it in with the trimmings from other cuts to make ground beef. Then again, many of them took the skirt steak home for supper which is how it came to be known as a butcher’s cut. Other steaks of which you might be aware – the hanger steak, the tri-tip, and flap meat (which they sell as sirloin tip here) used to be hard to find and very inexpensive.

Then the fajita craze hit. Skirt steak – the best cut of meat for fajitas – became more in demand.  What was once a downright cheap, delicious protein became as expensive as all but the high-end steaks such as porterhouse and rib eye.  While it remains so, one other thing has happened.  There are two parts to the part of the steer that’s skirt steak (the plate).  One (the outside plate) was rarely sold since it’s chewier and less tasty.  With the increase in demand, suddenly stores would have sales of skirt that was the lesser cut, confusing consumers and offering a lesser experience.  Consumers moved on.

It’s happened with fish too, as we can see with the monkfish.  Once a “trash fish” and known as the poor man’s lobster, it grew popular because it was tasty and inexpensive.  That led to it becoming very expensive and overfished.  In some cases, other fish were sold as monk that weren’t.  Consumers moved on.

The business point is pretty simple.  People are drawn to high-quality, low-cost products, whether they’re proteins or electronics or services.  The ebb and flow of the market will make some price increases happen and demand will support that up to a point.  What the market won’t support is a changed, lesser product or a price point that makes other products viable options.  I’d rather eat a porterhouse that’s on sale for what it costs for skirt, as an example.

We need to be cognizant of why people came to our products in the first place and not undercut those fundamental reasons.  That’s business suicide.  Thoughts?

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September 13, 2013 · 8:58 am

Eating Vs. Dining

It’s Foodie Friday! Today I want to talk about something that was pointed out to me by an older friend.

English: Minangkabau cuisine (Padang food) ser...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We were talking about the quality of a number of restaurants and we happened to hit upon one that we both agreed was not of particularly high quality. The interesting thing was that it always seems to be full of people, generally younger ones.  I was expressing my wonder that their business was doing so well despite that lack of a quality product when he said this:

They’re there to eat.  We like to dine.  You can eat anywhere.

I knew immediately he was right.  The young audience to which this place caters generally doesn’t cook.  They need to eat and are less fussy about the quality of the experience as long as the food is serviceable and not particularly expensive.  They want to perform the human equivalent of gassing up a car.  They need fuel!

My friend and I, both decent amateur cooks, prefer to dine.  We emphasize the quality of both the food and the atmosphere in which it is served.  It’s a very different standard in many ways.  While you and I  could have a good discussion about whether that difference is good or bad, we can probably agree about  one point of differentiation: once you have us as regular customers, we’re not leaving.  Which is an interesting business point.

Having a customer base that treats your product as a commodity is risky.  It opens you up to the whims of the market.  There’s always someone who can play better music or offer cheaper food.  If your customers don’t recognize your product and the experience through which it’s delivered as unique they’ll be gone.  Having a clientele that savors your product is very different from one that views it almost as a necessary evil.

This isn’t a young vs. old or cheap vs. expensive issue.  It’s about building deep relationships between customers and products.  We want them dining and not just eating.  Wouldn’t you agree?

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