There is a particular memory from my childhood that won't go away, and it's one shared by millions of Americans: Dinner with my grandmother at a restaurant where she would annoy the crap out of the waitress (who invariably had limited English skills) with all of the things that my grandmother couldn't eat and why.
"No salt. I have high blood pressure. And no MSG - it gives me a headache. And take it easy on the chili peppers - they give me gas." And so on.
The point is not that my grandmother was every Chinese restaurant's worst nightmare; The point is that my grandmother knew WITH GREAT PRECISION what she could and could not take. And she knew it in the 1970s. AND ... the restaurant was adept at handling these requests (in fact, they knew their customers and expected those requests.)
I have long believed that mass customization and food belonged together to create the ultimate taste experience, but there is a higher calling down the road. Food allergies have been increasing over the years, along with specific diets as our population ages. And as people get older, their sensitivity to "ordering errors" will go up. It may be that 50 years from now, in countries like Japan that have rapidly aging populations, automation may be the only way to serve food to so many older adults without risking their lives!
Monday, May 26, 2008
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Shame on ALL of us!
I saw an interesting movie a few months back. “For the Bible Tells Me So” documents the struggle between religious parents and their gay children and contains a scene that struck a chord with me. A young man tells about how, when he was a child, the boys would look at Playboy and talk about the strange feelings going on in their bodies; but HE didn’t feel anything. But, he figured, he should probably SAY that he feels something or risk standing out.
This is how I feel about Champagne. It tastes like piss to me. It has ALWAYS tasted like piss to me. But, I would pretend to be excited whenever there was Champagne around, since that’s what everyone else was doing. On occasion, I would confess to a friend that I really didn’t like Champagne, and that pouring any of that $50 bottle in my glass would be a waste. “NO,” they would respond. “You just haven’t had GOOD Champagne. Try THIS!” So I would try it. And it would taste like piss to me. And I was forced to wonder, is it me? Am I a freak? Or does it taste like piss to everyone, but society has forced them to pretend to like it?
I remember living in Japan and promised myself that I would try to eat ANYTHING presented to me. And I did. And some of it disgusted me, but I ate it and smiled and told my generous host how delicious it was and paid for my deception my finding a second helping on my dish when I turned away. I suffered. But I was not alone.
I know countless people who live with “Gourmet Food Shame”. ‘L’ likes iceberg lettuce, not the fancy stuff. ‘A’ doesn’t like mushrooms, no matter how rare and expensive they are. ‘F’ thinks caviar is disgusting. Ditto for foie gras. But all too often, they lie and they smile and they eat and they don’t enjoy. I’m probably the worst of all – I wouldn’t last a day in Cape Cod!
But there is a glimmer of hope in the future. Gastronomation and the prospect of interacting with a system (instead of a judgmental person) and getting things EXACTLY how you want means that our long suffering may one day end. Yes, it is good to try new things. But if you KNOW you don’t like them, cast off your shame, my brothers, and eat what you enjoy!
This is how I feel about Champagne. It tastes like piss to me. It has ALWAYS tasted like piss to me. But, I would pretend to be excited whenever there was Champagne around, since that’s what everyone else was doing. On occasion, I would confess to a friend that I really didn’t like Champagne, and that pouring any of that $50 bottle in my glass would be a waste. “NO,” they would respond. “You just haven’t had GOOD Champagne. Try THIS!” So I would try it. And it would taste like piss to me. And I was forced to wonder, is it me? Am I a freak? Or does it taste like piss to everyone, but society has forced them to pretend to like it?
I remember living in Japan and promised myself that I would try to eat ANYTHING presented to me. And I did. And some of it disgusted me, but I ate it and smiled and told my generous host how delicious it was and paid for my deception my finding a second helping on my dish when I turned away. I suffered. But I was not alone.
I know countless people who live with “Gourmet Food Shame”. ‘L’ likes iceberg lettuce, not the fancy stuff. ‘A’ doesn’t like mushrooms, no matter how rare and expensive they are. ‘F’ thinks caviar is disgusting. Ditto for foie gras. But all too often, they lie and they smile and they eat and they don’t enjoy. I’m probably the worst of all – I wouldn’t last a day in Cape Cod!
But there is a glimmer of hope in the future. Gastronomation and the prospect of interacting with a system (instead of a judgmental person) and getting things EXACTLY how you want means that our long suffering may one day end. Yes, it is good to try new things. But if you KNOW you don’t like them, cast off your shame, my brothers, and eat what you enjoy!
Monday, May 5, 2008
A Battle of Wills with No Winner in Sight!
I am conflicted about my coffee. You see, every Saturday for longer than I care to admit, I have gone to a certain coffee shop and ordered a special drink. No, it’s not my “daily” coffee, it’s a special treat (because I think it has about 600 calories and I weighed 10 pounds more when I was drinking it every day). I had a nice life with this ritual, until the unthinkable happened… They ran out of my favorite Torani – Chocolate Mint!
Now, the girls at the coffee shop are very nice, but they have no appreciation for the OCD that fuels my charm. “Oh, we have another mint. It is the same!” Sorry, ladies. Peppermint is not the same as Chocolate Mint. To my mouth, they are night and day.
“We’ll order another bottle” said the matriarch of the café. But that was months ago. “It’s very difficult to find,” she tells me. But I’ve found it at another place. And here is the dilemma….
You see, the ritual, itself, is part of the experience that makes the Saturday so nice for me. It’s the farmer’s market across the street, my bagel and cream cheese, the special outdoor bench AND the coffee drink. With the Torani substitution, I can only get about 85% of the overall experience. Sometimes I will go somewhere that DOES have what I need, but then I give up the farmer’s market and the rest of the ritual. Any way you cut it, I’m screwed.
“Why not bring your own syrup,” says my fiancée. “Because then I’d look like a freakin’ dork with a bottle of syrup,” I say. Not exactly conducive to a relaxing Saturday, either.
Next week, the girls at the coffee shop have PROMISED me (again) that they will have the syrup. I’ll give them another shot, but if they fail me again, they may have lost my business for at least a little while as punishment. And as for my Saturday ritual, I may ultimately have to look inward to restore the calm, and make a new ritual. Sorry, coffee girls – it’s hard to get a new customer, but easy enough to lose an old one!
Now, the girls at the coffee shop are very nice, but they have no appreciation for the OCD that fuels my charm. “Oh, we have another mint. It is the same!” Sorry, ladies. Peppermint is not the same as Chocolate Mint. To my mouth, they are night and day.
“We’ll order another bottle” said the matriarch of the café. But that was months ago. “It’s very difficult to find,” she tells me. But I’ve found it at another place. And here is the dilemma….
You see, the ritual, itself, is part of the experience that makes the Saturday so nice for me. It’s the farmer’s market across the street, my bagel and cream cheese, the special outdoor bench AND the coffee drink. With the Torani substitution, I can only get about 85% of the overall experience. Sometimes I will go somewhere that DOES have what I need, but then I give up the farmer’s market and the rest of the ritual. Any way you cut it, I’m screwed.
“Why not bring your own syrup,” says my fiancée. “Because then I’d look like a freakin’ dork with a bottle of syrup,” I say. Not exactly conducive to a relaxing Saturday, either.
Next week, the girls at the coffee shop have PROMISED me (again) that they will have the syrup. I’ll give them another shot, but if they fail me again, they may have lost my business for at least a little while as punishment. And as for my Saturday ritual, I may ultimately have to look inward to restore the calm, and make a new ritual. Sorry, coffee girls – it’s hard to get a new customer, but easy enough to lose an old one!
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
The Big Gulp: Portions and Perceived Value
I want you to think about the last dozen times you ate out at a restaurant. Do you remember someone uttering the phrase, “Let’s start with this much. We can always order more.” Now for the big, fat question: When was the last time you actually REMEMBER ordering more? I can’t, for the life of me, remember it happening more than a couple of times in my LIFE! Why? Because once we're not hungry anymore, out of sight is out of mind.
We humans progress through a few stages when we eat:
We keep eating until we’re not hungry anymore
Then we keep eating until the food is gone or we feel physically sick
But once we’ve reached our initial satiation, we get almost NO marginal utility out of an additional bite. In fact, we pay good money to do something that we know is harmful: eating additional calories (I’m assuming that you are NOT one of the 1% of Americans that doesn’t get enough calories).
Why do we buy into this destructive scheme? Because the restaurants and marketers tap into our perception of “more-is-more” value proposition.
So let’s tally up the scorecard again:
Restaurants: Keep more inventory, waste more food and promote unhealthy lifestyles
Consumer: Have less choice, spends more money and shortens their lifespan.
The solution? As always, ASK the CONSUMER and give them more choices!! Believe me, doing that will earn you a lot more loyalty than making them feel like a pig.
We humans progress through a few stages when we eat:
We keep eating until we’re not hungry anymore
Then we keep eating until the food is gone or we feel physically sick
But once we’ve reached our initial satiation, we get almost NO marginal utility out of an additional bite. In fact, we pay good money to do something that we know is harmful: eating additional calories (I’m assuming that you are NOT one of the 1% of Americans that doesn’t get enough calories).
Why do we buy into this destructive scheme? Because the restaurants and marketers tap into our perception of “more-is-more” value proposition.
So let’s tally up the scorecard again:
Restaurants: Keep more inventory, waste more food and promote unhealthy lifestyles
Consumer: Have less choice, spends more money and shortens their lifespan.
The solution? As always, ASK the CONSUMER and give them more choices!! Believe me, doing that will earn you a lot more loyalty than making them feel like a pig.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Why Older People Shouldn’t Try New Restaurants
Ok, ok.. I really don’t care if older people try new restaurants. And, yes – many people enjoy the adventure of trying a new restaurant and use it as a social catalyst within their community. But there IS a statistical defense to the countless “neophobes” (those with a fear of new things) who like going to the same restaurant(s) they’ve been going to for years.
For the sake of this discussion, we’re going to skip some of the more arcane arguments about the decline of sensory abilities over time and focus on one of the most important pieces of any statistical argument: Sample Size.
Sample Size is the element of statistics that refers to how many pieces of information you have when testing a hypothesis. For example: If I have a hypothesis that I am the tallest person in California and support this claim by visiting a pre-school and noting that I am taller than everyone there, it is not a well-defended claim, since 1) the pre-school is hardly a representatively random group of Californians and 2) the group is too small to extrapolate a conclusion for a state of 37 Million people. The more people I sample where my claim stands up, the more credible that claim is. So, if I travel to L.A., Sacramento, San Diego, and a dozen rural communities and randomly evaluate 1000 people in each place and determine that I am STILL the tallest of all the people I evaluated, my claim gains more and more credibility.
Let’s extend this example to restaurant-testing and take 2 people: “Oldie” is a 60-year-old man who has tried over 1000 restaurants in his life and thinks that “FastBurger” is the best restaurant for him. “Youngie” is 20-years-old and has tried 100 restaurants in his life and thinks that “QuickyBurger” is the best restaurant for him. Since Oldie’s sample size is substantially larger (meaning that he has tested his favorite restaurant against far more restaurants than Youngie has), his hypothesis that any new restaurant won’t dethrone FastBurger as his favorite restaurant has a good deal of credibility to it. And when his nagging wife insists that he try something new once in awhile, besides from his psychological need to be right, that new restaurant will probably not satisfy him as much as his favorite. Youngie, on the other hand, hasn’t tried as many restaurants and stands a much better chance of having his favorite dethroned.
So if you’re over 30, the next time you want to try a new expensive restaurant, think twice. The odds are that it probably won’t break into your top-10 restaurants list and there’s a decent chance that you won’t like it at all. Instead, why not head on down to your old favorite and get something you know you will enjoy. Trying a lot of new restaurants doesn’t show you’re adventurous – it shows that you’re mathematically challenged!
For the sake of this discussion, we’re going to skip some of the more arcane arguments about the decline of sensory abilities over time and focus on one of the most important pieces of any statistical argument: Sample Size.
Sample Size is the element of statistics that refers to how many pieces of information you have when testing a hypothesis. For example: If I have a hypothesis that I am the tallest person in California and support this claim by visiting a pre-school and noting that I am taller than everyone there, it is not a well-defended claim, since 1) the pre-school is hardly a representatively random group of Californians and 2) the group is too small to extrapolate a conclusion for a state of 37 Million people. The more people I sample where my claim stands up, the more credible that claim is. So, if I travel to L.A., Sacramento, San Diego, and a dozen rural communities and randomly evaluate 1000 people in each place and determine that I am STILL the tallest of all the people I evaluated, my claim gains more and more credibility.
Let’s extend this example to restaurant-testing and take 2 people: “Oldie” is a 60-year-old man who has tried over 1000 restaurants in his life and thinks that “FastBurger” is the best restaurant for him. “Youngie” is 20-years-old and has tried 100 restaurants in his life and thinks that “QuickyBurger” is the best restaurant for him. Since Oldie’s sample size is substantially larger (meaning that he has tested his favorite restaurant against far more restaurants than Youngie has), his hypothesis that any new restaurant won’t dethrone FastBurger as his favorite restaurant has a good deal of credibility to it. And when his nagging wife insists that he try something new once in awhile, besides from his psychological need to be right, that new restaurant will probably not satisfy him as much as his favorite. Youngie, on the other hand, hasn’t tried as many restaurants and stands a much better chance of having his favorite dethroned.
So if you’re over 30, the next time you want to try a new expensive restaurant, think twice. The odds are that it probably won’t break into your top-10 restaurants list and there’s a decent chance that you won’t like it at all. Instead, why not head on down to your old favorite and get something you know you will enjoy. Trying a lot of new restaurants doesn’t show you’re adventurous – it shows that you’re mathematically challenged!
Friday, April 25, 2008
The Burrito – Nature’s gift to Gastonomation??
Ah, yes… the burrito. Marriages have ended debating where to get the best one. Here in California, it is an obsession; Pity the tourist who stops to ask two locals where to get a good one! But one thing is for sure: The Burrito was BORN to be Gastronomated! Why? Because it has most of the characteristics that Gastronomation desires:
Burritos are made up of a LIMITED number of primary ingredients. We’ve all seen the burrito bars – your average “taqueria” doesn’t have more than about 20 distinct bins.
The “assembly” requires little knowledge, precision or nuance. What does this mean? Well, unlike a car or a microchip, all of the ingredients of a burrito essentially get rolled up together without any attempt to keep certain parts away from others or any fear of mixing. A burrito is essentially smushed-together ingredients with a wrapper - unlike, for example, Crème brûlée or a soufflé which requires substantial skill and can easily be ruined.
People have very specific ideas about how they like their burritos. You would never tell a taqueria to make you “whatever the chef recommends”! Will they put spicy salsa in when you can’t tolerate it? Do you like sour cream or avocados, or did your trainer just tell you to stay away from them? There is no such thing as a “typical order”. If you don’t believe me, try this: Go get a burrito for a friend of yours and bring it to them. Odds are that they will examine it, smile, thank you, and put it in the trash as soon as they find that there is something in there that they don’t want anything to do with.
The assembly-line nature of a taqueria is a good model for automation. I have generally observed a lot of room for improvement in such places, but they do seem to have an instinct for industrial engineering.
Speed is key in a burrito place. Almost ALL of the business will happen between 11:30AM-1:30PM and 5:30PM-8PM. If a customer comes between those times and can’t or won’t wait, they will WALK. Burritos are about both craving AND convenience. If you screw up either element, the customer won’t hesitate to choose a different vendor or a different meal, altogether.
Now, I will stop short of saying that a burrito is PERFECT for Gastronomation. It does have a few characteristics that go against it, which I will get into on a further post.
Burritos are made up of a LIMITED number of primary ingredients. We’ve all seen the burrito bars – your average “taqueria” doesn’t have more than about 20 distinct bins.
The “assembly” requires little knowledge, precision or nuance. What does this mean? Well, unlike a car or a microchip, all of the ingredients of a burrito essentially get rolled up together without any attempt to keep certain parts away from others or any fear of mixing. A burrito is essentially smushed-together ingredients with a wrapper - unlike, for example, Crème brûlée or a soufflé which requires substantial skill and can easily be ruined.
People have very specific ideas about how they like their burritos. You would never tell a taqueria to make you “whatever the chef recommends”! Will they put spicy salsa in when you can’t tolerate it? Do you like sour cream or avocados, or did your trainer just tell you to stay away from them? There is no such thing as a “typical order”. If you don’t believe me, try this: Go get a burrito for a friend of yours and bring it to them. Odds are that they will examine it, smile, thank you, and put it in the trash as soon as they find that there is something in there that they don’t want anything to do with.
The assembly-line nature of a taqueria is a good model for automation. I have generally observed a lot of room for improvement in such places, but they do seem to have an instinct for industrial engineering.
Speed is key in a burrito place. Almost ALL of the business will happen between 11:30AM-1:30PM and 5:30PM-8PM. If a customer comes between those times and can’t or won’t wait, they will WALK. Burritos are about both craving AND convenience. If you screw up either element, the customer won’t hesitate to choose a different vendor or a different meal, altogether.
Now, I will stop short of saying that a burrito is PERFECT for Gastronomation. It does have a few characteristics that go against it, which I will get into on a further post.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Variety is the spice of life, but I've already got picante salsa on my shirt!
Man, one of my favorite things to eat in the world is Cold Stone Creamery. I LOVE that stuff! And I’ll even share my favorite order: White Chocolate ice cream with real peanut butter and Nestle Crunch bar in it. I’m one of those people that think that almost everything is better with peanut butter (btw, ever met a non-American that liked peanut butter? I haven’t…)
But they suffer from 2 problems: 1) They are slow as HELL! Every person’s order takes (it feels like) 5 minutes to make. And if there is even a short line, you can be in for a wait. 2) They are only human. Yes, like all humans, they are capable of limited precision. This means that what I order will be a little (or a lot) different every time. Some of the servers take a big dollop of peanut butter, some use a smaller one. Some chop up the Crunch bar into fine pieces, some leave it as bigger pieces. It’s never quite the same…
I know, I know… Variety is the spice of life, right? Well, I got PLENTY of variety in my life, thank you! It’s cold, it’s hot, the market goes up, the market goes down, people are in a good mood, or maybe a bad mood. I’m sick, I’m healthy.
Really, I’ve got all the variety I can handle. I just want something I can bank on!
But they suffer from 2 problems: 1) They are slow as HELL! Every person’s order takes (it feels like) 5 minutes to make. And if there is even a short line, you can be in for a wait. 2) They are only human. Yes, like all humans, they are capable of limited precision. This means that what I order will be a little (or a lot) different every time. Some of the servers take a big dollop of peanut butter, some use a smaller one. Some chop up the Crunch bar into fine pieces, some leave it as bigger pieces. It’s never quite the same…
I know, I know… Variety is the spice of life, right? Well, I got PLENTY of variety in my life, thank you! It’s cold, it’s hot, the market goes up, the market goes down, people are in a good mood, or maybe a bad mood. I’m sick, I’m healthy.
Really, I’ve got all the variety I can handle. I just want something I can bank on!
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