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I made a similar argument to a friend while eating at a small street food vendor in Bangkok a couple of months ago. I was turned off by the flies and the fact I
by southphillyman 9y ago
I made a similar argument to a friend while eating at a small street food vendor in Bangkok a couple of months ago. I was turned off by the flies and the fact I was a couple of feet from a dirty alley. My friend, who likely grew up eating in similar shops in Nigeria, pointed out I was looking at it from a very Western pov.
He argued that these kind of establishments were safe to eat at because their entire livelihood is dependent on their reputation among locals. Looking around at all the competition along the street we just walked down, it kind of made sense.
In my north american city if a shop fails inspection they are closed down for 48 hours, after which they can open back up and operate until next inspection. In Bangkok if a vendor makes some one sick the news spreads via word of mouth and their business is DONE.
I was able to enjoy an amazing meal after calming down.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 9y agoYou talk as if word of mouth doesn't exist in the US.
- sitkack 9y agoThere isn't a singular reason. But one of them is that SF doesn't have the storage and refrigeration that a fixed establishment does. The other is throughput. Combined, food doesn't stick around long enough to go bad. I have gotten sick in Vietnam, and it was at the fanciest restaurant on the entire trip. Most likely it was something kept under bad refrigeration for way too long.
- pizzetta 9y agoThat only goes so far. One only has to look into "gutter oil"(1) to see that reputation is not always paramount in vendors' minds. (1)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutter_oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutter_oil Also, the GI tracts of people in developed nations are more susceptible to some pathogens than people who have been exposed to those pathogens from an early age and have survived those pathogens in their foodsource.
- pavel_lishin 9y agoDoes the word-of-mouth reputation system still work if you're using a phone app to order food from someone who isn't necessarily local? Now, everyone's competing against everyone in a much larger geographical area. Sure, you can go by reviews, but now you've got a negative-comment war.
- mindcrime 9y agoReputation seemed to largely work for The Silk Road. I mean, there might have been isolated incidents, but I don't seem to recall a broad trend of people dying from buying bad drugs. At the end of the day, I think it always remains the case that "killing your customers is bad for business".
- DonHopkins 9y agoFerengi Rule of Acquisition #10: "A dead customer can't buy as much as a live one."
- tracker1 9y agoLook at the SJW campaigns on Yelp... it's worked a number of times, for good or bad.
- alexeiz 9y agoI'm not following your logic. You're trying to say that the existence of regulation somehow prevents the spread of information via word of mouth? Besides, in Bangkok with its 8 million people, does the word of mouth even make any difference? You don't have to rely on return customers in the city with millions of people.
- spaceflunky 9y agoOr maybe if you ruin your street vendor reputation, you just move two blocks over, repaint your cart, and start over?