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I was a corporate restaurant consultant
- blowski 8y agoInteresting article about what’s involved, but there doesn’t seem to be any “science” in the article. Just a combination of knowledge, experience, competitor analysis, and “see what happens”.
- jgtrosh 8y agoMaybe that's what “weird science” means?
- snaky 8y agoShould it be called "alchemy"?
- mrarjen 8y agoThis article is mainly about the science of convincing the client on updating their menu, the tactical "telling the client what they just told you" strategy doesn't work in this field.
- baq 8y agolooks like science to me, only without p-values and peer reviewed papers.
- suprfnk 8y agoNext you'll have people claiming vaccines cause autism and global warming isn't real and you'll have to believe them because "it's just a combination of knowledge, experience, analysis and 'see what happens'".
- osteele 8y agoAs a consumer of carefully-tuned journalism offerings, it’s useful to know that magazine titles are generally selected without the approval of the author and often without full consideration of the content. The title should be taken with a significant g̵r̵a̵i̵n̵ ̵o̵f̵ ̵s̵a̵l̵t̵ dash of unami. The article itself uses the word “science” only once: it concludes with “[…] there’s no science behind the secret sauce.”
- dang 8y agoWe've switched the title to the subtitle, which contains no science.
- fowl2 8y agoThe marketing jargon is entrancing.
- mrob 8y agoI'm particularly irritated by the talk of "guests". It's a huge insult to charge guests money for food. If I have to pay then I'm a customer.
- ramphastidae 8y agoOof. That’s about as bad as calling co-workers “family.”
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoTo me it's in the same league as referring to McDonald's locations as "restaurants".
- jackhack 8y agoAt least they're not yet so pretentious as to call it an "eatery" which seem to be the latest trend among middling restaurants trying to distinguish themselves.
- gamblor956 8y agoA restaurant "is a business which prepares and serves food and drinks to customers in exchange for money." McDonalds prepares and serves food and drinks to customers in exchange for money. This clearly makes it a restaurant. It may not be a fine-dining type of establishment, but it is a restaurant. More pretentious is all the hipsters that look down on restaurants like McDonalds simply because it doesn't fit their narrow, preconceived notions of what a restaurant should be.
- geodel 8y agoAgreed. Long back my office used to have 'canteen' for food. But nowadays it is considered downtrodden and 'Cafe' is used in place.
- function_seven 8y ago> For every perfect, client-ready pizza, there were at least six that missed the mark— ... pepperoni that curled when cast in the oven, pockmarking the pie with tiny buckets of grease. Ummm, that's a feature, not a bug. Right? best pepperoni is the curled up kind as far as I'm concerned.
- Slartie 8y agoI'd second this! I'm very much into making pan pizza at home, and I totally love when the pepperoni pieces get just a little crispy and curled up at the edges. This (as well as the cheese color) tells me when it's time to fetch the pizza from the oven. But maybe that's just the commonly agreed ideal for pan pizza. The article was about New York style pizza, after all.
- Shivetya 8y agoand here I remember pizza where the pepperoni is put on after the pizza is baked as there is sufficient time for it to "cook" from oven to presentation or boxing without it curling or leaving grease behind
- chomp 8y agoFeature for me! Here's a great article about pepperoni curl: https://slice.seriouseats.com/2012/12/the-pizza-lab-why-does-pepperoni-curl.html https://slice.seriouseats.com/2012/12/the-pizza-lab-why-does...
- arkades 8y agoAfter reading that passage in the article, I thought maybe I’m misremembering - weren’t cupped pepperoni the superior? And then, when it got to the passage about “truffle oil” being “craveable” I stopped doubting myself. Truffle oil is synthetic garbage used to sucker people unaware of the non-relationship between truffles and “truffle oil.” Now I just can’t figure out whether this is a fast food consultancy that knows nothing about actual food (which would be ironic, but not surprising), or whether they know about food, and this is pure cynicism on their part regarding the public’s taste in food.
- mikeymz 8y agoPart of my soul just died
- gadders 8y agoI remember reading a story once about how McDonalds wanted to start introducing wraps or salads or something. The impact on the supply chain at that scale was immense.
- thisisit 8y ago"If any subject uses two words and one of them is science, then there is no science behind it" - My maths teacher explaining the word - "political science".
- chillydawg 8y agoComputer science is obviously a total scam.
- dagw 8y agoObviously not a scam (I doubt most people would call political science as scam either), but the question is, is it a science?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- paulific 8y agoAt the university I studied at it was still called "Government". I suppose the "science" is to make a distinction between the "practice of" and the "study of". If you study history you are a historian, but if you study politics you are not a politician (usually), so I suppose you have pick something academic sounding.
- freddie_mercury 8y agoTo add.... Physical science, earth science, planetary science, space science, life science, natural science, formal science, systems science, applied science, fundamental science, ocean science, atmospheric science. And partial credit for neuroscience. But I guess a rush to post a pithy reaction based solely on the headline is more important than trying to have a meaningful discussion.
- dmurray 8y agoTo be fair, "weird science" isn't even trying to be an exception here.
- ggambetta 8y agoI'm so jaded that I read "Blockchain Restaurant Menus" and believed it for a second...
- mamurphy 8y agoI wish I could figure out what chain the main example is about.
- mabcat 8y agoSome tactical googling about the orange chicken says Pei Wei. Not from around there, never heard of them, but it’s clear from their menu PDF.
- empath75 8y agoDefinitely Pei Wei, I w just ate there a few nights ago. It might be that it’s in a location with a thousand authentic Asian restaurants nearby, but it’s almost always empty. The new menu is pretty good though, I have to say. I think they’ve been using it for a few years now.
- mvgoogler 8y agoFlippin' Pizza (https://flippinpizza.com/menu/ https://flippinpizza.com/menu/). I used to live less then a mile from one. Pretty solid pizza. FWIW, it always had the feel of a local place. I was surprised that they had 20 locations and used consultants.
- inostia 8y agoThat seems right.
- gashad 8y agoIt's got to be Pei Wei. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pei_Wei_Asian_Diner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pei_Wei_Asian_Diner Corporate is based in Arizona, has 200 stores, talks of a rollout of Quinoa, etc.
- dsego 8y agoIn capitalism it's all about illusion. Illusion of healthy, illusion of choice, illusion of ancient, illusion of homemade. If they can sell it to you, reality doesn't even matter.
- StevePerkins 8y agoI think this is pretty much a constant in every system of human organization that's ever existed.
- dsego 8y agoI guess you're right.
- baq 8y ago"Under capitalism, man oppresses man. But under socialism, it's the other way around."
- dvdhnt 8y agoWhat does that even mean? Who said it?
- linksnapzz 8y agoIIRC it's a joke commonly attributed to soviet-era Russians. That might be a clue as to the meaning....
- eeZah7Ux 8y agoWriting this on HN gets you plenty of downvotes. Everybody here is going to be the next internet billionaire.
- soniman 8y agoOne of the biggest mistakes I see at mom and pop stores is too low prices. I told the mom and pop Asian place at the local high-end mall to raise their soda can prices from $1 and I just went back and they'd raised it to $1.50. It's really the mom and pop places that would benefit the most from consulting like this.
- briandear 8y agoThe other mistake is a menu the size of a phone book. Choice breeds paralysis. And it also drives up food costs.
- dsr_ 8y agoCounter-example: Cheesecake Factory famously has phone-book menus, but if you look carefully, you'll discover the same thirty-five ingredients* arranged in a thousand* combinations. *: No, I didn't count.
- icebraining 8y agoSimilar thing in our local Indian/Nepalese restaurant. 100+ choices based on the various combinations of ingredients.
- hvidgaard 8y agoIf you can make it work without driving up the inventory cost, then fair enough. But it's still annoying to have to go through 4 pages just to see the entire menu. I want 4-5 different plates or so to choose between for the main course. If the restaurant is any good, I'll be fine with a Fish, Cow, Chicken, Vegetarian dish, and the chef can make what is fitting for the season and current availability of produce. Some of the best meals I've had there wasn't even a choice. I really don't go to restaurants to research the difference between 4 similar but not identical dishes. I want to pay someone to know how to make a really good meal, and make it perfectly for me.
- marak830 8y ago
- dugmartin 8y agoYears ago, my wife’s friend who was the marketing director of a regional chain of family friendly restaurants told us about a few menu positioning tactics that are used to maximize revenue. The one I still remember is the item on the first inside page on the top right corner is the item with the highest margin, usually pasta. The reasoning for the placement is that people who didn’t have a strong preference for what they wanted would scan the entire menu and then return to the beginning of the menu and get “stuck” in the corner on their second pass. I’m not sure if this is based in any research but it’s a fun thing to look for when you are out to eat.
- bardworx 8y agoYou are 100% correct and there is plenty of "science" that goes into it. It is similar to how a person reads a website[0][1], in an F pattern; The most important information should be top right, with lower importance being down below. Also, all hier tier items (think steak/shrimp) are always near the middle of the menu, to "sandwich" them between items that are more cost conscious in order to downplay the price difference. [0]: https://conversionxl.com/blog/10-useful-findings-about-how-people-view-websites/ https://conversionxl.com/blog/10-useful-findings-about-how-p... [1]: https://econsultancy.com/blog/66920-why-visitors-only-read-20-of-your-web-page https://econsultancy.com/blog/66920-why-visitors-only-read-2...
- unixhero 8y agoStrange, I always learnt that we read, no, scan websites and pages in a Z pattern. https://uxplanet.org/z-shaped-pattern-for-reading-web-content-ce1135f92f1c https://uxplanet.org/z-shaped-pattern-for-reading-web-conten...
- bardworx 8y agoSame guy wrote about Z[0] and the F[1] pattern. I think they're different sides of the same coin (what information you're trying to convey). In the Z pattern, most websites have log in requirements or call to action[0]. In the F pattern, most websites convey information: menus, newspapers, blogs, etc.[1] [0]: https://uxplanet.org/z-shaped-pattern-for-reading-web-content-ce1135f92f1c https://uxplanet.org/z-shaped-pattern-for-reading-web-conten... [1]: https://uxplanet.org/f-shaped-pattern-for-reading-content-80af79cd3394 https://uxplanet.org/f-shaped-pattern-for-reading-content-80...
- briandear 8y agoI see the results of these consultant-driven places everywhere and, everywhere it’s like they all used the same consultant in a dire bid for relevance. It’s poke-this, quinoa that, avocado toast with a side of “authentic” matcha. The hell with it. Give me a “voice” — do something with your food. Don’t Kardashianize every damned item. An example of someone I feel that is doing it right is a guy in Houston named Russell Ybarra. He just started his latest place called Burger Libre — and it wasn’t consultant driven, it was driven by his decades of success with his Gringo’s chain in Houston. The “consultants” are his friends and employees along with actually knowing how to make a restaurant succeed. Tillman Fertitta is another guy who uses years of experience to create great chain experiences. The restaurant business is filled with people that have more money than sense. It’s obviously about the food, but it’s about having something to say with the food and experience — and that voice rarely comes from consultants that travel to 20 restaurants in 2 days looking for insight. The same could be said about startups. Want to make money? Don’t chase yoga pants. Yoga pants follow, they rarely lead. If you are duplicating what’s working with the yoga pants crowd, you are already 5 steps behind. “Don’t skate to where the puck is, but where it’s going. — Wayne Gretzky” — Michael Scott.
- Damogran6 8y agoI don't know where it's like where you are, but around here, there's a dozen established eateries, and corners of strip malls that get new restaurants every 8 months or so. There's gotta be a solid profit in selling loans to people who have a dream of owning a restaurant (or bar, or eatery, or whatever), but haven't the faintest clue how to run the business.
- dmurray 8y agoGenerally lenders prefer to lend to a business that will succeed.
- Damogran6 8y agoYou'd think that, but the percentage of failure I've personally witnessed tells me there's profit in the write-offs, too. ETA: In the venture capitalist realm, I hear you fund 10 businesses with the hope that one of them strikes it rich.
- eadmund 8y ago> “Yes,” the strategist answered. “That’s an operational solve.” I recall several years ago 'ask' being used as a noun (which struck me as very odd, given that 'request' exists and suffices); the use of 'solve' instead of 'solution' seems equally gratuitous. Has anyone spotted any other similar oddities in the wild? I wonder if it's a trend. One wonders if 'food' will someday just be called 'eat' (yes, there's already 'eats,' which is subtly different) or 'article' 'read.' Reading the article itself, it's a little amusing how much of this is trend-chasing (European blazers, odd habits of speech, 'lighter, brighter, fresher') rather than trend-setting. It's a bit like a middle-aged dad trying to seem 'hip' and 'with-it.' Incidentally, the restaurant in question appears to be Pei Wei.
- whalesalad 8y agoAt the agency level things like this happen all the time. It’s an abstraction from the problem that suggests it isn’t one. Makes me miss LA.
- cat199 8y ago> Makes me miss LA. where people are simple, straightforward, and down to earth? hmm.
- foobar1962 8y agoI listened to a webinar for some software, and the presenter boasted that a feature has been “up-leveled” in the new version. I thought it was embarrassing tbh. As though is not enough to “improve” things any more.
- ggambetta 8y ago"Learnings", which seems to be uttered by people who also speak of "asks". I find all these terrible.
- jacobush 8y agoYour attitude is double plus un-good.
- bardworx 8y agoWorking in the hospitality field for half my life, I can attest to this article. Its really on point (company I work for went through a similar exercise a year or so ago). The thought that goes into menu design is spectacular but it's less science and more shooting darts in the dark; No one can predict consumer behavior but there are always "staples" that have been proven to work.
- johan_larson 8y agoI wonder how often consultant-driven revampings like this actually succeed. I seem to remember that the show "Kitchen Nightmares" generally fails to turn around the restaurants they work with.
- bardworx 8y agoFrom personal experience: 50/50. If a brand has solid OPs, then consulting firms do wonders; Menu is only part of the equation. If a brand has spotty OPs (poor service, lack of "energy", employees who are not engaged) then a new menu will not help them. McDonalds, Panda Express, and Subway did not win because they had the best food; They won because they had predictable food with good OPs and understanding of trends. A real word example: Panda Express makes sure that when their orange chicken is coming out of the kitchen, it's always in a sizzling wok. That "experience" is trained (by their OPs) from the beginning to embody the story of "hot & fresh right off the stove" feeling (from the guest). Chipotle attempted to simulate a similar feeling with their open kitchens: sounds of knives chopping and grill sizzling provides an atmosphere that their food is fresh, regardless if its mass produced. This wasn't by chance but heavily researched, including the sound (in decibels) of the sizzle from the guest's side.
- spodek 8y ago> I was a corporate restaurant consultant. Here’s how the sausage gets made. Didn't even make two sentences without a tired old cliché, maybe supposed to be clever because of the food connection. Sounds like a venture capitalist.
- gwbas1c 8y agoI read this article for about 15 minutes and I did not come across any science.
- dang 8y agoOk, we'll switch to the subtitle.
- Damogran6 8y agoI hate these people. The pessimist in me thinks it's the emergent behavior of universities convincing people they have to have a college education to be successful, which turns out millions of MBA's, who then descend on society, looking for untapped profit to optimize. It's a position that does nothing for the customer but convince them to spend more for less.
- cat199 8y ago"I hoped he didn’t sense the sarcasm in my voice. As much as I enjoyed the perks of the job (free pizza), working at the agency had been a mixed bag. I had spent nearly eight years in grad school analyzing the politics of 18th-century venison feasting, and here I was, Googling high-res images of French-fry containers before I could leave for the day."
- vinceguidry 8y agoI suspect the agency he worked for is going to hear about the article, realize who it was, and hound all his future employers about what a disloyal cad he is. I appreciated the insights that the article offered, but it felt like a scurrilous bit of whistleblowing to me, the kind you really don't want to know about, like married CEOs sleeping with their staff.
- 794CD01 8y agoWhat's wrong with whistleblowing? It's pretty concerning that your example of something that isn't worth blowing a whistle about is basically rape.
- vinceguidry 8y agoA CEO sleeping with subordinates absolutely crosses ethical and moral lines, but it isn't rape. It's not rape unless it's rape. There's too much depressing shit in the world to report and publicly name and shame everyone that decides to be a cad. If he crosses over from cad to monster, that's when I want to hear about it.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoHey we all 'program' right? And I 'paint'. And a doctor will 'cure'. Its been going on for aeons.
- jasode 8y agoA related video from Dan Jurafsky where his team analyzed the words in 6500 menus and found correlations of adjectives & nouns used by the cheap vs expensive restaurants.[1] (Or put another way... imagine this thread's "menu design" story being multiplied 6500 times and DJ researchers analyze the output of those consultations -- the 6500 menus. The corpus reveals some interesting repeating text patterns.) To apply DJ's findings, we notice that the author India Mandelkern writes: >Back at the office, our team pooled our observations on multicolored sticky notes that we stuck to a giant whiteboard. “Dishes have no freshness cues.” We assume this results in a Pei Wei menu[2] with these excerpts (and with particular words _underscored_): >Then we wok-sear it in our _delectable_ orange sauce and finish it with _fresh_ orange slices >our Wei Better Orange Chicken and Wei Veggie Orange Chicken are made with _fresh_, not frozen chicken, According to DJ, the expensive restaurants would not use words like "delectable" and "fresh". [1] deep link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iYwUh1Hdho&feature=youtu.be&t=14m27s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iYwUh1Hdho&feature=youtu.be... [2] https://www.peiwei.com/orangechicken https://www.peiwei.com/orangechicken
- 0x4f3759df 8y agoI learned the concept of counter-signalling from that video "Contrary to this standard implication, high types sometimes avoid the signals that should separate them from lower types, while intermediate types often appear the most anxious to send the “right” signals. The nouveau riche flaunt their wealth, but the old rich scorn such gauche displays. Minor officials prove their status with petty displays of authority, while the truly powerful show their strength through gestures of magnanimity. People of average education show off the studied regularity of their script, but the well educated often scribble illegibly. Mediocre students answer a teacher’s easy questions, but the best students are embarrassed to prove their knowledge of trivial points. Acquaintances show their good intentions by politely ignoring one’s flaws, while close friends show intimacy by teasingly highlighting them. People of moderate ability seek formal credentials to impress employers and society, but the talented often downplay their credentials even if they have bothered to obtain them. A person of average reputation defensively refutes accusations against his character, while a highly respected person finds it demeaning to dignify accusations with a response." https://kelley.iu.edu/riharbau/cs-randfinal.pdf https://kelley.iu.edu/riharbau/cs-randfinal.pdf
- criddell 8y agoThe article mentions Applebee's and that made me think of Chili's. I remember in the late '90s going Chili's somewhat regularly and always being happy with the food and service. On a whim, we went to a new Chili's about a year ago and nothing was very good. Anything that wasn't deep fried was microwaved. It made me wonder if my tastes had changed over the past 20 years or if Chili's changed their processes. Is this the result of relying on consultants?
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoEverything changed. We're not the generation they're catering to any more? An upbringing of burgers and fried food has brought a new generation to restaurants.
- Cthulhu_ 8y agoI want to believe that said generation, if they really are into burgers and such as much, would gravitate towards higher quality products, but I guess convenience, lack of competition / options, familiarity, and probably most importantly, cost would stop anyone from making it in that area.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoMaybe 'quality' is in the eye of the beholder. Really good, boutique burgers are quite tasty. And you can fry food badly or well. There's room for it all in a good restaurant.
- xapata 8y agoThe other possibility is that they're badly managed. They didn't figure out a way to measure food quality and therefore chased a local optima, ignoring an important dimension. Evidence for this hypothesis is that many branches of these chains are closing and several chains are nearing bankruptcy.
- nimbius 8y agoOne of the first jobs I had after graduating with a culinary arts trade degree was at one of the big 5 chains of restaurants where they nail salvage items to the walls and play classic rock. After 2 years working the kitchen and bar, I can attest fully these are the equivalent of a Chuck-E-Cheez for adults. "food" is slightly more than a step up from fast food. main course Items are delivered frozen and reconstituted in a high speed sous vide system. Fries or any fried finger food are frozen, and depending on the franchise owner there is a specified hold time of up to 2 hours. My location ignored this because 'we sell so much food!' when in reality we're ignoring it because wastage is logged and reported to corporate and the franchise owner wasnt interested in lectures from the suits. Other items like specials and anything that read 'grill' was placed in one of four high speed commercial microwaves, then sent to a 'finisher' which resembled a grill but simply imparted the markings on the food in about 20 seconds. Hamburgers didnt receive this treatment as they arrived fully cooked in many cases, with the exception of the angus burger, which was one of 2 items on the menu that was actually thawed and cooked on a real grill. The bar isnt operated on a razor-thin margin of profit, its just flat out greed. items are chosen for hold time and markup. Frozen margaritas/anything can be held for up to 2 weeks, as the mix from corporate is largely preservatives. distributer orders do not specify a brand, only a negotiated price for a specific liquor. Beer provided almost for free, as corporate aggressively negotiates the terms and in some cases, owns major stake in distributors. all poured alcohol is underpoured partly because the establishment is cheap, and partly because the only thing that can shut down these shitty chains is an alcohol violation or poor customer experience because of an 'over-service event' at the bar. they just reopen in a week 'under new management' anyhow. If you're wondering how franchise owners play into the restaurant, theyre basically nonexistent. Our franchise owners only visible presence was a plaque on the wall with their names, and occasional half-hearted sentiments from the managers on things the owners would like us to do which were basically restatements of what corporate wanted us to do. It wasnt until my last year of employment when I learned they were in their early eighties, and confined to a nursing home somewhere out of state. Power of attorney rested with their son, who had been in and out of drug treatment programs somewhere in california. We were eventually purchased as a franchise package by a venture holdings company in chicago.
- shadowtree 8y ago
- magic_beans 8y agoThis article is a sad reminder that the goopy atrocity that is PF Chang’s is the ONLY encounter swathes of Americans ever have with “Asian” food. What a shame.
- Graham24 8y agoI couldn't read to the end of that article, I just felt myself dying inside.
- marak830 8y agoThe biggest take away (no pun intended) I got from this article is that the owner was cluless and the chef was non existent. Where I come from, the chef designs, costs and impliments the menu. If I, or the theorical they, don't draw customers or sufficient funds to cover the business they are out on their arse. For a chain, there needs to be an executive chef whose sole job is to cost, oversee each location, ensure quality standards are being kept, use the fact that the restaurant is order x amount more than anyone else to get a better price from suppliers and make sure everything is running at cost (our next cinname in the industry is bean counters for a reason haha). This sounds to me like the owner got in way over their head.
- leroy_masochist 8y agoI work as an independent consultant and one of my recent projects was a study on the fast-casual restaurant industry on behalf of a long/short investor. It's a fascinating industry, and a bit depressing to learn about in depth (kind of like reading this article). The basic business model of all franchised restaurants with fixed menus and nationalized marketing budgets is getting people in the doors with something appealing (e.g. a value meal) and then get them to buy high-margin products (i.e. coffee, soft drinks, french fries, and food items that don't contain vegetables or meat). One thing I think most people don't realize is how much the house loses money when you go in there and buy the healthy stuff. At QSRs from McDonald's to Panera the cost of delivering a salad to the customer exceeds the salad's price. If you're a starving entrepreneur and you can be disciplined about shopping for value, the healthy stuff at QSRs might be your best bet on a daily basis.
- danans 8y ago> the cost of delivering a salad to the customer exceeds the salad's price. Is this mostly due to the higher cost of fresh ingredients, or the additional labor required to assemble them?
- Domenic_S 8y agoI'd bet it's due to waste. You can buy a lot of things in bulk and refrigerate/freeze them, but salads don't keep very well.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoMaybe the low $/m³ value?
- leroy_masochist 8y ago> Is this mostly due to the higher cost of fresh ingredients, or the additional labor required to assemble them? Both. On ingredient cost alone, restaurants will analyze across multiple dimensions: the per-unit pure cost (e.g., the wholesale price of a head of lettuce), transportation cost, storage cost, and spoilage rate (lots of interesting volatility modeling done on this).
- ryandrake 8y agoI don't get all the sadness in these responses. Are you guys all surprised that businesses finely tune their marketing and operations in order to maximize profit, and sometimes they hire consultants to help? You wouldn't be surprised that retail clothing stores measure and optimize everything about their ops, store layout, merchandise presentation, color palette, music, the fragrance in the air. Your favorite grocery stores are carefully engineered, too, and your favorite hotels, home improvement stores, gas stations. Nobody would be surprised that these places are tweaked and optimized for profit by MBAs. But, suddenly it's shocking that your favorite restaurants are all phony too?
- mhneu 8y agoThe problem is how many of our smart people go into marketing and persuasion. Not clear if that is good for our economy... or society.
- eqdw 8y agoNot sad that they do it. Sad that they do it _stupidly_ Almost everything described in this article as an optimization was something that makes my experience worse
- Kagerjay 8y agoI had thought it was Peiwei as well but Peiwei doesn't serve korean BBQ bimibap (maybe its their newest item and I haven't seen it yet). Everything else in the story matched 100% with Peiweis decision making. Peiwei has had some... questionable management choices in my opinion. They revamped their website not once, but twice overhauling it with a new webstack in the last 2-3 years. Everytime its been changed, its gotten significantly worse to order online. They originally had a perfectly fine site built in PHP now its in ASP.net. They had broken functionality on their chile ramen noodles for about 3-6 months which is strange because I reported the issue to corporate and it didn't get fixed. I didn't quite understand their marketing strategy until I read this article. I remember when poke bowls were introduced. Then dandan noodles. Then thai peanut noodles (which was removed). They are trying to do everything, which never works out at the end. Peiwei has a lacking brand identity, they do everything but at an extremely mediocre level. They just.. simply are copying the current trends. Japanese / Korean fusion used to be the hottest trend in this market. Then it shifted towards hawaiin and pokebowls. Now the current hot trend I would say is streetfare food / tapas (taiwan, singapore, and thai). Source: I eat at peiwei maybe once a month for 3+ ish years, personally have met the owner of Panda Express, and consulted with many growing restaurant and national chains as well.
- nfriedly 8y agoI don't eat out very often any more, and I really don't miss it. I get better food at home, for less money, and counting travel time, it's probably faster too.
- swanson 8y agoAnyone know the name of the consulting company featured in this article? I find this kind of stuff super fascinating -- the intersection of behavioral economics, lean manufacturing, queuing theory, and food.
- heathercranston 8y agoi've been a corporate consultant for roughly 20years. Last year, I started working with the biggest restaurant consulting firm in NYC, The Restaurant Company. I can tell you, one of the most honest truths I can bring to this conversation is how the world works; plain and simple. We as consumers, pay for service. and I'm not referring to the service of a waiter; the service fees associated with service. NOTHING in this world is priced at cost, price is determined by the "perceived value". Not something you should be depressed about, but just aware of, as a consumer. If you pursue to purchase things at cost, you will have to chop out a few middle men. Your vendor, your farmer and the entity you walked in to purchase the meal. Your pockets are paying for convenience, unless you have an interest and time in growing your own garden and raising a few cattle. James Leak Head QSR Advisor The Restaurant Company www.therestaurantcompany.us