Aaron D. Allen » Authenticity

World’s Best Foie Gras May Point the Way for Rising Culinary Stars

Aaron Allen — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 00:43:30 +0000

Sure, the controversy over Foie Gras rages on – and some cities continue to work to ban it – but no matter your position on Foie Gras, this video helps to communicate a broader message. The message I took from this video (and some of the recent Food Documentaries) is that our modern day approaches to making food and nature better are flawed. The message is that, more often than not, food tastes better when the chef works to help nature shine through the food rather than wrestling and forcing his will on the food. Many indicators point to a modern day consumer that seeks more authenticity in the food, to better understand where they food came from and the story behind that (see Celebrity Chef trend), and a return to more natural foods that better respect the earlier agricultural systems before there were patented (Frankenstein versions of) soy beans and molecular manipulations of our foods. While you’re still more likely to see fructose corn syrup be in far more plentiful supply than actual fruits at McDonald’s and other mass-feeders, there is strong indication of a shift in our desired relationship with food.

Hope you will also visit my blog post on Food Industry Evolution.

Restaurant Marketing & Authenticity

Aaron Allen — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 08:56:46 +0000

Coca-Cola has on their balance sheet an asset for brand equity, otherwise known as goodwill. It places the value at $50 billion. To put that number in perspective, if you stacked $100 bills on top of each other you would have a stack 3,459 feet high for every billion dollars (a stack of $100 bills 32 miles high). Try fitting that in your wallet.

Surely we can all agree that the real value of Coca-Cola isn’t in the recipe. After 100 years, a better tasting sugar-water could have been invented. The real value is the brand and the bedrock of the brand is “genuine” and “authentic”. Or, as they sum up in a successful campaign “The Real Thing”.

The book The Experience Economy has been around for a while and I’ve long recommended it (we even did a book report on it). The follow up book by the same authors is titled “Authenticity”. It also is a must-have in your personal library.

With 1,000,000 restaurants in the United States alone, differentiation is a key tenant of successful restaurant marketing. At the heart of differentiation is authenticity and being true to what your company stands for.

I found this clip for you of the author of Authenticity and Experience Economy. These principles are essential components of restaurant marketing.