RESTAURANT MEMES: McDonald's Ice Cream Machine, This is Dory Now, Jamie Oliver, and Many More!
This week’s restaurant memes include some inspiration, Patrick (from Spongebob) goes to work for McD’s, growing older, the official hat of craft brew drinkers and more. Kick off the week with some lolz, and share them with staff & guests.
DID YOU KNOWS…
Could You Go Cold Turkey?
Social media has revolutionized communication behavior over the past ten years. It seems hard to have a social life without using the various platforms to interact with friends, family or the wider world. This makes findings by the Pew Research Center all the more surprising, which suggest that Americans might be less dependent on social media than often thought: across all age groups, 59% of respondents thought it wouldn’t be hard to give up social media.
This is March
Sports reporter Jon Rothstein has a lot of catchphrases and he’s decided to try to copyright one of them – “This is March” under the apparel category. In the first eight days of March, Rothstein tweeted “This is March” 17x. Someone should check if the robot is broken.
Barbie Girl
Barbie is releasing a chef doll inspired by Hélène Darroze. Darroze is one of 14 “role models” who are getting their own dolls. Darroze owns several Michelin ranked restaurants across Paris, London & Moscow, and was admitted into the French Legion of Honor in 2012.
SALVATION...GROCERY...STORE?
Why it matters to you: The Salvation Army is opening non-profit grocery stores in a low income community and aims to go national.
This past week “Doing the Most Good” Foods (DMG Foods for short) opened the doors at it’s inaugural location in Baltimore, MD. It marks a new journey for the Salvation Army, which aims to bring good, wholesome food to low-income residents in the country’s nutrition-poor areas. They aim to make these stores a sustainable landmark in their communities and teach residents how to eat smarter and healthier. An average DMG Foods will also be about half of the size of a typical supermarket, a strategy to reduce overhead and food waste.
A truly great aspect of this new plan is for SNAP recipients. DMG Foods aims to double the amount of nutritional food they can afford to purchase along with valuable programs like cooking courses and plenty of premade meals and salads. Salvation Army sounds like they may truly have the right idea with this venture and we are excited to see what happens with it from this point on.
STARBUCKS AND THE CONNOISSEUR
Why it matters to you: Starbucks continues it’s unending struggle to appease and attract coffee snobs everywhere.
Do you know any baristas? Do they ever go into a Starbucks for their morning coffee? “Usually not, unless it is the only available choice” is something along the lines of what they’ll say. How about your friends who are really into coffee? We’d venture to guess that they’ll have a similar response. Starbucks has constantly struggled to have coffee connoisseurs embrace them. They’ve tried several tactics and none have really been a hit within the coffee community. New roasts, single origin coffees, specialty espresso drinks; nothing has struck any chords with anyone beyond the casual consumer. So is there any winning for Starbucks in this battle?
We think most likely not. Independent coffee shops have long held a monopoly of sorts on people who care about coffee. These larger chains will always struggle in this realm because they simply cannot put the care into each cup that a smaller shop can. Nor can their baristas have the same level of training and expertise because, monetarily, it doesn't make sense to train them to that level. So, while they can try to assimilate to trends, they will never truly be able to nail down the connoisseurs.
