MEMES: Chicken Fingers, Drunk Cooking, Scooby-Doo S**t, & More!
Monday always brings you a fresh hot pot of restaurant memes. Perfect for laughing over with your staff or sharing with your guests as some social media fodder. This week’s batch brings children ordering at fancy restaurants, true burrito love, finding your passion, and more. Enjoy!
DID YOU KNOWS…
America’s Favorite “Mexican” Restaurant
In the most American thing ever, Taco Bell has been named “America’s favorite Mexican Restaurant.” *sigh* One day maybe we’ll get it right, America. To be fair, there aren’t many Mexican-inspired chains out there, so Taco Bell had an edge going into it.
SI TV Teams Up with MLB
There’s still no plans for Sports Illustrated TV to start hosting live games, as they’re really focusing on what they do best – tell stories. The OTT network is teaming up with MLB to bring two longform documentaries, including 14 Backwhich documents the NY Yankees-Boston Red Sox 1978 pennant race and Bucky Bleeping Dent. Seems like SI TV is enjoying twist the knife in Sox fan’s backs.
The Best Food Docs on Netflix
If you’re looking to show-binge on your next day off, Netflix has a slew of food documentaries to keep you going. How many of these have you already seen?
DON’T BRING A COFFEESHOP TO A COFFEESHOP FIGHT
Why it matters to you: Starbucks is moving into Italy in a confusing move.
In a truly bizarre move, Starbucks is opening its first store in Italy-- the country that perfected the cappuccino and other espresso drinks. This is akin to Taco Bell or Chipotle opening a store in Mexico or a Domino’s in Italy. This harkens back to our story about the oversaturated poke bowl restaurant market leading to a potential crash in that type of restaurant.
Now, we’re sure Starbucks knows this but them opening a store in the coffee capital of the planet brings up a good point on knowing your market and the oversaturation of said market. Example: don’t try to open up a coffee shop in an area already deep with excellent coffee shops. Starbucks is almost certainly setting themselves up for failure.
So, what does this mean for restaurateurs on a normal level? Know your market. We see it all the time; a pizza/roast beef shop opening next to another pizza/roast beef shop opening next to another, etc… Setting yourself a part is setting yourself up for success; blending in to the market is risky unless you have some other unique way of differentiating yourself. Choose something unique, do it better than anyone around, and stick with it! People love artisan food.
CALORIE COUNTS ON BEER?!
Why it matters to you: The FDA is enforcing adding calorie counts on everything from menus at restaurants to the craft beer industry.
Have you ever been sitting back with your friends sipping on a couple of ice cold session pilsners from the local craft brewery and thought “Dang, I wonder how many calories are in this?” It isn’t a question that generally arises for craft beer fans, mostly because it is generally common knowledge that 1. beer isn’t good for the waistline, and 2. the probable-high calorie count is a trade-off for supporting a delicious small business.
Even still these companies must comply to this new law being imposed by the FDA and it may-well hurt these companies. If a casual craft beer is looking at beers to try they may be very wary of these higher calorie counts. A double IPA is a far cry from a Coors Light…
Time will tell on how calorie count info will affect the craft brew market. While some drinkers might be turned off by the high calorie beers, previous studies have shown that consumers aren’t as swayed by nutrition info as proponents of the guidelines would’ve hoped. If that’s changed, it could be a nail in the coffin for a lot of the very small batch specialty brewers, the ones that produce weirder IPAs and flavored beers especially. Those beers are certain nowhere near low-calorie. We suspect that the larger craft brewers will be completely fine though, just a few tweaks to the labels and packaging and then back to business as usual. Full steam ahead! Overall, we are worried for the little guys here; hopefully they can figure it out before it is too late.
