Authenticity
This blog deserves much more time than I’m going to give it right now…but I was reading an article in Nation’s Restaurant News on El Pollo Loco picking a fight with KFC (I post feeds on my website to some great blogs so I can go there every day to keep up with what’s going on in restaurants). KFC is getting their teeth kicked in by El Pollo Loco! Who?!!, right? I didn’t even realize El Pollo Loco was big and strong enough to go into the octagon with KFC but they have them in a rear choke submission on the topic of using beef powder and rendered beef fat in their grilled chicken…and it isn’t actually grilled… http://beefychicken.com. I’m going to try El Pollo Loco just on the merit of this commercial ad.
15 years ago I said to my wife, my boss and my dog (my dog was the only one who paid attention to me then) “The Mom and Pop will return with a vengeance to topple the mighty chains.” I don’t care what they say about market share, economies of scale, block buying, and leverage…people want authentic food!. I believe that now more than ever. Restaurants go wrong when they get greedy. They cease to be restaurants and, instead, become…well… retail stores serving food. REAL Food needs supervision and love. Retailers and accountants who apply pure economics to the food industry can get pretty far but they rarely create compelling food. Chili’s? Ponderosa? Bennigan’s? On The Border? Yep, you can pack em
in but the food lacks “love” and the service might as well come from Asimo.
Nope, for my money, I’ll give the small guy a chance, provided they are focused on using real fire from real wood, real grill marks, real cream in the cream sauce, real butter in the beurre blanc, real roasted chicken in the, uh…roasted chicken…I want real food when I go out to eat and I want to see the chef being a little creative. If he whiffs a few times, I’ll cut him a break…at least a human being is doing his best to cater to the community. If the Kitchen Manager at Chili’s sends out a burger that is Medium Well when I ordered it Medium Rare, I’m disappointed with him …and Asimo too…because they didn’t follow the carefully choreographed and trained and re-trained steps to make sure my burger comes out Medium Rare. Kitchen Systems are critical but over relying on them saps the restaurant of it’s soul. Chili’s provides jobs with great benefits and teaches restaurant managers to use some of the greatest streamlining and scaling tools available…but they sacrifice authenticity. Indeed every chef who wants to learn to run a successful restaurant should sign up for a stint at one of the big chains…they’ll learn how to be efficient, consistent, and profitable. I have nothing against Chili’s and think they do a marvelous job at consistently replicating their food in multiple markets through robust system execution. However…
Truly great food doesn’t happen when it’s done “for the money”. There is plenty of profit to be had when it’s done right…”right” means for a reasonable profit with a dining experience and assortment that suits the neighborhood it serves. Wall Street pressure will never support fresh food. El Pollo Loco should be careful, though. Once they get the taste for market share, they’ll surely start taking some shortcuts to support their growth…and pressure for profit…like KFC.
