everwas

Tag: food

  • American Food Mythology

    Let us remember the giants of American Cuisine. Betty Crocker Betty Crocker isn’t actually a real person. She is the brainchild of an advertising campaign developed by the Washburn-Crosby Company, a flour milling company started in the late 1800s that eventually became General Mills. Who was Betty Crocker? Colonel Sanders Ironically, Colonel Harland Sanders cannot…

  • NYC Takeout Chinese

    NYC Takeout Chinese

    There’s an unremarkable-looking Chinese joint a block away from where we live on 2nd Avenue. We pass it often on our way somewhere else. When SmartNews kicked in a stipend to encourage us to order in for dinner so we could stay online and monitor things for Election Night, I chose to give the Mee’s…

  • After Prison Cooking Show

    Joe Guerrero served time in prison. Joe has a pretty successful YouTube channel and website about his life in trying to adjust after prison. Riffing on the cooking show genre, Joe invites fellow inmate alumni Danny to teach his viewers how he made food in prison.

  • Grandma’s Recipes

    Izumi turned me on to a YouTube channel she’s discovered that features lovingly documents the kitchen recipes of an older, sometimes forgotten, generation in Japan. Each short vignette explores the life of these women who fed their family with what they had and passed on traditions of their region. From the producers: Our team especially…

  • Engineered Experience at Starbucks

    While Taco Bell worked several years to engineer the Doritos Locos Taco, Starbucks has honed its formula for the optimal coffee delivery experience. Apparently the seats at McDonald’s are engineered to get uncomfortable to sit in for longer than 30 minutes. Can you think of any other examples of Taylorism to guide consumer behavior?

  • Engineering of the Doritos Locos Tacos

    Fast food is engineered. The product development process is no different from other things that are engineered, it has a prototype phase, followed by QA, and user testing. The central issue was that Taco Bell’s shells used a different type of corn masa than Doritos chips. But it wasn’t simply a matter of adjusting the…

  • That Burger Has Strength, Dayum

    Long weekend here in the USA, a land where one guy’s review of a hamburger gets remixed into an iTunes hit.