The Michelin travel company was created for one reason – to promote the sale of tires, Michelin’s primary product. The tire company’s executives reasoned that promoting destinations to travel to, such as restaurants, hotels, and travel guides for a wide range of countries, will increase car travel and, with it, tires’ wear and tear. The entire line was considered a marketing expense to support the main business of the company.
They were right. Car travel increased as the famed Michelin guides took hold. The green guides gradually became an indispensable companion to travelers, particularly European travel for newcomers. Its accurate assessment of restaurants and hotels rendered the red guides a reliable source of information about both hospitality branches and gained enormous credibility and sway among the world’s gourmands and travelers at all levels of sophistication and financial means.
What began as a marketing expense turned into a valuable business. Michelin’s reputation and brand recognition grew, as did the products marketed under the travel arm of the company. The red guides and the star system became so important that at least one chef committed suicide when his restaurant was downgraded from 3 to 2 stars (I know because Liat and I had reservations there but he passed before we arrived). They were the ultimate judge of quality of cuisine. Their critics were feared and revered at the same time, and their exacting criteria for each star category became the goal for many a chef world-wide.
The company continued to evolve as travelers’ tastes and financial resources changed. When flights became more ubiquitous and worldwide travel increased meaningfully, Michelin introduced different categories for lower priced restaurants (bib gourmand, for example) and digitized its product without abandoning its famous red guides. It expanded from Europe to Japan and the United States, and adapted (perhaps with an eye toward revenue generation) its criteria to yield guides featuring hundreds of restaurants around the world, with strong emphasis on status-sensitive markets in Asia. Today, Tokyo has more restaurants in the Michelin guide than Paris. This shift increased meaningfully the number of users and participants in the guides, resulting in greater profitability. At the same time, it began a process of criteria changes that modernized the guides and made them less reliable for persnickety hospitality seekers.
No longer can a traditional user of Michelin rely on the guide to ensure that the most expensive restaurants will provide a flawless dining experience. The reason is because, as the guide adjusted its criteria to reflect changes in diners’ expectations and demands (and commercial needs and pressures as well), the infallible reliability that characterized the guides for many decades declined. The cache is still there, but experienced users take the recommendations with a grain of salt as Michelin’s criteria continue to shift.
Today’s three starred restaurants can be classified into four categories:
1. The new cuisine – minimalistic, experience-driven, story-telling and emotional. A typical menu features dishes with names such as “The horizon fades”, “Summer blaze” or “Yellow beam” (these are actual dishes from a venerable 3 starred restaurant that has had 3 stars since Michelin’s inception of the star system). There is no description of the ingredients or the dishes. The dishes emphasize meticulous visual presentation (admittedly they are incredibly pretty) and, in my opinion, the taste takes a back seat to the visual and emotional effect”. Many of the traditional elements of traditional cuisine, such as highly concentrated sauces, are absent. Unusual combinations are at a premium. A story associated with the menu is especially appreciated. For example, there is a restaurant that presents the food based upon the elevation in which the ingredients (typically potatoes and corn) are grown. I can attest from personal experience that my humble palate can’t tell the difference; but it’s an interesting gimmick. Others forage for obscure herbs and greens which taste as you might imagine, but are celebrated nevertheless.
Most of these restaurants do not specify a menu. They offer fixed menus of a certain number of dishes, with or without wine pairings. Your choice is how many of these dishes (some call them “sequences”) do you want – 5, 7, 10 etc.
Most Michelin restaurants today are in this category. Alexandre Mazzia in Marseille, France and Central in Lima, Peru are good examples of these genre.
2. The bridge cuisine – building on traditional techniques and sauces, embellishing them with new elements such as molecular cuisine (using chemistry to change the texture and look of ingredients while remaining true or intensifying the taste). Restaurant Bareiss and Waldhotel Sonora are examples of this genre.
3. The unique one-off restaurants that simply produce spectacular food using influences and ingredients from various parts of the world to yield delicious combinations not for the shock value alone. There are few of those in my experience. Disfrutar and Arzak and examples of this genre.
4. The traditionalists – perfectly executed traditional cuisine. The Tokyo three-starred sushi restaurants and our own Masa in New York are perfect examples of that genre.
The problem for me is, Michelin doesn’t tell you who is who, and obscure menus including dishes such as sunshine or earth (group 1) don’t tell me what the food is like. Fortunately for Michelin, I am in the minority. Most diners still rely on their critics and appear to enjoy the food.
The Michelin story is inspiring because it shows how one can build on brand loyalty to diversify the product line to meet a broader range of customers’ needs. It also demonstrates the importance of staying abreast of market changes in terms of customer tastes and technology. Michelin guides have survived and thrived despite proliferating competition (Pellegrino’s Fifty Best Restaurants in the World) where others (Frommers, Fodors) have not done nearly as well.
So, what does all this have to do with banking? Check out Anheuser Busch’s new non-beer products (energy drinks, BEES Fintech and Digital Marketplace – including merchant financing, digital wallet integration) and Amazon’s AWS to be inspired by how trusted brands find ways to diversify well beyond their traditional missions, often by leveraging their customer base’s diverse needs. It’s an intriguing concept.
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