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How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business

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Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business

#31

Post by gist »

moron4hire wrote: post #22
hluska wrote: post #6

You know, at the risk of heaping on the negativity, I read their Yelp ratings and while some are excellent, others are genuinely a sign of a restaurant in crisis. Consider the gentleman from New Zealand who made reservations via an email to the owner five weeks in advance, spent the afternoon walking around downtown LA to avoid rush hour traffic, and then showed up only to be told that they were closed for a wine tas…

I've generally been growing to the idea that I want to hear all criticism towards my projects, whether it's good or bad, whether it's constructive or not. People suck at communicating, but when they leave criticism, there is always a reason somewhere at the core. It's the old saying that it is apathy, not hate, that is the opposite of love. So when people are heaping hate on one of my projects, I am now starting to t…

On your homepage seanmcbeth.com the javascript (or whatever does the animation) is totally choking my Firefox (latest) running on a Mac Pro Desktop (latest). Infact when I tried to write this comment it was literally like 300 baud until I closed your website page.

(All of this is to your point and ironically..)

Btw it looks cool but if I can't easily scroll your homepage you have lost me as a potential client.

Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business

#32

Post by lsc »

wdewind wrote: post #12
hluska wrote: post #6

You know, at the risk of heaping on the negativity, I read their Yelp ratings and while some are excellent, others are genuinely a sign of a restaurant in crisis. Consider the gentleman from New Zealand who made reservations via an email to the owner five weeks in advance, spent the afternoon walking around downtown LA to avoid rush hour traffic, and then showed up only to be told that they were closed for a wine tas…

I don't think that actually speaks against the story, though. The story is: we started small to do our own thing, then a national review blew us up and we couldn't handle the stress in order to scale the business. A lot of the yelp reviews sound like scaling issues, especially since the great reviews are interspersed with the bad: they were capable of delivering great experiences just not consistently.

Yeah. I mean, loving to do one aspect of the business is a huge advantage when running that business... but it's not the whole of the business. there's still all that other bullshit.

And... my experience? when you are small, if you are really good at that one thing you do, it's mostly okay that you suck at the other aspects of the business. As you scale, this becomes less and less true, you need someone at least minimally competent in the other business stuff, and "just hiring someone" is a lot harder than it sounds, when you are hiring for a skillset that you don't have. Scaling is hard to the point where it sometimes make sense to set a limit and try not to scale above a certain point.

Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business

#33

Post by damon_c »

Gorbzel wrote: post #11

HN is usually pretty good about calling out founders who blame everyone but themselves for failings. This is exactly that, just in a restaurant context. The problem is that Ari thought that Alma's humble origins mattered to people coming in for a good meal such that they would somehow obscure some pretty big problems with the restaurant. I can't imagine ever excusing a product's flaws simply because the founder had d…

I love how well the other two replies to this comment compliment each other!

Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business

#35

Post by gyardley »

downandout wrote: post #28
Gorbzel wrote: post #11

HN is usually pretty good about calling out founders who blame everyone but themselves for failings. This is exactly that, just in a restaurant context. The problem is that Ari thought that Alma's humble origins mattered to people coming in for a good meal such that they would somehow obscure some pretty big problems with the restaurant. I can't imagine ever excusing a product's flaws simply because the founder had d…

>could you possibly stop ripping people off with Eastern European wine that didn't pair with any of your tasting menu?.....Good riddance Perhaps it's my disdain for wine snobs or anyone else that takes ridiculous things seriously, but I find your comment extremely distasteful - especially the quoted part. Unless he is actively misrepresenting the origin or brand of the wine, he isn't "ripping people off". He simply m…

Eh, there are wines that go better with certain dishes than others. If you order a wine on your own and it doesn't go with the food, it's your own damn fault, but on a tasting menu with wine pairings it's 100% understood by the customers that the sommelier has spent some time identifying and selecting good matches for each course.

I can't tell from the grandparent comment whether he's grousing about a bad choice he made personally or some botched tasting menu pairings - but if he got the tasting menu with the wine pairings and the wine didn't match, then yeah, he absolutely got ripped off. Expecting two things the restaurant recommends together to actually go well together isn't an 'outlandish expectation' at all.

Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business

#36

Post by sgeisenh »

striking wrote: post #26
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Phantom Menace is objectively a bad film. You want a good film that teaches this to seven year olds? Try Finding Nemo. The Phantom Menace features offensive racial stereotypes, terrible dialog, A poorly-executed subplot about a trade dispute, and characters that I personally could not and cannot identify with. Is it fair to speculate that you were born in 1992, making you the 7 year old you refer to above? Search…

It's also a historic piece of cinematography with a world that feels vast and immersive to its fans. (I'm not one, but I am empathetic enough to imagine how they feel.) Objectively it's not perfect, but every movie means something different to everyone and registers on a different level with each person. So you're free to criticize it and rate it based on how well or poorly it portrays the things you think it stands…

I don't want to weigh in on the discussion about The Phantom Menace, but I do want to address the sentiment that in order to have a valid opinion about some craft, you have to be proficient at that craft.

When you practice something, you usually don't practice it in order to impress others who practice the same thing. Unfortunately, this ends up happening in many cases (usually with abstract things such as pure mathematics or classical music, where appreciation is difficult without context). But in most cases, you produce things that can be appreciated by others, regardless of their interest in the process. If you knit your friend or loved one a cool scarf, they don't necessarily need to be interested in knitting to enjoy wearing it. And if you're a great baker, someone doesn't need to know anything about baking to enjoy your creations.

All the same, ordinary people can have valid negative opinions of things that they aren't proficient in. When a scarf has numerous dropped stitches or a pie doesn't taste quite right, many people can make observations and express their distaste. Just because they aren't knitters or bakers doesn't mean that their critique doesn't "count for anything." They might not be able to pinpoint the part of the process where something went wrong, but that still doesn't invalidate their opinion.

In this case, the intended audience of The Phantom Menace was not film makers, it was ordinary people (in contrast to say Birdman, which may be easier to appreciate if you have some insight into the dramatic world). Maybe it was meant to appeal to a younger crowd (I enjoyed it when I first saw it). Maybe it was meant to appeal to fans of the original trilogy. But the fact remains that aaronbrethorst is entitled to his opinion and his opinion is perfectly valid.

P.S. I also don't like The Phantom Menace, but that doesn't really matter.

Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business

#37

Post by Spooky23 »

percept wrote: post #4

And they continue to beat up on the guy in the comments: "You represent everything that is wrong with the food industry in Los Angeles." Can you imagine that? Who is he, Stalin? (I'm giving Hitler the day off.)

Foodies flexing their Yelp/Tripadvisor power are a obnoxious bunch. Stalin may be worse than this guy :)

The best example of these food nuts gone wild can be found in "Mexican" restaurants all over the country. Once a small cabal of folks decide that a place isn't "authentic" or not, forget about it... They'll be whining about the lack of fish tacos or whatever forever.

Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business

#38

Post by moron4hire »

gist wrote: post #31
moron4hire wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've generally been growing to the idea that I want to hear all criticism towards my projects, whether it's good or bad, whether it's constructive or not. People suck at communicating, but when they leave criticism, there is always a reason somewhere at the core. It's the old saying that it is apathy, not hate, that is the opposite of love. So when people are heaping hate on one of my projects, I am now starting to t…

On your homepage seanmcbeth.com the javascript (or whatever does the animation) is totally choking my Firefox (latest) running on a Mac Pro Desktop (latest). Infact when I tried to write this comment it was literally like 300 baud until I closed your website page. (All of this is to your point and ironically..) Btw it looks cool but if I can't easily scroll your homepage you have lost me as a potential client.

This is indeed a defect, so your criticism wasn't negative or unwarranted :)

Filing a defect report is one thing, complaining about the very idea of having an animated background, yelling at me for being a "typical front-end dev, doesn't test in Firefox" or something like that, that's the sort of negative criticism I'm talking about.

My point was, even the people who are engaging in dismissive, negative criticism need to at least be a cause for consideration. You might not take them at their word, but it should trigger a process of introspection.

People hate animated backgrounds for the reason you just mentioned, it causes a slow experience. But I didn't know it was causing a slow experience for you. You are correct that it is better to not have a slow experience than to have an animated background, but maybe I can have both. I wouldn't have known there was a problem until you complained (not that I don't test my projects, just that particular site is not very high on my priority list because it is not and has never been a source of business for me). So now I get to make the choice of either improving the animation or removing it entirely, just because someone complained and I didn't just dismiss it as "haters gonna hate".

Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business

#39

Post by pinkrooftop »

I ate there before it was named best restaurant in America. It was ok a bit pretentious with tasting style food and bare interior. I tried to go back months later with a date and the answering machine said they don't take phone calls during dinner service (but they were only opened for dinner) and just hung up. Went to another place downtown instead and drove by Alma, it was empty

Re: How Being Named the 'Best New Restaurant in America' Hurt My Business

#40

Post by jpp »

nols wrote: post #16
wdewind wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that actually speaks against the story, though. The story is: we started small to do our own thing, then a national review blew us up and we couldn't handle the stress in order to scale the business. A lot of the yelp reviews sound like scaling issues, especially since the great reviews are interspersed with the bad: they were capable of delivering great experiences just not consistently.

The second paragraph says "the restaurant was never, ever full." So it seems like they expected to handle more business, and in fact the lack of business shut them down. Maybe they had problems with the growth, but if they were never full then they really shouldn't have. Restaurants with growth problems need to serve food quickly so they can get people in and out to make room for more people, this restaurant apparent…

A "not full" restaurant scenario can be a scheduling algorithm issue -- "we need a 4 top at 7:30 pm;" meaning everyone who comes in between opening and 7:30 pm sees it empty. Multiply across the entire space, and you can get bad utilization while "100% booked."
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