A few articles seen in the lunchtime reading that seem to cluster around the team of making something appear better than it is:
- Remodeling. Two stories on remodeling. Based on their success at Applebee’s, the corporate owners of IHOP have decided to renovate the menus. They also plan to introduce IHOP frozen items to stores. In a larger makeover, McDonalds plans to revamp its stores to look more upscale and encourage people to linger. In other words, they are learning from Starbucks. Make it look nice, and people will pay more.
- Shopping. An article in the St Louis paper discusses how a local store, Schnucks, is playing up their quality because the previous price-based ads didn’t take. Related in some sense to that: if you didn’t see it over the weekend, the LA Times had a really neat interview with the Joe of Trader Joes.
- Cookbooks. I first looked at this article because I read the head as “Incarcerated Cuisine from a Camarillo Restaurant”, but it actually has to do with prison cooking. An inmate at a Texas prison has written a cookbook about how to cook only with prison comissary ingredients: garlic tablets, chips, salsa, canned tuna, etc. I’m not sure I want to eat it, but it is an interesting article to read. She says it should be useful for college students…
