I love a few restaurants. I love Jackie's in SilverSpring. I love Pete's Apizza in DC. I know how hard it is to make a sustained buisness out of a restaurant. I tell people about both whenever I can. I have no material connection to either business and sadly am not even recognized upon my frequent visits. (I mean, come on, I was at Jackie's opening night.....)
So when I discovered Tastecasters, I was intrigued.
A simple service, TasteCasters lets folks with social media juice (followers) form their own local groups to try restaurants and food shops with the express purpose of sharing their experience via their social graph ( their blog, Facebook page, Twitter, YouTube - you get the picture). Your self-formed group will then get invited by restaurants to come have a session. It's kind of like a tweet-up with an informal commitment to share your experience at the establishment via your own platform.
Dan Harris is the founder and is bootstrapping this effort. He is building the car while driving it so to speak. So, he gets lots of points and latitude for the scaffolding still being in place, so-to-speak. Being a WOMMA ethics guy I had to make a few suggestions that will only help what is an interesting idea. But first it begs the question of what gap is he trying to fill. There are lots of restaurant review sites and the ascendency of Yelp seems to leave little room for improvement. Still, I like the grassroots promise. And the chance to be a more prolific advocate for a restaurant or food shop you care about. But if the only gap TasteCasters fills is free food for tweeters, then this idea cannot fly.
Here is how Dan describes their purpose:
"At TasteCasting, we view this effort and our purpose as a way to help restaurants, coffee shops, bakeries and other food service businesses grow their business. Who knows, we might even positively contribute to our country's economic recovery."
Disclosure Will Help
His FAQs start to tell the story of how it all works - restaurants do not pay to be covered yet they do provide a free meal. This seems to fly in the accepted wisdom that restaurant reviewers pay for their meals and attend restaurants anonymously to protect their credibility. Not sure that's how it always happens in practice, however. Things are different now in social media. Offering "influencers" a product experience such that if they choose to post about you they will have something to write about is common. So long as there is full disclosure.
Suggestions:
1. Make TasteCasters check a box indicating their commitment to disclose their "material connection" to the restaurants - namely that they received a free meal. While Tastemakers has no connection to WOMMA, I cannot help but want to encourage them to adopt practices that will only help their business.
2. Restaurants (and food shops) have their target customers. How can a restaurant invite a tastecaster event and expect they will get someone within the range of their customer base. It wouldn't work if Jackie's drew a bunch of college kids from University of Maryland. Perhaps if members added a little profile information about the type of food and dining experience they enjoy, the service could do a more refined job of matchmaking.
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