Last week my wife and I went to Rainforest Cafe for lunch. I had never been to one, even though most of the malls where I shop have one. I used to work with one of their senior operations people and remember hearing how expensive they are to build, so I wanted to see what all that cash got them. While I commend them on their commitment to the theme (EVERYTHING is jungle themed), I think they suffer from a Dancing Bear problem. The term comes from the book The Inmates Are Running The Asylum and refers to things that do something, but not particularly well. Sure, the bear is dancing, but he's not dancing well. The fact that it's a bear that's doing the dancing is the only thing that makes it even remotely interesting. Which brings me to the food at Rainforest.
Our hyper-caffeinated teenage waiter (pictured left) tried to push margaritas and rum punch on us at 11:45am with little success. I ordered a burger, which is $11 with chips or $12 with fries. I was anxious to see how much of the cost was for the animatronic jungle that we were sitting in and how much actually went into making a good burger. It should be noted here, once again, that I was CTO at DuClaw Brewing Company for 3 1/2 years. They make my favorite burger in the world: The Arizona Burger. I've been to Burger Bar, the Hubert Keller joint in Las Vegas and I still think The Arizona Burger is the best I've ever had.
Back to Rainforest: The burger was thoroughly mediocre. They kitchen cooked it properly and, as far as I could tell, plated it properly which means that they executed it correctly. This also means that this burger has no chance of ever being very good. It is simply "a burger". No, it's simply "an $11 burger served in an animatronic jungle". The burger did not dance well.
Anyone who has been to Rainforest may say, "Yeah, but kids love the place." No doubt about it, sitting in a simulated jungle is a real kick for kids and I understand that that's really what you're paying for. The problem I have is that I know that it doesn't cost more to serve a great burger than it does to serve a mediocre one. We're not talking Kobe beef and shaved truffles here, we're talking about the most flavorful and interesting dish you can create within budget. That doesn't have to cost more or take more effort to prepare, it only requires that someone commit to serving a good burger during the recipe development phase.
Which brings me to the reason that all of this is particularly important to me right now: I've been thinking about the Tribal Pizza recipes a lot lately. Even though our production kitchen isn't ready yet, there's still plenty I can do in my home kitchen. The most important thing that I can do now, however, is commit to serving a really good pizza. We're a very technology-driven company that has, in my humble opinion, some really killer marketing ideas. None of that matters, however, if people are disappointed with the product that we deliver. It's not like they'll take bite after bite of a mediocre pie and say to each other, "It's not great, but man was that website cool! Let's do this again soon!" No, with any luck they'll talk about the pizza and the rest will kind of disappear -- only to be noticed when they order somewhere else and have a less enjoyable experience.
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