What gluten-free pasta, kosher coke and free-to-play games have in common?
If you like food as much as I do, you definitely need to watch Netflix’series Chef’s Table. It shows the creative process and the amazing dishes made by the best chefs of the world. And there is one of them that really caught the attention of my wife and I: Massimo Bottura, the chef of now n°1 restaurant in the world, Osteria Francescana.
Since we were going to Italy for Xmas, we decided to go on a Gastro Tour in Emilia Romagna, the region where that restaurant is located. Unfortunately for us, the only thing we saw from Osteria Francescana was its entrance: it was full until April.
Instead, since my wife is gluten intolerant, we decided to try another restaurant from Modena, Locanda del Parco, that made its name for its entirely gluten-free but delicious menu. After our (excellent) dinner, the owner of the restaurant came to chat with us. He owns 3 entirely gluten-free restaurants, but, he said, the latest one is not officially declared as such.
This was definitely weird to me; everyone is all crazy about gluten-free, so why hiding it? Actually, he replied, the day he decided to turn his 1st restaurant into a gluten-free one, he lost half the clients: gluten-free works well for people that are gluten intolerant; but for people that are not intolerant, it is actually synonymous with “weird pasta”. So they just don’t want to try it.
What’s worse, he said, is that even the gluten-free people feel bad about bringing their “normal” friends to a gluten-free restaurant. So they’d rather go to a non gluten-free restaurant and not eat much, than “bothering their friends”.
Once again, as a reminder, we had an absolutely great dinner there (maybe one of the best pizza dough I ever tasted, and it was a gluten-free one…). So it’s not the taste that is a problem here, it’s the idea of it.
I’m not entirely sure that it’s necessarily a totally bad thing to advertise the fact you’re gluten-free. More and more, you see many products tagged as “gluten-free”, even some that never had gluten in the first place anyway. Maybe it’s just that people are not ready yet to go to the restaurant to have gluten-free food advertised as such.
I’m actually wondering when it will be so common for products to be gluten-free, that it will just be hidden in fine prints at the back of the product. For instance, did you know that most of the sodas in the US are kosher? or that more and more burger meat in Europe is hallal?
This is explained very well by Nassim Taleb in this article about the dictatorship of the small minority.
In short: drinking kosher coke does not bother the regular person; but drinking non-kosher coke for kosher people, is an issue.
So it’s just easier to make everything kosher by default, so that everyone can drink the soda.
It’s true for food, but it might also be very well true for my industry: free-to-play games. Why this type of gaming suddenly exploded is, to me, very likely due to the dictatorship of the minority!
Here is how: most of the players were willing to pay for a premium game. But a fraction of the players really did not want to invest a cent on a mobile games.
Since nobody minds playing for free, free-to-play naturally became the solution to that issue. Non-payers can now play, and payers pay and play. Everybody wins! (especially the game maker).
Actually, the mindset of the initial minority is now so present in free-to-play, that very soon many games will, I think, be entirely free (and will have to rely solely on ads). Maybe not so good of a business after all…
Now, to come back to gluten-free, I think it’s gonna be harder for it to become a dominant minority. As long as you’ll have gluten-free products that don’t test as good as the original (bread, I’m looking at you), it will be very hard to really have everything gluten-free by default.
But, in the meantime, please, be adventurous and do try gluten-free products. Doing so will help celiac people get better products over time (and my new favorite restaurant in Modena will get more clients!). So that maybe one day gluten-free will truly be a dominant minority!
Hey! Thanks so much for reading me! I’m so lucky to have you! If you can leave a comment or even just like the post, that would mean the world to me :) Thanks!
