Earlier this year I was listening to Evan Kleinmen from KCRW’s Good Food Podcast where there was an interview from the author Matt Goulding of the book Rice, Noodle, and Fish. I then read the book in its entirety and was blown away with the stories of restaurants and food.

Matt went around Japan eating with a handler and interviewed chefs and restaurateurs along the way. Matt talks about the word ‘shokunin’ which in Japanese means ‘artisan’. Shokunin refers to people who obsess over quality and often do the same tasks over and over. A well known example is Chef Jiro with his world renowned sushi.

I was surprised at the end of the book where there was an ancillary website with all of the restaurants mentioned in the book as well as a Google Map links. With that, we decided to create our own adventure through Japan. It is amazing how one little podcast can change your entire trip.

TOKYO

Motenashi Kuroki — ¥ — Ramen饗 くろ㐂

Ramen in Japan is totally different than in the states. In Japan, you eat quickly then leave. Rarely do you sit at tables and socialize. After reading Ivan Orkin’s book on ramen, and even making my own ramen noodles and stock, I think I considered myself ready to appreciate the first ramen on my trip.

Montenashi Kuroki is way out there on the outskirts of Akihabari. On the day I went, they opened at 11:30am, and I figured if I came there at 10:45am I wouldn’t have to wait long. How I was so wrong.

Like many shops in Japan, you order off a vending machine and get a ticket. With the help of the Google Translate app, I was able to find the ramen I was looking for. You then hand that ticket to the chef and get your food.

Montenashi Kuroki is known in particular for their chicken stock based ramen as traditionally it is made with pork bones. Here I ordered a salt based ramen which the chef said is made out of 6 different salts.

Out of the entire trip, this was my favorite ramen shop. The stock was light, and there was an impressive amount of umami just from using salt as the primary seasoning. There was the proper ‘tare’ (the stir fried shallots) on the left, and a great salt cured egg on the right.

Website in Japanese

Kagari — ¥ — ramen篝

Kagari ramen has two locations, one near Ginza station, and the other actually in Ginza station near exit C2. In the station the wait is only 10 minutes compared to about an hour in the main store.

Notice here that the ramen is white. This actually is chicken stock with tons of collagen and fat in it. And the chicken almost seemed like it came from a sous vide machine.

Afuri — ¥ — Ramen — 阿夫利

Afuri is a chain in Tokyo with emphasis on a healthier take on ramen. I ordered a vegan ramen.

The ramen had a really nice umami to it for being vegan, but I didn’t know enough Japanese to ask if they used MSG.

Kamachiku — ¥¥ — udon釜竹

Kamachiku is a handmade udon place near Ueno. The charm of the place is if you come early enough, you can grab a table looking out at the garden.

Otafuku — ¥¥ — oden — 大多福

Way out there in Asakusa is Otafuku which serves oden over a heated copper pot. The oden here is incredible, but be aware you probably will be surrounded with smoke as people like to drink and smoke cigarettes here later in the evening. There is an English menu here which resembles the Japanese menu.

Nakamura Shokudo — ¥ — izakaya — なかむら食堂

This restaurant is a low key restaurant where you can order a lot of different type of izakaya food. Unfortunately the menu is in Japanese, but we survived because a Japanese friend ordered for us.

Sadaharu Aoki
This is a bakery in what my friend calls ‘America Town’ (Roppongi). The pastries here are a fusion of east meets west.

Ice Ouca
At the recommendation of a friend, we checked out Ice Ouca which is near the hip area of Daikyanama.

Dominique Ansel Bakery
This bakery originally came its way through New York, and I heard some of the initial complaints was that it was too sweet. In New York, I always had to wait to get cronuts, but at this location there wasn’t a wait for anything.

Tokyo UNU Farmer’s Market

I have a habit of trying to go to farmer’s markets in any city I visit, and the Tokyo market does not disappoint.

Tokyo Google Maps Link

KANAZAWA

My original plans were to go to Kanazawa and to drive up the Noto Peninsula to check out some food up there. Because of the limited time, we only checked out the city of Kanazawa which is now connected to Tokyo via the high speed train (Shinkansen). I was pleasantly surprised on how delicious and affordable the food was.

Daiba — Izakaya — ¥¥ — 台場金沢駅前店

Daiba is a humble izakaya style restaurant near the train station. Price and quality wise, Daiba has to be one of the best deals out there. Unfortunately they are moving locations, so be sure to give them a call in advance if you want to check out their location.

Mori Mori Sushi — ¥ — もりもり寿し

Mori Mori Sushi was recommended by many locals as well as the Rice, Noodle, and Fish book. Just like Daiba, the quality and cost was incredible. Each dish ranges from $3 — $8 a plate. Here, you order via an iPad, and get your food delivered to you on a conveyor belt.

Oden Miyuki — ¥¥ — おでん居酒屋 三幸

In the quest to compare oden, we checked out this place. We waited a while to get in, and my recommendation is to make a reservation in advance. The oden here unfortunately isn’t served in a copper pot which is heated, but still is solid.

Chayu — ¥ — 茶ゆ

Chayu lays nestled in the Higashi district and you pass by it if you do any of the Kanzawa free walking tours. Some of the best ice cream I’ve had comes out of some of the unique flavors out of this shop (soy bean flour ice cream anyone?)

Kanazawa Google Map

KYOTO

In Kyoto, my recommendation is to stay at a hotel. There were several restaurants we wanted to try (Tempura Matsu, etc), but we could not get in because reservations only could be made by a Japanese hotel concierge. Also generally speaking, I would make reservations for any restaurant you want to try with ¥¥ as restaurants in Kyoto don’t have waiting lists like in the states.

Honke Owariya — ¥ — 本家尾張屋本店

Honke Owariya specializes in soba noodles, and has been around since 1465 (although it was serving pastries initially).

Oryouri Menami — ¥¥ — お料理めなみ

After getting turned away at Tempura Matsu, we made a successful last minute reservation for Menami which serves food with ingredients local to Kyoto (Obanzai food). Their menu is completely in Japanese, but their English wait staff is super friendly and willing to work with you. Be sure to get a counter seat.

Kyoto Google Map

OSAKA

We couldn’t get into any restaurants in Osaka (turned away because of a lack of a reservation), but we did manage to score one delicious dessert.

Rikuro Cheesecake

This bakery makes fresh Japanese style cheesecake. Think of it as a mixture of angel cake + cheesecake for a lighter faire dessert.

Osaka Google Map

You of course had a partner of in crime. The current resident of the house Cookie taught you all of the tricks of the trade. From stealing tissues from people’s pockets to eating oranges. You learned it from the master.

Like any other dog out there, you were forced to take embarrassing photos during the holiday season. You really didn’t like any of it, but 1/100, a reasonable photo would emerge.

For 15 years you lived a full and eventful life. From chasing possums quite unsuccessfully to walking humans around the block, life was good. But at 15, you began to slow down a little bit.

When I came home to visit you on Friday’s I noticed that you didn’t bark as often. Then you didn’t walk as much. We didn’t think much of it, but you continued enjoying life, albeit on a slower pace.

Around the house there was a chatter of putting to you sleep. I know this sounds so harsh to talk about in public, but your quality of life began to suffer more and more.

You see, with your protege Cookie, the same conversations happened. However I was adamantly against Cookie being put to sleep under any circumstances. She was deteriorating quite quickly, but I didn’t see this.

One day, when she was 15, she broke her legs just by walking and slipping. It was truly a traumatic event as we had to take her to the animal hospital and put her to sleep immediately. Nobody in the family was prepared, and it was a tough ordeal to see her go unexpectedly.

A couple weeks back, I was asked to take care of you while Mom and Dad were out of town. I noticed you were super stinky so I gave you a bath. I haven’t given you a bath for many years since I moved out, and for the first time in a long time I noticed something. There was fear in your eyes.

While giving you the bath, it was hard for you to stand. So instead I floated you in a tub of water and washed and rinsed while holding you because you couldn’t have the strength to stand.

After that bath, I noticed you were tired all of the time. And during dinner you would often poop on the carpet because you didn’t have the strength to make it outside. We all knew that you didn’t mean to do these things. We understood you were getting older. The aging of your bones and your eyes are just nature’s course of a dog’s life.

After some deliberation with the family, we decided it was time to let you go. Thank you for being such a light in our lives for 17 years.

However the article that struck the biggest chord with me was The Guardian’s Taste Testing Article of Chocolate (spoiler alert: Hershey’s was #1). Really, it wasn’t just The Guardian’s article, but the sentiment that a $10 bar of chocolate is ridiculous, and Hershey’s is better. The Guardian isn’t alone as this resonates strongly through the comments-o-sphere on the Internet. But with all this chatter, what is really good chocolate? To answer this question, we need to take a windy road.

Sourcing Cacao Beans

The first start of any conversation is to ask yourself, what is chocolate? I am going to keep it really simple and say for the time being, it comes from Cacao pods grown around the world in the ‘chocolate band’

This chocolate band is a temperature range across the equator where Cacao pods can grow. So for example, you never will be able to get Cacao from Canada because the weather is not amendable to this ‘chocolate band’ temperature. A fun fact I have heard from ChocoMuseo in Peru is that the chocolate band may be changing due to climate changes so new ranges may be able to grow chocolate soon.

Bean-to-bar primer

Now we know where Cacao pods come from, what does bean-to-bar mean? It means that you as a company or person claim that you purchase the beans from somewhere along the chocolate band and make the chocolate from those beans. Below is a friendly chart from Dandelion Chocolate.

This is different than someone who calls themselves a chocolatier. A chocolatier is someone who buys chocolate, melts them, and makes fancy combinations of truffle shaped chocolate, etc.

Single origin definition

If you look at the fancy bars out there, you will see a percentage and an origin

• Madgascar — this is the origin of the bar where the Cacao was grown
• 75 — this means it is 75% cacao, and 25% sugar

Why bean-to-bar makers care about single origins is because sourcing the Cacao from one location usually gives one type of flavor profile. For example Cacao from Madgascar has a pleasant fruitiness to it. If bean-to-bar blended all types of cacao from the chocolate blend, they would get a more muddled taste.

Subject: Hershey’s Bar

If you look at the Hershey’s bar, there is no indicator of origin or percentage. Let’s take a look at the back

Same thing here. All we have is a nutrition label, and an ingredient statement of

• Milk Chocolate (Sugar, Milk, Cocoa Butter)
• Chocolate
• Soy Lecithin

What defines good? Take 1

What we usually define as good is what we are used to. And lo and behold, what we are used to are Hershey and Lindt type bars. Generally speaking, these are the characteristics of these bars.

• Buttery mouth feel
• One character chocolate profile.

The buttery mouth feel is really due to Cocoa Butter and Soy Lecithin added to the chocolate making process. To me, what it does is disguises the true taste of the chocolate.

An analogy is take some really fresh raw tomatoes and make a marinara sauce. Heat up some olive oil, and then toss in the raw tomatoes and simmer them for about an hour. When you taste it, you can really taste the true profile of the tomato. It might be bitter, sweet, or complex, but you know the taste of the tomato because you pretty much only have the tomato and the olive oil.

But now add half a stick of butter. The raw tastes and unique characteristics of the tomato are there, but it is overwhelmed by the buttery taste. It may taste good, but whether you have good or bad tomatoes is masked.

Redefining what tastes good. Take out cocoa butter and soy lecithin

If you talk to a lot of bean-to-bar vendors, you will notice their ingredient list is much simpler

• Cacao Nibs
• Unrefined Cane Sugar

A lot of chocolate makers will argue that it is impossible to make chocolate without the use of cocoa butter and soy lecithin. But in the market these vendors have been able to do it usually through techniques of slow stone grinding or specialty techniques.

• ChocoVivo
• Dandelion
• Ritual
• Potomoc

What tastes good? Take 2

If we remove cocoa butter and soy lecithin from the chocolate, you actually taste the uniqueness of the chocolate from its single origin. If you tried Madagascar, you usually get fruity and floral notes. If you try something from Venezuela, you might get coffee type notes.

Note that when we talk about fruity or floral, this is talking about the actual taste of the cacao. Just like a tomato will taste different in the US to Europe, cacao has different properties all over the chocolate band.

Going down the dark road

In summary, if you want to discover really good chocolate, ask these questions:

• Are you bean-to-bar?
• Do you add cocoa butter or soy lecithin?

If the answers are ‘yes’, then ‘no’, then you have already filtered about 90% of the chocolate out there, and are already in the 10% of the good chocolate category.

The question for many of us is this a worthwhile journey. Some people are perfectly content with their $2 Hershey bar which is no problem. If you want to start moving into discovering what true chocolate tastes like without adulteration, you unfortunately do need to pay higher prices per bar ranging from $6 — $12. But if you do choose to pay more for the higher bars, at the very least it is good to know why you are paying more for it and the thinking behind the bean-to-bar movement.

Lastly, if you’d like to learn more about this whole bean-to-bar in glory details, feel free to listen with my podcast with ChocoVivo.

Happy eatings!

How Watson works is you enter an ingredient, then Watson suggests other ingredients which might go well with it. When I played with it, I was getting kind of crazy recipes.

Watson suggested as my first recipe:

The directions were:

• Broil grapes coated with honey and shallots
• Add rice vinegar
• Add chives afterwards.

And for the first try, it tasted pretty good. It was kind of different, but not too crazy. For the second recipe:

The directions basically said to:

• Stir fry diced chicken thighs with:
• Avocado
• Mushrooms
• Diced turnips
• Sugar snap peas
• Strawberries
• Mint

Now this recipe tasted really weird. Like it wasn’t bad, nor good. It kind of got me wondering how Watson pairs their ingredients. From browsing their Watson Facebook page, one of the IBM Engineers stated:

In fact, we rely on the “flavor pairing hypothesis” mentioned in this paper, but aim for synergies rather than contrasts, which this paper refers to as the ‘western’ preference. It would be interesting to see if we could have a knob or slider that lets you decide what your preference is…. I’ll put that on a future back burner…

For me personally, I had two major problems with Watson.

1. As the engineer stated, the flavor pairings were kind of odd to me. I personally prefer more of an Asian pairing which has more contrasts. For example, Vietnamese food is a balance of sweet, salty, and umami.
2. The Watson website ingredient combinations were way too crazy. I really needed to pair down the additions.

However, I was still adamant in throwing a dinner party around Watson, and I really wanted to incorporate local and in season farmer’s markets fruits and vegetables. I then played around a lot with tangelos and saw

This was really intriguing because in salsas, you usually add some acid like lime or lemon juice. But adding a tangelo (which is a combination of a tangerine and grapefruit), added a really interesting mellow orange flavor to the salsa.

After playing around and experimenting for about a month, this is what I decided on the final Watson dinner party menu.

PEPPERMINT ALMONDS — Honey roasted almonds, salt, dried peppermint flakes

This item was a direct inspiration from a post from the Watson Facebook group. What I did is dry fresh peppermint leaves in the microwave, then pulsed it in a spice grinder. After roasting the almonds coated with honey, I added some salt and the peppermint flakes. As a friend stated at the party the flavor is really understated until you let the almond sit on your tongue where the peppermint and salt flavors hit you slowly.

CUCUMBER LEMONADE — 1 part juiced cucumber, 1 part water, .25 parts simple syrup, .10 parts lemon juice

Not a Watson inspired recipe, but this is something I picked up from the restaurant Ink in Beverly Hills. For any good drink, adding about 10% sweetness from a simple syrup works perfectly for it to be refreshing.

TANGELO SHRUB — 1 part freshly squeezed tangelos, .10 part apple cider vinegar

GRAPE CHUTNEY — Broiled grapes with rice vinegar, mustard, shallots, honey, and chives

These were one of the few Watson recipes I kept intact without changing. The only problem is visually it looks really gross, but tastes wise it had a nice sour note to it. Most people at the dinner party enjoyed this to my surprise.

TOMATO TANGELO REDUCTION — A reduction of blended farmer’s markets tomatoes, shallots, garlic, and tangelo juice

What I did is blended tomatoes, and then added the shallots, garlic, and tangelo juice into a stock pot. I reduced it to about -70% leaving a nice thick mixture. The sauce was really nice because I could prepare it in advance and freeze it. The day before the dinner party, I put it in the fridge to thaw it. Similar to the salsa, the sauce had a subtle orange hint to it which was nice.

COCONUT GELATO AFFOGATO — Coconut gelato, mission olive oil, frozen peanut butter, cinnamon leaf, mulberries

Not a Watson recipe, but I just wanted to throw in some different flavor compositions into a dessert.

Overall what Watson has really done is pushed me out of my comfort zone to add pairings which don’t by instinct pair in my head. If you use the system, I suggest to add only one or two new ingredients to a base recipe to make sure the dish tastes familiar.

As for a computer being able to cook, I’d say at the current time, there still needs to be a lot of human intervention to synthesize what makes sense. Recipe development is a multi-sensory exercise that computers are getting better at, but not quite there yet.

I think my Watson experiments will end for now, but if they add flavor pairings via contrasts and balance for Asian flavors, I’ll be back.

And for those who are curious, below was the final menu.

I spent a week in October completing the “W Hike” in Patagonia. Overall, the weather was really great. Some sunny days, and some cloudy days. But the best experiences I had were making new friends along the way.

When doing research on the hike, the Internet and guidebooks provided seemingly contradictory information on what to do. The purpose of this guide is to provide some of my experiences. Note that this will be catered more towards staying at Refugios.

Before I start, I have to give credit to Jeremy’s post on the W Hike as it is a great starting point, especially if you are camping.

Question 1: Refugios or camping

Refugios are lodgings actually interspersed between the hike. This means all you have to carry is your hiking equipment and your clothes. You can buy food at the refugios, and they also have packed lunches you can take on the road which have snacks. There are also hot showers (mostly), and great people you will meet at the refugios.

From most that I met, the issue whether to stay deals with cost. If you have some money to spend and want some luxury, I say go with the refugios. Otherwise staying at the campsites saves quite a bit of money.

Oddly enough, the refugios are run by two different companies so you need to book reservations separately.

Fantastico Sur

• Refugio Cuernos
• Refugio Chileno

Vertice

• Refugio Paine Grande
• Refugio Grey

Refugios tend to book quickly, so I would be sure to make reservations once you know your plans.

Question 2: West to east or east to west?

There is much debate on which direction to go. Both have their pros and cons.

West to East
If you go west to east, your hike starts easier and gets progressively harder. The bottom was my itinerary for the trip.

• Take the bus from Puerto Natales into the park.
• Get off at the second stop, Lago Pehoe
• Take the catamaran to Paine Grande

Then starts the hike

• Day 1: Hike from Paine Grande to Refugio Grey — an easyish hike. Do an additional hike to Las Guardas to see the glacier fields (easyish). Stay at Refugio Grey.
• Day 2: Do an ice hike with Big Foot Adventure Patagonia in the morning. Hike back down to Refugio Paine Grande (easyish). Sleep at Refugio Grey.
• Day 3: Hike to Camp Site Italiano and drop off your bag (easy/moderate). Hike up to Valley Frances and back to Italiano (hard). Hike to Refugio Cuernos (moderate). Day 3 is a super long day where you will sleep at Refugio Cuernos.
• Day 4: Hike to Refugio Chileno (moderate), and if the weather is good hike up to the Torres (hard).
• Day 5: If you know the weather is good in the morning, hike up back to the Torres to see the sunrise. Hike back down to Hotel Torres (moderate), and take the shuttle bus to Laguna Amarga where the bus will you pick up.

Basically in West East, you start off easy, but then it gets progressively more difficult. In one sense this might be better as your body gets used to carrying your backpack as well as handling inclines.

East to West
I didn’t do east to west, but I can visualize the route backwards, so this is what you probably will be doing.

• Take the bus from Puerto Natales and get off at Laguna Amarga. Take the shuttle bus to Hotel Torres.
• Day 1: Hike up a steep hill up to Refugio Chileno (hard). Drop your bag off at Refugio Chileno and if the weather is good hike up to the Torres (hard). Sleep at Chileno.
• Day 2: If you know the weather is good in the morning, do the morning hike to the Torres (hard). Hike to Refugio Cuernos (medium).
• Day 3: Hike to Campsite Italiano, drop off your bag (easy). Hike up Valley Frances (hard), then hike to Paine Grande. Sleep in Paine Grande.
• Day 4: Hike up to Refugio Grey (easy), and if you want to do the Ice Hike, stay at Refugio Grey.
• Day 5: Hike back down to Paine Grande by 12:30pm to catch the catamaran back to Lago Pehoe.

In East to West, you get slammed with huge inclines and climbing the Torres on the first day. And then you do the second hardest hike of Valley Frances on your second day. Not that this is better than West to East, but you should be mentally prepared to be challenged right off the bat.

Question 3: What kind of shoes should I wear?

There is another debate on the Internet whether to get Gore-Tex boots or ultralight trail shoes. Because I was staying in refugios, my pack was lighter, so I opted instead to bring my Altra Lone Peaks 2.5 Trail Running Shoes. One of the things which is awesome about trail shoes is when they get wet, they dry quickly.

Question 4: Should I use hiking poles?

I unequivocally vouch for hiking poles. They will save your knees and help you cross streams faster. You can rent some in Puerto Natales, or buy some on Amazon.

Question 5: What is the weather like?

Many people will tell you, “it is Patagonia, there is no way you will no what the weather is like.” Well while I was there, most Refugios were actually pulling up the weather online which seemed to be pretty accurate. If you want to know what the weather is going to be like a couple days before, you can Grey check on reports from windguru.cz.

• Grey Glacier Weather
• Refugio Grey Weather
• Refugio Paine Grande Weather
• Refugio Chileno

Note that this reports aren’t 100% accurate, but they will give you a good idea of what is going on. For seeing the Torres, the values you really care about is the cloud cover.

Let’s take a look at Tuesday 6am. Here the cloud cover has three values:

• high — 93
• mid -78
• low — 0

What this means is if you were going to see the torres, this means you will have high clouds and not many low clouds.

Now let’s take a look at Wednesday 12pm.

• high — 0
• medium — 0
• low -7

So if you were going to see the Torres, this means you will have a clear day. I wouldn’t use this to change how you route your trip, but you at least can make some strategic decisions on when to see the Torres. To get this information, go to Refugio Chileno, and ask to see the latest windguru.cz reports.

Question 6: What clothes do I bring?

The challenge with Patagonia, is that the temperatures can change on you pretty quickly and when you get to the park you don’t know whether it is going to be raining, or sunny. With that this is the minimum.

• Rain/wind shell. There are a huge range of products, but make sure that your shell can also handle wind. I brought my Arc’teryx Beta LT.
• Insulation Layer. This is your warmth layer that is layered below your wind shell if it gets cold. I brought my Mammut Broad Peak II.
• Long Sleeve Base Layer. Anything will do, just make sure it is a quick dry.
• Hat. The sun here is super intense as a lot of the ozone protection has disappeared over this region. Because of my paranoia, I brought my goofy looking OR Sun Runner Cap.
• Gloves. Any pair of good gloves will do. Waterproof ones are preferable.
• Sunglasses.
• Hiking Pants. I brought my lightweight North Face Libertine Pants.
• Hiking Socks. I’m a fan of Darn Tough Socks.
• Hiking Backpack. If you are doing ultralight, you should be able to fit everything in a Deuter ACT Trail 24 Pack.
• Sleeping shorts and a shirt
• Shower sandals (that double for walking around the refugios. Only Refugio Chileno has a strict policy of no shoes).

Question 7: What about water?

The really great thing about doing the W Hike, is that there is plenty of water from streams. If going west to east, I would bring half a liter to start off, but otherwise you will run into streams about every half hour. As long as the water is running quickly, it will be safe to drink. With that, just bring a small canteen to refill your water.

Question 8: How many snacks should I bring?

If you are buying lunch at the Refugios, I wouldn’t bring too many snacks as the lunch has some nuts, a granola bar, and chocolate.

Question 9: How fit do I have to be?

Hm. I would say you should be in fairly decent shape. If you can do a 9 mile hike in one day, you should be good.

Question 10: Can I do it alone?

Yes you definitely can. Even if you are staying in the Refugios, attend Erratic Rock’s 3pm talk. The park has this huge orange poles every 15 feet, so it is hard to get lost. Also if you attend the talk, most likely you will meet these same people on the buses and along the hike.

The only thing which got funky is when hiking from Italiano to Cuernos, you will eventually get dumped out at the beach. Keep walking along the beach for about 200 feet, and you will see another entrance back to the trail.

Lastly, you will see a fork that says ‘shortcut to chileno’ from Refugio Cuernos to Refugio Chileno. Take it.

Question 11: Is there cell phone reception?

Nope. But there is Internet you can pay for at Refugio Cuernos and Refugio Chileno if you need to send a message out to your loved ones that you are okay.

Question 12: Is there anything else I should bring?

• Your passport for the Refugios
• Your embarkment card (the receipt you get from customs), when you entered Chile. The Refugios will need this so you don’t pay any taxes.
• Portable battery charger. This will make your life easier when recharging your cell phone.
• Headlamp
• Quick dry towel. Refugios Cuerno and Chileno charge you for towels, so if you have a mini one you will save a little bit of money.

Now for some obligatory pictures of the hike.

In terms of natural disasters, Southern California pretty much has four seasons. Earthquakes, mudslides, drought, and wildfires. As for earthquakes, we probably don’t worry enough about them as we should. For mudslides that only really is a concern of certain regions. And wildfires majorly suck, but they have been rare as of late (*crosses fingers*).

Now drought is something we have had, but this one is different.

For the first time I can remember, there is a collective worry, and it is growing. As I go to the farmer’s markets, they are concerned as their water rates are skyrocketing. For those who are lucky who have wells, they have the ability to draw water, but even so there is a limited amount in our aquifers and the electricity cost to use it is very high.

In the city, I think there is a little bit of cognitive dissonance because right when you go into nature, you can see the problem.

With this lack of water, comes conversation measures, but an interesting drought morality issue has arisen.

One current controversy is a 1,000 foot slip and slide proposed in Downtown Los Angeles

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvvoVD_5PHE

The event would take about 25,000 gallons and does look like a lot of fun. But as highlighted in the most recent episode of KCRW’s Design & Architecture Podcast, there is a concern whether we should be even having this event in the midst of massive water problems.

In this case the argument can be made that the event is more symbolic that we are not taking the drought seriously when LA County is fining those $500 who are wasting water.

However in the podcast a metric popped out at me. A golf course takes 312,000 gallons a day. And there are 4 major golf courses in Los Angeles. A quick calculation comes out to 455 million gallons/year.

With that, how do we define our morality of what is right and wrong in water usage. With the drought, should we stop playing golf? Or should we instate mandatory 3 minute showers?

Another interesting controversy which has arisen is the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. I’m sure by now you have seen some type of video of someone dumping water over themselves to raise awareness of the issue.

From Facebook, I have pretty much seen two camps form. There is one which is I guess is ambivalent about the water issues, and the other camp which is very sensitive to wasted water. The arguments range from “they should donate regardless of the challenge and not waste water” to “this water challenge helped them raise 10x more to the cause.”

The question is how much do we let this drought and perceived moral issues affect our quality of life. One can go down a very slippery slope and state all these different things which waste water. As an esoteric example, it takes about 1,000— 1,800 gallons to make a pound of meat (depending on which study you look at). Does that mean that Californians should now give up meat? Give up golfing? Stop eating at restaurants because of their water usage?

I think we are in the beginning of this crisis, and time will tell how this unfolds. We are in about a third year of the drought, but if it goes on for 4,5,6, or 10 years, perhaps the morals of the issue will change.

If you have been doing any cold e-mail campaigns, you probably will run into the challenge of what to write in your follow-up e-mail.

What Does Not Work

Hi Vendor ____,
Hope your 2014 is going well! I just wanted to follow-up that in the new year it is a good time to think about Nutrition Facts Analysis. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions!

Here are the problems with this

• vague
• no call to action

When introducing ourselves again in a follow-up e-mail, it is tempting to make a little bit of small chat or put in a little emotional feel to it. But statistically, we virtually got no responses from these type of e-mails.

What Does Work

Hi Vendor____,
I was just following up to see if you were still interested in nutrition facts analysis.

Here is why it works:

• short
• you are forcing them to make a decision
• very clear call to action

On first view, this e-mail seems impersonal and to the point. But really at the end of the day your vendors are most likely super busy and if they see a short message, they are more likely to respond.

Lastly, the end goal of your follow-up e-mails is to get the vendor to say yes or no to you. That way, you can decide whether to spend more time with the lead or to drop them.

Summary

• Keep your follow-up e-mails short and to the point
• Get your leads to say yes or no to your prospecting

A couple posts back, I wrote a post on how I’m handling my sales processes. When first sending our cold e-mails to spear prospects, I had a subject line something like

Nutrition facts labels for $XX/month

For the most part, everything was fine and dandy, until I began experimenting with the pricing model. When I first started the saas site, I didn’t know exactly how to price the plans. After the site was running for a couple months, I had some concrete data to make a decision on adjusting the price.

Now about 6 months later, I got an e-mail asking something like

From reading your e-mail, I’m confused on the pricing of your product. Is it $XX per this e-mail, or $YY as specified on the site.

When examining the e-mail, this prospect was replying to an e-mail I sent 6 months ago, when the pricing was different. Now I’m thinking perhaps something weird happened and the e-mail got delivered 6 months later. Or perhaps the prospect really did check the e-mail months later.

Regardless of this mystery though, the prospect already has the price of $XX in their mind. And when they see $YY as a higher price, they no longer think they are getting a good deal.

Let’s say you are at a electronics store and you are buying a laptop.

In January, you see the laptop priced as $1,500 dollars. Two weeks later, the price of the laptop drops to $800.

First off, you might be whoa, great deal! I want to buy that laptop now! But it is only a great deal because you perceive $800 to be far less than $1,500.

Let’s rerun the example.

In January, you see the laptop priced as $900 dollars. Two weeks later, the price of the laptop drops to $800.

Now you no longer see the laptop as a good deal because the pricing pivot is only a $100.

In short, if you plan to experiment with your pricing models, don’t put pricing in your initial e-mails. It may come back to haunt you.

At some stage of your sales process, you will have made first contact with your client. The following usually happen.

• You sent out a cold e-mail and they cold called you to get more information.
• They replied to your cold call e-mail and you set up a meeting with them.
• You cold called them after some type of conversation via e-mail.

In this scenario, we are assuming that you and your prospect have some type of introductory relationship. They at the very least know who you are probably via a short e-mail conversation.

Now as a confession, I have an unhealthy obsession with diagramming, so here is a flow chart of the process.

Call Prospect
The first thing when making a call is to make sure to call in their time zone. Calling them 4am or at 8pm if they have their cell because you neglected to think where they are at is a death sentence for your sale. Call Introduction

“Hello ____. My name is Dan Quach from Menutail. Is this a good time to talk?”

Here, we introduce ourselves, but we IMMEDIATELY ask them if this time is convenient to them. This phrase “is this a good time to talk?” highlights your respect for their time.

It seems really minor, but if you don’t add that phrase and keep talking, they might get flustered if they are really busy.

If there are busy, ask if there is another good time to talk with them.

Are There Any Questions I Can Answer About Our Service

“I’m just calling to see if I can field any questions about our service for you?”

When you talk with your prospect you most likely will not know the level of knowledge they have on your service. Asking them a question takes their guard down a little as it gives them time to talk instead of you preaching the virtues of your service.

Listen

At this point, there really is no good script, except to listen. Listen to your prospect’s problems, and see if it is a match for your service. Your goal is to ensure that your client and your service have a mutually beneficial service (a win/win).

Evaluate Sales Feasibility

If you happen to realize that your solution won’t work for them, hold the high ground and don’t push them to your service. Send them leads to other people who might serve them better, and who knows they may just go out and refer you a client for having high ethical standards. If your prospect would indeed benefit from the service, suggest the next step to close the sales process. If they need to sign-up, then be sure to send them a follow up e-mail quickly after the call.

When I launched my start-up, I really had no idea on how to get new b2b customers. Somebody on Hacker News suggested reading Predictable Revenue which ended up being hugely influential. I could have perhaps subscribed to marketo.com or salesforce.com, but being a boot strapped start-up, I decided to try to do it myself.

The big takeaway from the book is that there are 3 types of leads

• Nets — Leads generated through email marketing, conferences, or Internet marketing (wide net)
• Seeds — Leads through a long term relationship from local user groups, social media, and existing happy customers.
• Spears — Targeted leads that require individual human efforts.

I decided to take a stab at developing a system for ‘spears’

Generating your first list of spears

The first problem I had was that I had no customer leads. I generated them in two ways:

• Scraping farmer’s market websites and food awards websites.
• In person leads from local farmer’s markets.

After I got the information, I created this record

When the record gets inserted into the database, two processes kick off

• A snapshot of the site is taken via phantomjs
• The e-mail gets validated through briteverify.com

Next, each entry is manually reviewed to see if the vendor lead is relevant. If it passes the test, then an e-mail is sent out (inspired from an appsumo.com email template:

Hi <vendor name>,
I found your website and was wondering if you were in the need of any nutrition facts analysis. Shops like yours typically use analysis for <their product line>.This is a sample label that would be generated from the analysis

http://labels.menutail.com/nutrition_label.pdf

When you have a few moments, I’d love to talk to you or the appropriate person about this.

thanks,
-dan
777-777-7777
http://www.menutail.com

This e-mail also contains an invisible image which helps with e-mail open tracking. To help with the reviewing process, some business rules were created to throw out entries which weren't relevant.

Sales funnel

After the e-mail gets sent, several options come into play. As you can see in the diagram, your job is to winnow the scenarios until the vendor subscribes to a plan.

Vendor Not Interested

• No response
• Vendor says analysis isn’t needed

These are two straight-up rejections from the vendor. At this point, I haven’t really come up with a good response, but I more or less leave them alone.

Vendor Not Interested Right Now

• Vendor expresses concern on a use case
• Vendor says they are interested in the future

In these use cases, the vendor isn’t ready to make a commitment. In this scenario, I try to answer any concerns, and follow-up every 30 days.

Vendor Interested

• Vendor e-mails questions
• Vendor requests phone call
• Vendor calls

If the vendor is interested, they tend to reach out immediately. If they are comfortable with chatting on the phone, I reach out immediately and answer any questions they have.

What I’ve Learned

• Don’t give too much information at any point of time.

When testing different e-mail templates, vendors rarely read the full subject line or even the full e-mail. There often is just a small segment of information that interests them (‘nutrition analysis’ in our scenario), and then they reply back.

When you have a lead, give them one small piece of information at a time to help them with their decision making process.

• Put an unsubscribe link in your e-mail even if it is considered a transactional e-mail.

In our initial e-mail blasts, several targeted e-mails were being marked as spam. Some on the Internet suggested putting an ‘unsubscribe’ link, and we found that since then, no one has marked the e-mail as spam as long as it was a targeted spear e-mail.

• Verify your e-mails before sending!

When we first started sending our e-mails through our external e-mail gateway, we were getting bounces. Pre validating an e-mail before sending it out saves you time in reaching out, and protects your e-mail reputation with your gateway.

• Rejection does not mean a sale

Several times I have vendor leads saying they aren’t interested. But maybe a month later, I end up seeing them subscribe to the service. So always be nice to all of your leads. Even if they reject you.
We have a lot to learn, but hopefully this helps others new to the b2b process.