Not too long after the automobile started gaining popularity, they started releasing a sort of driving guide, basically cool road trip ideas to get people using their cars more. Part of this guide was rating restaurants. After a while the guide part fell off, but the restaurant ratings stuck around.
Until today when nobody remembers the guide but the restaurant ratings are the most prestigious awards in the entire industry.
Michelin wanted people to drive more, because people driving wore out their tires meaning more tire sales for Michelin. They created a travel guide that included a star system for restaurants that were worth travelling to, eventually settling on the 3 star system where 1 star was worth a stop along your route, 2 stars was worth a detour along your route and 3 stars is worth a dedicated trip to eat at.
Which everyone always gets wrong, since there’s apparently a deeply ingrained cultural misconception that a restaurant can achieve up to five Michelin stars. Even Ratatouille got this wrong (although possibly deliberately), with the implication that Gusteau’s was a “five” star restaurant, its downgrading to four is the event that caused Gusteau himself to lose his will to live, and afterwards it was downgraded again to three. Which is already the maximum. Either Gusteau’s was just originally so good it broke the scale, or it was the sole and singular haute cuisine establishment in all of Paris that was not ranked by Michelin for some reason.
The various hotel ranking schemes have a one-to-five stars scale, though, which is probably what most people conflate the Michelin stars with. Unlike the Michelin ratings there is no central or consistent authority on hotel rankings so they’re pretty arbitrary to begin with and to a certain degree just a marketing ploy.
it isn’t this for sure but it is very much advertising gone good
Michelin tires would put out road maps with advertisements and they started to include destinations with restaurant reviews in them, that was like the biggest critical review that a restaurant could get back then. So they took it really seriously
![‘TASTING TIRES’ [OC] (the marketing gimmick that got out of hand imo)](https://feddit.nl/pictrs/image/009b3410-f52d-4b55-a2e7-4f0fdacd3606.webp){kind=link}
I always wondered what the story was.
Not too long after the automobile started gaining popularity, they started releasing a sort of driving guide, basically cool road trip ideas to get people using their cars more. Part of this guide was rating restaurants. After a while the guide part fell off, but the restaurant ratings stuck around.
Until today when nobody remembers the guide but the restaurant ratings are the most prestigious awards in the entire industry.
It was also updated every year and you got one with a new s set of ties. So an extra incentive to get a new set of tires every year.
A part of this was that they wanted people to drive far so they’d have to replace their tires more often.
Is this about the Michelin Stars?
Yeah.
No, this is about the Firestone… huh…
…
Son of a bitch…
Michelin wanted people to drive more, because people driving wore out their tires meaning more tire sales for Michelin. They created a travel guide that included a star system for restaurants that were worth travelling to, eventually settling on the 3 star system where 1 star was worth a stop along your route, 2 stars was worth a detour along your route and 3 stars is worth a dedicated trip to eat at.
Which everyone always gets wrong, since there’s apparently a deeply ingrained cultural misconception that a restaurant can achieve up to five Michelin stars. Even Ratatouille got this wrong (although possibly deliberately), with the implication that Gusteau’s was a “five” star restaurant, its downgrading to four is the event that caused Gusteau himself to lose his will to live, and afterwards it was downgraded again to three. Which is already the maximum. Either Gusteau’s was just originally so good it broke the scale, or it was the sole and singular haute cuisine establishment in all of Paris that was not ranked by Michelin for some reason.
The various hotel ranking schemes have a one-to-five stars scale, though, which is probably what most people conflate the Michelin stars with. Unlike the Michelin ratings there is no central or consistent authority on hotel rankings so they’re pretty arbitrary to begin with and to a certain degree just a marketing ploy.
I once saw a plaque that claimed the hotel was a “6-star”. It was a nice hotel, sure, but it made it clear those “stars” mean very little.
it isn’t this for sure but it is very much advertising gone good
Michelin tires would put out road maps with advertisements and they started to include destinations with restaurant reviews in them, that was like the biggest critical review that a restaurant could get back then. So they took it really seriously
True story. ☝️😉