Ben and Jerry’s, San Jose, California, 8:45 pm

Without donuts being part of the plan when I travel, they seem to show up with some regularity. While Krispy Kreme and Dunkin’ Donuts seek to provide a consistent experience across geographies, there are also very unique experiences available in the very same category. The notion of donut is rather broad and is reinterpreted in some engaging ways. There’s something about the pure pleasure of a donut that also invites a fun approach to all aspects of the experience: the flavors, the environment, the presentation, the messaging.

Here’s a few I’ve documented. Please leave recommendations for other donuts-shops-to-experience in the comments.

Randy’s Donuts, LA (Amazing site, donuts are pretty good)

Voodoo Doughnuts, Portland, OR: Rex Diablo and Ol’ Dirty Bastard (fun to choose, less to eat)

Murciano in The Marais, Paris (the best thing I’ve ever eaten)

Fractured Prune, Washington D.C. (didn’t get to try it)

Roti Donat, Bali, Indonesia (definitely not good)

Mister Donut sign and exterior, Taipei, Taiwan

Mister Donut Simpsons promotion, Kyoto, Japan (I don’t remember what I got but it was good!)

Coca-Cola is running a three-page ad in the Sunday paper.

As part of our ongoing commitment to finding new ways to suit your changing tastes and needs, we’re always working to develop innovative options. We’d like to say thanks for the inspiration. And please stay tuned, because it’s just a taste of things to come. To learn more about our latest innovations….

image adjusted to fit your screen

I noticed the use of innovation twice in their copy and as much as I like to throw the word around, I’m often troubled when I see how it’s being used by others. I think most of us find new brands or new products or new packages interesting (granted, some of us more than others!), but the small can (for example) isn’t new.

Mini cans of Pepsi, Burlington, ON, 2004

The ad also reminded me of an image from 2005, showing just the diet beverages sold by Pepsi.

That’s a lot of choice! But good luck trying get a handle on how many different things Coke sells. It’s impressive and overwhelming. Their huge list of brands (worldwide) is here and a virtual, global vending machine is here.

Meanwhile, Oroweat is doing their small-packaging bit with new smaller bags of bread.

I wondered what has changed that necessitates this new package? Are breadboxes getting smaller? According to their site, the smaller bread package came out at the beginning of 2007 (emphases mine)

New Smaller Loaves Fit with Industry Trend of Reduced Size Options

The unique line of mini-sized variety breads are perfect for smaller households or families that like to buy several different varieties of bread. Although the loaves are smaller in size, they deliver the flavor and quality known from Oroweat.

“We all like the freshest bread and many consumers have told us they cannot finish a full size loaf of bread before its expiration date. Oroweat Mini Loaves are the perfect solution for smaller households that typically toss away a portion of a loaf of bread,” said Dan Larson, Oroweat Marketing Director. “Mini Loaves also make it easier to enjoy a variety of breads for different occasions; including 100% Whole Wheat with whole grain nutrition, and Country Buttermilk, a favorite for the perfect grilled cheese sandwich! Now you can have both. This is one more example of Oroweat’s innovative thinking to offer new options that are important to our consumers.”

With the average number of people per household just over two in the United Sates, smaller size offerings are gaining attention in the food industry. Keeping an eye on trends and listening to consumers, Oroweat is one of the first bread companies to introduce smaller loaves. Last year, Oroweat successfully introduced premium buns in four-count packages.

Oroweat confirms it, then. Small packaging is innovative thinking.

There’s been a lot of interesting discussion recently around personas. Part of what’s really being talked about is how to tell an effective story. As in, one party has information they want to impart to another in a way that is impactful, memorable, makes a good working tool, and can be internalized and passed along to others.

Stefan Nadelman’s animated short, Food Fight, which I discovered over at Drawn, is a virtuosic example of telling a story through alternate means. Nadelman’s film presents a history of major armed conflicts since WWII, using food to represent the conflicting nations. It’s hilarious, touching and thought-provoking, and it made me want a Big Mac.

Food Fight relies on a set of shared reference points to tell its story, and I think it’s useful to keep in mind that the more we use proxies to convey information, the more we are relying on all of the communicating parties having the same set of reference points. That’s why it’s so important in a design process that any type of information vessel be treated not as a static artifact, but as a material that we can work with to clarify interpretations and surface assumptions.

I’ve uploaded nearly 1300 of my Japan pictures to Flickr. For reasons I’m sure you’ll understand, I haven’t added titles or tags or descriptions proactively, but please add comments or questions on flickr and I’ll gladly offer a story or explanation.

Meanwhile, I’m including some of my faves here, as well as part 1 and part 2.

I’ve uploaded nearly 1300 of my Japan pictures to Flickr. For reasons I’m sure you’ll understand, I haven’t added titles or tags or descriptions proactively, but please add comments or questions on flickr and I’ll gladly offer a story or explanation.

Meanwhile, I’m including some of my faves here, as well as part 2 and part 3.

Sites like Canada Only demonstrate the emotional draw of food from home. I’d love some Shreddies, butter tarts, or Aero bars. But if you’re African, maybe you’re hungering for bushmeat (the “meat of African wild game…in this case, pieces of baboon, green monkey and warthog”).

Prosecutors, meanwhile, cast Ms. Manneh as a thriving businesswoman, “selling traditional African foods to immigrants who undoubtedly miss home,” as Mr. Green put it in his response. He compared the meat to ham, reasoning that the tradition of serving ham on Easter “does not render ham a sacred, religious food.”

Outside the courtroom on Tuesday, Corinthian was fuming. She said she has eaten dried monkey meat, which has the ropy consistency of beef jerky, and does not understand why government objects to it.

Until fairly recently, bushmeat was sold openly in immigrant neighborhoods, said Dr. Wonkeryor, who teaches in the African-American studies department at Temple University. He said the case against Ms. Manneh has made it more expensive and hard to find.

Several immigrants acknowledged interest in the case but were loath to comment on what has become a sensitive issue. One man noted only that a small amount of bushmeat can change the character of a stew, adding a spiciness that is hard to describe.

The Rev. Philip Saywrayne, pastor of Christ Assembly Lutheran Church on Staten Island, said many people in the community are accustomed to carrying small amounts of bushmeat back from Africa. They remain puzzled about what American law allows, he said, and worried for Ms. Manneh.

This further raises my suspicions about Gorilla Barbecue, just around the corner from our office.

Although we were dazzled by the array of Asian cuisines available in the food halls at Taipei 101 we observed the biggest (and most eager) crowd at the KFC. We were further surprised to note the Air Canada promotion (amusingly inaccurate translation here including surprising use of the word urine) where, to honor the culture and flavors of Canada, they’re selling a traditional Chinese egg tart drizzled with maple syrup. We passed, thanks (we had hoped it was a traditional Canadian butter tart, but no luck).

The outside of the KFC stand was decorated with retro Americana and historical brand imagery.

The American Road Trip promotion at TGI Friday’s
Around the corner was TGI Friday’s, with an American-themed promotion, throwing together states, highways, and foods that might believably (in Taiwan, I guess) carry a geographic association: Kansas Cinnadunker Donuts, Illinois Mushroom Steak, California Shrimp Martini, Missouri Chicken Parmesan, Texas Dragonfire Chicken, Arizona Cape Cod Shrimp Louie, and New Mexico Tortilla Tilapia.

Check out the press release for this promotion.

Movie lovers must have seen car chase scenes on American inter-state highways, the most notable of which is the No 66 Highway. The new menu features characteristic foods of the eight states through which the No 66 inter-state highway runs. That would include Texas, New Mexico, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arizona, and California.

Start spreading the news
Although not a food venue specifically, it’s worth pointing out the New York, New York shopping mall, noted for the presence of American brands.

It’s a curious part of the experience of being a foreigner — in addition to noting the things that seem strange (and some of those will be appearing here eventually), in our global world we are likely to encounter things that we expect to be familiar, yet through someone else’s lenses they are very very different.

A couple of months ago I spent a couple of weeks in London on-site with a client, meeting with different players and learning about how they did things, and how they were using the products they were developing.

This company is in the finance industry which has a pretty specific culture: high energy, male dominated, very social, very competitive. I was there as an outsider and I was obviously an outsider…strangely dressed, from “Silicon Valley” (one person I met with revealed that they had been anticipating my arrival by referring to me as Silicone Man, because, in part, they didn’t know my name), and of course asking a lot of ridiculous questions.

The trading floor (essentially rooms with rows of desks that have 3-6 monitors each) has a very hierarchical culture. For example, the young guys run out every day and bring back food for the other guys. One day I was working on the floor during lunch; the team I was with asked me if I wanted lunch, so I placed an order with two young traders from France, as they went out to Wagamama (or as they called it, Wags).

When the food arrived, one of the brokers noticed me with my bucket of noodles and announced to everyone “Hey, Steve is having lunch on the desk! Now he’s really and truly one of us!”

Being overtly included is always touching; I was struck by the power of the shared dining ritual (which in this case was simply the ordering, then we all sat at our desks with our computers and ate and worked) to delineate that inclusion.

I responded by announcing that one of the tools I use in my work is participant observation. “Oh…” he said, “We learn something new every day!”

The Nutella bottle is an iconic sight in Paris, with roadside cr?™peries displaying the bottle (even without the label) as a visual indicator of what you could and should get there.

The Dutch university of Wageningen has opened a restaurant of the future that doubles as a research lab. Cameras and other data monitoring devices will help the Center for Innovative Consumer Studies “find out what influences people: colors, taste, personnel. We try to focus on one stimulus, like light,” said Rene Koster, head of the center, as overhead bulbs switched through green, red, orange and blue.

“This restaurant is a playground of possibilities. We can ask the staff to be less friendly and visible or the reverse,” he said. “The changes must be small. If you were making changes every day it would be too disruptive. People wouldn’t like it.”

From a control room, researchers can direct cameras built into the ceiling of the restaurant to zoom in on individual diners and their plates. They watch how people walk through the restaurant, what food catches their eye, whether they always sit at the same table and how much food they throw away.

…

Koster said researchers can experiment with variables like noise, smells, furniture and food packaging. Is the same ham and cheese sandwich more appealing if it is wrapped in cellophane, under a glass cover or on offer in a vending machine?

They had already noticed that one table where the plastic chairs had pink flowery covers was always occupied.

Koster said observation is much better than questionnaires for consumer research as many choices are unconscious.

The other day we went to JumpSpace for a JumpTalk by Chuck Darrah about the work featured in his (along with James M. Freeman and Jan English-Lueck) new book Busier Than Ever!: Why American Families Can’t Slow Down

Busier Than Ever! follows the daily activities of fourteen American families. It explores why they are busy and what the consequences are for their lives. Busyness is not just a matter of personal time management, but of the activities we participate in and how each of us creates “the good life.” While numerous books deal with efficiency and the difficulties of balancing work and family, Busier Than Ever! offers a fresh approach. Busyness is not a “problem” to be solved-it is who we are as Americans and it’s redefining American families.

Chuck gave a compellingly accessible talk peppered with stories from their in-depth fieldwork (like something about of Albert Brooks’ Real Life, they spent a huge amount of time with these families, becoming unavoidably involved with their lives. So different than doing “an interview” as is typical in consulting work).

He handed me a copy of the book, so I’ve got some reading to do, but some cool themes/behaviors he told us about (and this is my scribbly documentation and doesn’t necessarily fully represent their work)

• Everything is work…but what is work? Some companies take 2 hours off to play Dungeons and Dragons, other folks go get a tan. There are stories as to why that is part of work for the people concerned. People define boundaries, proclaim that they don’t take home work with them, but when asked about the briefcase they are hauling out of the office, they explain what category of activity (i.e., reading HR memos) they will do at home that is not work.
• People are taking on more stuff, by choice, but present busyness as an external force
• Coping strategies have emerged (but I wonder if these are in fact the creators of the increased busyness?)
• Planning and routinizing – time spent planning the day or working out processes for dealing with daily activities
• Communicating – seemingly trite phone calls to check in about the plans already made
• Anticipating – energy put into coming up with contingency plans – “what if this happens?” or “what if that happens?”
• Adjusting – being flexible (with layers of power embedded in those negotiations), making last minute changes to the plans already developed and communicated
• Protection – i.e., create a phantom meeting to keep blocks of time free for whatever purpose
• Intelligence gathering – you don’t know what info will end up being relevant, so knowing what is going on with coworkers or family members becomes crucial
• Simplifying – One father looked at every item in the house once per month and if he didn’t know what it was, it went to the dump or Goodwill immediately
• Chunking – using interstitial times to accomplish tasks, i.e., moving items out of a meeting agenda into hallway conversations (although this isn’t always successful depending on the person and the task)

Ultimately, Chuck told us, it’s not about time, it’s about activities.

Meanwhile, a story that struck me a few weeks ago referred to a study (funded by the Alfred P. Sloan foundation, as was the Darrah et. al work above) about convenience food.

the researchers saw that convenience foods weren’t used as a time-saving substitute for the same dish made from scratch. Instead packaged foods offered a way for families to eat more elaborate meals than they would normally have time to prepare.

When families did cook from scratch, they ate simpler fare — like one-pot meals or stir-fry. In the end, dinner took about a half-hour to an hour to prepare, whether it was made from scratch or with convenience foods.
…
The study showed that meals with little or no convenience foods took 26 to 93 minutes to prepare. Meals that used a lot of convenience foods took 25 to 73 minutes to prepare. While convenience foods were time-savers on very elaborate meals, overall, there was no statistically significant difference in total preparation time.

One difference that emerged was “hands on” time — the amount of time people spent slicing, dicing and stirring foods. Using convenience foods shaved about 10 minutes of hands-on time, but it didn’t make any difference in how quickly the food got to the table.

The study authors noted that the biggest time savings of convenience foods may be at the grocery store, where it’s faster to grab a frozen entree than to collect six separate ingredients to make the same dish from scratch. Grocery-shopping time wasn’t measured in the study. The average American spends about 22 minutes in the grocery store and shops about twice a week, according to the Food Marketing Institute.

Convenience foods also helped cooks offer a greater variety of dishes; cooks who made dinner from scratch offered three or fewer dishes. One family made a simple meal of sandwiches and edamame, using bread, cheese, greens and salmon and tomatoes. That meal took about a half-hour to prepare. Another family had a six-dish convenience-food meal of microwave barbecued ribs, macaroni and cheese, prebagged salad, bagged dinner rolls and a cookies and ice cream dessert. That meal also took a half-hour.

• Idaho Spud candy on Flickr
  Yum? Chocolate potato-shaped thingy.
• Idaho Candy Products
  The popular Idaho Spud Bar is a wonderful combination of a light cocoa flavored marshmallow center drenched with a dark chocolate coating and then sprinkled with coconut (Sorry, no potato!)

I’ve used this image before to talk about Unconsumption. This semi-space between the formerly binary states of garbage and non-garbage is an interesting cultural innovation. And now it’s been formalized as a movement called replate – a way to prevent unwanted leftovers from going to waste by placing them on top of a trash can.

Very cool.

Last year McDonald’s set up a panel of high-profile over-achieving moms. Their latest version appears to be drawing from the ranks of the everyday customer.

In a bid to convince health-conscious moms that its food is nutritious, McDonald’s says it will bring the group of mothers fully inside the company. The moms will visit restaurants, processing plants, orchards and test kitchens.

Beginning June 20, the moms will keep an online journal for roughly three months about what they see – and how they feel about it. The journal will be posted on the McDonald’s website and, the company hopes, read by other moms. McDonald’s insists it will have no input on what the women write.

…

McDonald’s dubbed the program Mom’s Quality Correspondents. The moms were picked from 4,000 applicants by Arc Worldwide, a promotions specialist.

They aren’t being paid, though McDonald’s pays for their travel. They got laptop computers for the program that they will be allowed to keep.
…

The women will be journaling – not blogging – says Starmann, meaning consumer responses to their comments will not be posted on the site. But the six mothers are free to respond to consumers or to post comments on other blogs, she says. They also will appear in videos at www.mcdonaldsmom.com.