Why "destination dining" won't lift your stagnant local economy

In his recent brain-wave on bold economic initiatives, ATB senior economist Todd Hirsch posits that struggling local economies should entice celebrity chefs to open restaurants in their communities, to take advantage of the burgeoning new phenomenon of "destination dining."

This is a subset of culinary tourism discovered, or made up by Hirsch, wherein people of means fly to wherever to try out the latest offerings of a celebrity chef.

The reality is that the more famous the celebrity chef, the more likely it is that a goodly percentage of his employees are being severely screwed over. Read up on this lawsuit brought against uber-celeb chef Gordon Ramsey.

At least those folks were being paid something. Here's a peek into the kitchen of famous NYC pizza joint Roberta's. The writer apparently has no clue why anyone would object to working for nothing;

 Plenty of two-, three-, and four-star restaurant kitchens routinely take on volunteer labor, sometimes dozens of aspiring cooks at a time, to the point where there's a fair chance that a few of those behind the line, cooking your dinner, aren't actually on the books.

So Mr. Celebrity Chef comes to town, hires dozens of aspiring cooks to work for free, and this helps the local economy how?

Come on Hirsch, enough with the nonsense!

More proof that being an economist is still the bullshitters' dream job

I've sounded off on this topic before. Last time round it was all about Todd Hirsch and his plan for the rejuvenation of the American economy.

Todd had it figured out that what was stalling the US economy was the fact that way too many folks were living large on their extended unemployment benefits.

The way Todd saw it, once those malingerers were cut off the dole, necessity would become the mother of invention, and those folks were going to re-invent pizza delivery.

Or something.

Well, Todd remains a senior economist, and he is still full of shit.

Here's his latest effort.

His friend flew from Calgary to Montreal to have a meal at a restaurant.

Ergo, Todd has identified an entirely new economic category.

Destination dining.

Yessiree, that's where folks fly to a destination because a celebrity chef has opened a restaurant there. When celebrity chefs open a place, it obviously becomes a destination restaurant.

Todd seems to think that this is a recipe for economic renewal for communities that have lost their tax base. If Wolfgang Puck or Gord Ramsey had opened a restaurant in Detroit before it was too late, the entire sorry tale of Detroit's demise might have been averted.

Disintegrating communities everywhere can revitalize their economy by attracting celebrity chefs, or even better, growing their own!

Between that and all those redundant middle aged guys reinventing pizza delivery, there is a new golden age of capitalism just around the corner!

What a retard...

Say no to job porn

There's a fairly recent innovation in entertainment for the brain dead that I'll call job porn. Its genesis was the insatiable need that the ever-expanding cable universe has for content. It took its cues from the food porn genre, which originally involved showing photogenic chefs making pretty food for dumbfucks sitting in the Lay-Z-Boy with a bag of Doritos and a 2 litre bottle of Coke.

Understandably there's a market for this kind of entertainment. When you're working two or three minimum wage jobs trying to keep a roof over the spawn you ain't gonna do any fancy-pants cooking yourself. But it's easy on the eye and allows the mind to unwind. These shows lacked one thing though; drama.

Didn't take long to fix that. You take the buff chef and the pretty food, and you add a couple or three wanna-be assistant chefs, young and pretty, who are competing for a chance to work in the Kitchen of the Great Man. Instant competition, instant drama, and you can bet all these wanna-bees will work for nothing just to get on TV. Brilliant programming! When they win, they get a chance to work in the kitchen of the Puck or the Ramsey for six months or a year, again for nothing. It's called "internship".

Didn't take long for the concept to spread to other occupations. You got duelling carpenters now, racing to see who can finish the deck first. The car shop guys racing the clock to see if they can get the flat screen television and the hot-tub fitted into the Cadillac Escalade by tommow at three, because that's when Lebron Bigballs from the Clippers is gonna pick it up, even if the ten dollar an hour Latinos with dubious immigration status doing the work have to pull an allnighter and gouge each others' eyes out to get it done.

Over at the bike shop you've got Bubba's team and Sparky's team, duking it out to see who can build the finest chopper for the semi-retired biker who made millions dealing dope. The human drama is mostly added in the editing room, of course. Walk into a chopper shop and see how they really react when you tell them the jobs gotta be done by tomorrow, or else. They'll think that's really funny. You won't.

Working in the kitchen or the car shop will never be glamorous. But by the time the editors work their magic it will certainly seem that way. To me, it's another way to profit from the little folks working really hard to make a wage that even in a good year will still see them well south of the poverty line.

The big dogs do OK though. Can't hurt Gordon Ramsey to have interns fighting for a chance to work for free. And Buddy with the car shop bills the customers $90 an hour while he pays the workers ten or twenty. All in all, it's a brilliant formula for making more money off the peons who will never have any.

But as an entertaiment genre that's cheap to make and consistantly profitable, it's hard to beat.

That's why I say no to job porn.