The Best Food Comes in a Tent (A Lesson on Ignoring Brands)

I Am Curious and Hungry. Always.

I will eat anything (except blue cheese. You can keep that abhorrent concoction away from me. Always.)

Naturally, this combination was very dangerous considering every time we drove down the highway there was a little tarp tent sent up on the side of the road with a family cooking food. I didn’t know what kind of food. All I knew is that I was hungry and curious.

About a week into my journey we were driving with one of the cofounders of the ecolodge who is native Puerto Rican. We had gone to Costco to pick up some food supplies and I had grabbed a champagne cola from the register fridge. Champagne cola is not something I have where I live, and even though I’m not much of a soda drinker, I am curious and hungry.

I will spare you the ecstatic rant I had about this polar opposite to blue cheese. I’ll just say it’s so delicious it makes me want to cry.

We all got back in the car to make our way home. Driving down the highway I once again saw that little tarp tent with the family selling something edible and I once again became curious.

Perhaps it was my previous excited over a bottle of soda that made the cofounder surprise me. She pulled over on the side of the road right next to the tent and asked if I wanted to try something really good.

Folks, dreams do come true.

We all got a little bit of everything to share. Various fillings of empanadillas (fried turnovers) and papas rellenas (stuffed mashed potato balls). My favorite was pulpo (octopus).

The way that it was cooked was brilliant, too. The cooks used blue oil drums with a the top removed and a large chunk of the side towards the bottom top cut out. A cast iron grate was placed on top which they used as a grilling surface. There were stacks of old pallets they used as firewood.

This was by no means a Master Forge grill, and I’m glad it wasn’t. I swear I hadn’t tasted anything of this caliber before.

Good food also gets me thinking. I couldn’t help but wonder why food like this isn’t more well-known.

Don’t Let the Packaging Fool You

When I was in cooking school years ago we were told how important the presentation of a dish is. How food looks does make it taste better. If food doesn’t look appetizing, there are plenty who won’t even make the effort to try it (if you have kids you may know this first hand).

When I had a business, I was told time and time again that the product doesn’t matter as much as the marketing and branding. You can have the best product in the world, but if it’s ugly and off-brand it’s going to be hard to market. If you can’t market it, you can’t sell it. It’s why a pair of Nikes sells for crazy prices compared to shoes that are higher quality.

However, both of those perspectives come from the lens of the servicer. What if we challenged this as a consumer? What would we be exposed to?

I came up with a little exercise called “Remove the Packaging”. Here’s an example of how it works:

• Take two products (let’s go with shoes) and imagine that product without any logos, no colors, no nothing. They are just two shoes.

• Ask yourself under these circumstances which one you’d prefer.

That’s it!

You may find that the branding is really important to you and that’s okay! You may even find that the better branded shoe is truly higher quality and aligns with what you want.

However, you may also find that the better-branded product is all fluff while the other is quality.

What Could You Discover Without a Brand?

"If I remove the layers of any product or service, I wonder what I’d be exposed to?"

"If I remove the title from a boss or manager, I wonder how we’d interact?"

"If I knew this stranger as a child, I wonder what our relationship would be?"

Interesting questions to ask yourself that you can only answer when you remove all the polished, pretty stuff that we all lead with.

It showed me how powerful a good brand can be, and how powerful we can be when we can temporarily ignore the power of a good brand.

Food for thought.

I’d like to hear your thoughts in the comments!

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