A man with keen taste buds can usually enjoy the treatment served by glamorous dishes. Gourmet restaurants and delicate dishes seem to be the whole things for a foodie, simple and easy. However, when we stretch “foodie” from a vocation to a culture, things become complicated and surpass people’s estimation.
Foodie culture, which stems from the basic human desire for food, nowadays leads people to feast their palate with fancy dishes. And this culture directly promotes the development of catering industry.
When deeply studied, foodie culture has also expressed itself in various forms of popular media such as food shows, movies, books, and food reviews in newspapers. By expressing itself through popular media, foodie culture contributes toward the developing other industries such as publishing communications, and film.
Contribution to catering industry
Fundamentally, foodie culture simply means people aspire after delicacy to still their appetite. Going out for dinner, exchanging information about fantastic restaurants with friends, and visiting recommended restaurants are all exterior demonstrations of foodie culture.
Food is the base for human life. There are nearly 945,000 restaurants in America as the national restaurant association shows. Take Atlanta for example, there are more than 900 restaurants, which can be sorted in 40 types, from American, Asian and BBQ to Thai, Vietnamese and wine bars. That reflects the fact that human desire for delicacy drives various foods to spread across the world. Thus people can find what they want to fill the stomach when restaurant staffs fill their wallets with money.
When salaries are discussed (usually this is the very point that most people are concerned about), restaurant and Food Services job are in the salary range of $30,000 - $50,000, and can even reach six figure incomes2, which is beyond many people’s expectation. The restaurants nationwide have 13 million employees3, or 9% of the U.S. workforce— one of the largest private-sector employers. Nearly half of all adults have worked in the restaurant industry at some point during their lives, and more than one out of four adults got their first job experience in a restaurant.
And the nation's 945,000 restaurants should hit $566 billion in sales in 20093. In 2000, the sales were only $379 billion, which means the restaurant-industry sales take a 49% advance in 10 years. This number is indeed incredible and reflects the irreplaceable position of foodie culture’s status.
For instance, one of Chevys1, a large Mexican restaurant chain, was located in a shopping mall in a large Southwestern city. The restaurant, which had annual sales in 2001 of $2,358,874, is open from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. on weekdays and 11 a.m. to midnight on weekends and draws a variety of customers including shoppers, couples, and families. The restaurant has a full-service bar and prides itself on its freshly prepared Mexican food. As is typical in many restaurants, the subject store is very busy for weekend dinners and lunches and customers often wait for a table for over an hour during these periods.
Apparently human basic need always takes the center stage and catering industry benefits from the original enticement of food, which laid the unshakable socioeconomic status of foodie culture.
Contribution to publishing industry
Though palate can be pleased by wonderful flavors, people are enjoying reading to know details of food and the delicate emotions and feelings that are related to them. Actually, people are willing to cost by mental pleasure.
The press takes advantage of foodie culture as people will never lose passion for food.
Food reviews blossom in a great many newspapers, such as Time, Newsweek, Slate, The Atlantic, and The New York Times. People love to read the objective and comprehensive articles, through which they can know every detail of a restaurant, and then enjoy the process of reading and assessing. Moreover, people are willing to visit those recommended restaurants as an indirect outcome of reading.
Hence, food reviews gave birth to restaurant critics, who bring the heterogeneous articles to the readers. Food critics4 range in their approach to writing from the acerbic (such as A. A. Gill from London), to the knowledgeable and perceptive (such as Patricia Wells from "the International Herald Tribune"). R. W. Apple, Jr. is another notable critic, from The New York Times, who wrote thoughtful articles about his travels throughout the world seeking for great food.
There is even James Beard Award for best restaurant review. No wonder the award’s appearance indicates that people focus on reviews and promote their development. Take Ruth Reichl, the renowned food writer, for example, she has been the recipient of four James Beard Awards: in 1996 and 1998 for restaurant criticism, in 1994 for journalism and in 1984 for Who's Who of Food and Beverage in America.
If you search “restaurant review” in The New York Times website, over 10,000 results in the past 12 months will be listed. And the circulation of The New York Times is 1,039,031 daily. Thus we can speculate there are a large number of people read those restaurant reviews and give rise to the boom of critiques and restaurants indirectly.
Books about food are also popular. Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl, a New York Times bestseller and Bittersweet by Matt McAllester are two of them, which both have millions of circulations. Magazines about food are also competitive, such as Gourmet and Bon Appetit. Gourmet has the circulation of 950,000 while Bon Appetit had 1.3 million readers7. Countless cookbooks are issued every year, and they appeared in every kitchen to be the effective assistants. Therefore food has created a huge economic benefits to publishing industry.
Contribution to communications industry
As people could no longer satisfy themselves by monotonous eating, they have been exploring miscellaneous ways to cater for their five senses. No doubt, the visual impact is the most marvelous one that can meet people’s demand.
Nowadays cooking shows are flooding in the TV programs. The show presents the preparation of food or the competition between chefs. While rarely achieving top ratings, cooking shows have been a popular staple of daytime TV programming since the earliest days of television.
30 Minute Meals by Rachael Ray, the French Chef by Julia Child, Good Eats by Alton Brown, Semi-Homemade Cooking with Sandra Lee, Iron Chef America, and Hell’s Kitchen...The pile of names listed above is only a small segment of tons of food shows.
The first cooking show emerged in 1946. Chef and food writer James Beard, who many people consider the father of American gastronomy, appeared on the first televised cooking show," I Love to Eat" (NBC). Cooking show followed the popularity of TV step by step and gradually took a place.
Initially, the shows were something dry and flat. And then gradually, they were added some spiciness, entertainment elements. With Graham Kerr. The Galloping Gourmet in 1969, we got a strictly comedic cooking show. Julia Child, in 1969, entertained everyone with her dramatic voice and exaggerated body language. After the success of her, cooking shows were springing up.
Thanks to broadcasting cooking shows, sponsors get their products sell better, restaurants that serve gratifying food spread across the world, techniques for cooking boom rapidly (chefs know each other’s advancements through TV programs), and dishes on family table vary from the Asian to the European. Information is undated at lightning speed due to cooking shows. Thus, these shows have contributed a great deal to the communications industry.
Anime about food appeared and achieved what seemed unrealistic in life. Food in anime is beyond people’s imagination and gluts people’s eyes. The most typical anime is “Chūka Ichiban! (Cooking master Boy)”(1997), which overwhelmingly dominated Asia. In China, almost everyone who is born in 90s has watched this anime, whose rating ranked no.1 at that time. Later on, the anime was adapted as a game. Hence, the food anime brought immeasurable income to the anime company.
The story is centered on a boy whose aim is to become the best chef he could be. As the boy gradually achieves his goal, many marvelous dishes are presented to the audience. In the anime, the cooking techniques are highly exaggerated (e.g. lightspeed cutting of ingredients in mid-air), along with the character reactions and the final results of prepared dishes (e.g. dishes emitting glowing dragons or blinding bright light). People were fascinated by the spectacles and got addicted to the anime.
Contribution to film industry
Producers and directors chased the business opportunity in food and bunches of movies came out. “No reservations” with Catherine Zeta-Jones, “Chocolat” with Johnny Depp (worldwide gross $152,699,946), and “Como agua para chocolate” by Alfonso Arau (US gross $21,656,534) are three of those commercial movies, which all pull at box office6. Totally they earned $266,957,530, which is tremendous and amazing.
“No reservations” 5tells the story that food breaks down the wall in heart between a top chef (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and her young niece, who lost her mother and lives with the chef. Also, food brings the love from anther brilliant chef (Aaron Eckhart) to the top chef. This movie has a worldwide $92,601,050 gross and ranked no.5 in the opening weekend, which shows the power of food connected with human secondary need - both emotional and mental. Thereby, food performs a significant role in film industry.
As the indispensable component of human life, foodie culture has been lasting for thousands of years because human was in pursuit of glamorous food in all ages. People developed food, and in return, foodie culture affects the world of human and owns a remarkable socioeconomic status.
References:
1. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3713/is_200407/ai_n9452142/pg_6/?tag=untagged
2. http://swz.salary.com/
3. http://www.restaurant.org/research/
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_critic#Notable_food_critics
5. http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=noreservations.htm
6. http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/
7. http://www.twincities.com/food/ci_13489132
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