Social Media Food for Thought

When I was five, I went to New York City with my family, and I visited the Automat. The Automat is a relic from a bygone era. You put your money into a machine, and out popped your lunch from a special vending machine-like portal. Consumers could see what they were going to order through the window in the portal, and they had a wide variety of choices. Your interaction with a waitress or a waiter was nonexistent. And you had zero control over what toppings you got with your sandwich. So, customization was lost at the expense of convenience in the name of low overhead. 

As a kid I loved the novelty of this experience with a physical machine serving as my connection to my food. But as I grew up, and my tastes grew up with me, I wanted greater choices. Burger King had a memorable campaign with their “have it your way” and I can still recite the McDonald’s sing-song mantra “…pickles, lettuce don’t upset us….” Big brands were beginning to understand that consumers want choices. There is no perfect, only “perfects” to suit all of our individual needs (thank you Malcolm Gladwell).

Fast forward more than 30 years, and I’m back in New York City again, eating at 4food, a new restaurant that is taking over where the Automat left off, with a mission to de-junk fast food in the age of social media. When you enter, you are overwhelmed by a massive video wall that showcases your social check-in on Foursquare back to the lunch crowd. And it’s impressive to see that you can play with iPads that they’ve conveniently placed around the restaurant (just wipe the ketchup off your fingers first). Then you are overwhelmed by how many choices you have to customize your food to your tastes. There are thousands of possible combinations, and the burgers have a big hole in the center just to cram all of those toppings inside (check out the video below).

4food does a great job of manning its social presence, with active engagement on Facebook and Twitter. And in the real world, the staff is friendly and attentive. But 4food runs the risk of providing almost too much choice to meet the new consumer’s need to feel engaged with his food by remixing it into a personal masterpiece. I found myself wanting to order something popular named after a movie star, as I could do at any deli. And I realized, as I ate my personalized burger, that I really didn’t like what I created.

This is a powerful message for anyone working in social media today. Brands can provide the forum and the content for consumers to create something personal for themselves, but ultimately what the consumer creates is the consumer’s responsibility, not the brand’s responsibility. The fact that I didn’t like my burger wasn’t 4food’s fault, it was my fault for not creating something good out of what they had to offer.