Yes, chef! Podcast with U-M expert explores Michelin stars, expert influence and customer expectations

EXPERT ADVISORY

The Michelin Guide and its infamous star rating system have incredible influence in the culinary world. Many chefs spend their entire careers chasing a star, and financiers see a high rating as the pinnacle for a successful investment.

That quest to be the best-at least as far as these gastronomic tastemakers are concerned-could change if more chefs got a taste of this: Research finds a decrease in Michelin stars often leads to improved consumer review ratings.

That research comes from Puneet Manchanda, a marketing professor at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, and collaborators. Manchanda discusses his research, forthcoming in Management Science, on the latest episode of the Business & Society podcast, a joint production of the Ross School of Business and Michigan News.

A counterintuitive explanation

"When we go to a Michelin star restaurant, we have a certain expectation. If the restaurant meets the expectation, it's a good dining experience. If it exceeds the expectation, it's a great dining experience," Manchanda said.

"On the other hand, if it falls below the expectation, you know, it's kind of a bad dining experience and you punish the restaurant through your reviews or not going back there again. But what happens here is that because the restaurant just lost a star, the expectation ratchets down. And so everybody (can) kind of relax a little bit. The restaurant also maybe feels less pressure.

"And then when people go there, the performance is still pretty good. And that performance typically is better than the expectation. And so people will give it a better rating."

At your service

"If you look at the Michelin Guide and the training they give that inspectors, they emphasize food, food, food, food. The food needs to be creative. The food needs to be balanced. The food needs to be harmonious," Manchanda said.

"The food needs to, you know, kind of have that explosion of flavor or taste in your mouth. But it turns out that a lot of the experience is relying on service. So if you look at the reviews, service gets mentioned a lot more. So I think one of the big insights that we get from our work is that focusing on service is super, super critical.

"If your service is great and people don't see it, they're very happy, but you don't want them to start talking about service, which means something failed."

Business & Society is co-produced by JT Godfrey of the Ross School of Business and Jeff Karoub of Michigan News. The audio engineer is Jonah Brockman and editorial production is provided by Mads Henke. Listen to all episodes of the podcast.