It so happened that, being hungry, I decided to go to a cafe of a well-known catering chain near the editorial office. I admit that this is not the first visit.
It was in this network that there was always a favorite dish – chicken cutlets with mashed potatoes. The dish is completely balanced for an elderly person, when red meat is harmful in principle, and the teeth are no longer the same as in the old days.
However, I did not manage to get the desired dish. On this day, as I assumed, complex meals were being practiced in the cafe. I was offered chicken cutlets with buckwheat groats, and mashed potatoes served as a side dish to beef stroganoff. Buckwheat has a fairly high glycemic effect. In other words, it contains fast carbohydrates, which are rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream and are hardly processed by the corresponding organ – the pancreas. And beef is red meat, which, due to its high iron content, increases the risk of colorectal cancer. Let’s add that everything applies to the elderly. However, I have not been able to change the side dishes. Moreover, I had to pay for buckwheat as a side dish in order to get the cherished chicken cutlets and then abandon the annoying side dish. I replaced it with a salad, but the money for the side dish was not returned to me. Moreover, when paying for the order, the waitress hinted at the possibility of a tip. And I tipped her, reasoning that she did her job quickly, and she was not responsible for planning catering activities. However, even here it was not without its curiosities – I could tip the amount only in a certain percentage of the order, no more and no less. In short, micro-dimensional planning.
The situation resembled a scene from the famous movie comedy “Déjà Vu”. This film by Juliusz Mahulski appeared as a Soviet-Polish gangster comedy-farce in 1989. According to the plot of the film, a mafia comes from the USA to Odessa in the 1920s with the task of killing a local criminal who supplied low-quality alcohol to abstinent America. During the twists and turns of the plot, a mafia man posing as an American scientist finds himself with a Soviet scientist in a university cafeteria, where he orders a set lunch. The proposed side dishes did not suit either the mafia scientist or his Soviet colleague. But the waiter serving the professors did not allow them to change the side dishes when ordering, and the unfortunate eaters could not even exchange them after receiving them. The catering department also monitored this. But that’s why comedy is a farce. The over-planned lifestyle of the first years of Soviet power, which may have existed in Soviet catering, was criticized. The technology of the system did not allow any individualism.
The set lunch is an invention of the planned economy. Its purpose is to drastically reduce production costs due to pre-selected ingredients. Such dinners usually consist of three courses and are designed for mass production. They were typical of the catering system in educational institutions, factories – in short, where it was necessary to feed large masses of people quickly and cheaply. The disadvantage of such a system is unification – the same number of calories, monotonous meals, the absence, as a rule, of any choice, and, finally, ignoring the features characteristic of a particular person. After all, one needs fewer calories, the other more, for one it requires a restriction of carbohydrates or fats, and for the other it does not matter. The lack of consideration of consumer characteristics is typical for the recent past of our country. To simplify, such a universal approach to the individual characteristics of consumers ultimately contributed to the creation of shortages and ruined the planned economy.
It is clear that the market reacts more flexibly to the individual needs of each person. I have come across a variety of dining options in Germany, where you could get not only side dishes for the second course, but even different entrees at the same price. Of course, such a multi-option is more expensive for the supplier than a one-option set meal. But it meets the needs of the market more.
Returning to the set lunch at a chain cafe in the center of Moscow, we can assume what caused such an anti-market move. I understand that the cost of renting in the city center is high, and I have already seen how such chain cafes (in particular, on Kuznetsky Bridge) gave way to fast food organizations that did not even bother with names, designating their establishments as dining room number so-and-so. The idea of quickly stuffing your stomach with something and running on is, of course, attractive, but there is also great competition in this regard. After all, any supermarket of the same chain origin already offers both lunches and breakfasts to the visitor – and a variety of dishes with a choice of dishes. True, you often have to eat standing up, but quickly.
In my opinion, the cafe, even if it is online, solves other tasks than just helping the visitor to fill his stomach quickly. I can give you an example when I once happened to visit a Paris cafe in Montmartre. There were paintings on the walls. I have seen the same atmosphere in Viennese cafes, where the latest newspapers were always offered to the visitor. In a word, a cafe is not catering, or rather, not only catering, but above all the atmosphere.… And it is she who determines the market advantages of a particular cafe – to what extent it meets the needs of each individual. It’s impossible to plan it. You can only feel it, and this is the art of the modern urban cook…