#233 Reinventing the Restaurant Business, Invisible Brands, Decentalizing Quality, World Fairs
Spotting Genius, Talenti’s Gelato Jar, Great British Bake Off, The Great Wave and more
Hello,
Diwali time! We are celebrating it in Bangalore this year. It’s a change from our usual Diwali with parents back home. Plans didn’t go exactly as we hoped, but decorating a new home and celebrating with cousins and friends made up for most of it.
Many of you are in full festive mode and probably spending less time in front of screens (my Substack stats agree). So today’s edition is a quick one, with exciting discoveries served in short, easy bites. Click, save, and come back when you’ve got a quiet moment. Or just revisit it next week.
Here take a quick look:
And now to the main thing…
🧑🍳 Reinventing the Restaurant Business
Sean Feeney, a finance bro turned restaurateur, shares his journey of building the ultimate hospitality experience. He talks about creative ways to engage local communities and what it takes to deliver unreasonable hospitality. Packed with great anecdotes and lessons for anyone in business or service.
Listen: Reinventing the Restaurant Business (Colossus podcast with Patrick O’Shaughnessy)
💯 Invisible Brands
Brands are built on trust, earned through countless successful and delightful interactions. But what does that look like in the age of AI? Francesco Frontani explores this question, arguing that in the AI world, trust will come from better memory: systems that learn, adapt, and earn reliability through consistent decisions. A sharp take worth paying attention to.
Read: Invisible Brands (Substack)
🧮 Decentralizing Quality
How do you scale a quality mindset? The common belief is to centralize it: bring in experts, set up dashboards, run reviews, and add layers of control. Matt Ström-Awn argues for the opposite. He makes a strong case for decentralization, showing how quality can thrive when it’s owned by everyone, not just a dedicated team. His essay breaks down the idea of quality into clear, actionable parts, making it a great primer on the concept itself. The debate on centralized vs decentralized then becomes an added bonus.
Read: Decentralizing Quality (Blog)
🗼 Do World’s Fairs Still Matter?
There’s a lot of debate about the real impact of hosting global events like the Olympics. Does the massive investment ever pay off? Or are we simply looking through the wrong lens? Mark Byrnes revisits the golden era of World Fairs to show how they shaped the world and delivered real returns on their huge investments. Maybe the model itself isn’t broken, maybe we’ve just forgotten how to design and execute them right. I can’t say for sure, but this piece makes a compelling case for learning from examples that today’s popular narrative tends to overlook.
Read: Do World’s Fairs Still Matter? (Bloomberg)
🧠 How to Spot a Genius
Is the world really running short of genius? Probably not. Talent exists everywhere, but we’re not very good at spotting or nurturing it.
This piece from The Economist suggests that academia could learn a thing or two from how mainstream sports develop talent. The key insight: finding geniuses isn’t just about discovery; it’s about development. Prodigies need mentors who can shape raw ability, open doors, and connect them with clusters of high-performing peers. Sports systems do this far better than academic ones.
And there’s a takeaway here for all of us, even if we’re not chasing genius ourselves: to grow intellectually, seek out great mentors and surround yourself with high-ability peers.
Read: How to Spot a Genius (The Economist)
(Archived here)
🫙 Talenti’s Gelato Jars
Talenti’s desserts are loved across generations, but they come with one big problem: their jars are tough to open. Fans have been talking about it for years. There are Reddit threads, fan forums, and even YouTube tutorials offering potential tricks to solve it. The company has tried to fix the issue, but it’s still not quite there. Ethan Beck’s piece is a great story of consumer love surviving product friction, but no brand should let a problem linger this long, especially when it frustrates its most loyal fans.
Read: Why are Talenti’s gelato jars so hard to open? (The Washington Post)
(Archived here)
🧑🍳 Inside the World of The Great British Bake Off
Which is your favorite cooking reality show? I’m sure you have one. Ruby Tandoh writes about the one Britain loves the most: a show that’s shaped the country’s pop culture, especially around cooking and food. Her story takes us behind the scenes, revealing how these shows create their magic and why they hold such a special place in people’s hearts.
Read: Inside the World of “The Great British Bake Off” (The New Yorker)
(Archived here)
✨ Everything else
There’s something hauntingly beautiful about old, abandoned buildings. I saw many in Karaikudi; once-grand homes now standing as quiet echoes of their glorious past. Bryan Sansivero’s America the Abandoned captures that same feeling, documenting forgotten houses across the U.S. The result is eerie, mesmerizing, and impossible to look away from. So many stories waiting to be heard.
A chronology of all 113 prints of Hokusai’s The Great Wave. Capucine Korenberg follows her curiosity and shows how sharp observation paired with a disciplined mind can create something truly remarkable.
And since it’s Diwali and you might need a game or two for your house party, let me re-share my favorite Diwali Bollywood Quiz. It is a blast everytime we play it.
ICYMI, here is the link to last week’s post.
The three pieces around the theme “facts, misinformation, and how we can fight the deliberate spread of falsehoods” are my favorite. Save them for when you’ve some time to indulge.
That’s all for this week, folks!
I hope I’ve earned the privilege of your time.
See you next Monday.