It actually makes sense once you know how it started! In the early 1900s Michelin wanted to encourage people to drive more (and therefore use tyres more), so they made a guide that was essentially a road trip companion. It had some instructions on basic car repairs, locations of mechanics and hotels, and of course good restaurants to visit along the way. Over time, the restaurant recommendations got particularly popular, so they leant into that

Fun fact: the Michelin Stars were originally a ploy by the tire company to convince rubes to travel to the middle of nowhere to eat, burn lots of rubber in the process, and sell more tires as a result

I am Jack's hungry belly give me the restaurants

This seems like quite a needlessly hostile response

*recommending places to drive to.

You get fucked up pretty easily.

But I like the way they put it, as a travel guide/tire company

1 star: "High-quality cooking, worth a stop"

2 star: "Excellent cooking, worth a detour"

3 star : "Exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey"

However the Guinness Book of Records was not created so drunk people had something to argue about in pubs.

Don't sleep on the Bib Gourmand list, basically the Michelin "Honorable Mentions", recently awarded to 3 Philly cheesesteak jawns during their first excursion to the city.. super cute name origin here too: The term "Bib Gourmand" comes from Bibendum (the Michelin Man's official name)

Read More: https://www.thetakeout.com/1714874/what-bib-gourmand-restaurant-mean/

It was the opposite, wasn't it? It was meant to provide answers to pub debates about things rather than be the topic of them, if I am remembering correctly

Guinness World Records are associated with the Irish brewery. There were Guinness pubs (not sure it was a pub that specialized in serving Guinness or a actual Guinness venue) which started collecting information about birds, regarding what we consider a “record”. The idea for the organization itself came from this. If you visit the brewery in Dublin, they sell (or at least back in 2008) sold the current edition of the record book.

It’s literally to make you drive more.

They were also really good maps.

Trying to stop people from arguing in pubs? That's more American than European....

I was At the Storehouse in 2006 and they didn't have them then.

There's a bbq place down the street from me with one of those and honestly it's one of the worst BBQ places I've ever had and was really expensive too. I definitely don't know how they received a great value award. Makes me think it's just a paid for award.

It's French though lol

Came to comment that. It's a very interesting story. We didn't had GPS, so we needed maps. Tire companies would make huge guides with maps and places to stop, an analog GPS, and guides started giving stars to places, like google reviews, aaaaaand them became what it is

Sure they still aren't up to mischief?

They still have online maps.

I think they have some details that other maps don't show. F.i. the lane directions are pretty detailed.

Wait till they hear about the people who keep track of world records

The business model for pubs was often a franchise relationship with the brewery. Your local pub could plausibly be a guinness pub that only served guinness beers at the time the record book was first invented.

As a chef, your highest honor is to earn a star from a tire company.  It just doesn’t get any better than that.  Sorry, but it just doesn’t.

Shouda explained what I mean

Yeah idk I'm waiting for the Yokohama star restaurants

Cuisinart and Calphalon should start producing car reviews.

Best you'll get is Kumho

My dad's road map used to have the locations of all the Little Chefs in the UK. Fucking awful place to eat.

While Dove Bar ice cream and Dove Bar soap are not the same (or weren't, mergers could have screwed that up)

As a kid it was a cool treat tho

Addendum: the food guide costs more to produce than revenue it generates. It's not even a "loss leader" its just a cost center.

literally the crystallization of drunk guys goin "Hey y'all, watch this!"

When I was in France I went to the Michelin museum that was all about the history of rubber production. Not even once did they mention how and where rubber was harvested and the brutal slavery.

Fuck Michelin, racist fucks.

What were pub debates like before the Guinness Book of World Record?

"I'm telling you! Nancy's cousin smoked 28 cigarettes in one puff! I seent it myself!"

"That's nothing, George! Carl's grandfather smoked 37 when he was a younger man. There's even a photo of it around here somewhere."

Like, that just seems like simpler times. Could you imagine if there was no Book of World Records, and people could still argue about that kind of stuff instead of I don't know avocado toast or whatever it is today?

We need a "Guiness Book of Consumer Inflation Indices and Things Actually Getting in the Way of Millennials Buying Houses"

You did get one of those orange lollies if you finished your dinner.

Not places to eat, places to drive to, so people would buy more tyres.

As an animal with taste buds, the one time I was in a one Michelin star restaurant it was amazing. Everything about it, including service.

That's the closest near miss in trademark collisions I can think of, other than when McDonald's moves into some small country, there's been a restaurant called McDees there since the 50's, McDonald's sues and then loses all trademark rights in that nation.

Similar thing happened to Burger King in India. Although they still get to keep using the name I guess.

Burger King loses 13-year legal battle against Indian restaurant https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/india/burger-king-pune-case-lawsuit-b2598771.html

Michelin actually does have red guides for restaurants and hotels, and also green guides for cities, regions, and countries.

King Leopold II got into the colonialism game a bit later than some of the other players, but the people of the Congo gave him a hand in quickly catching up and surpassing the others in being a massive piece of shit.

Normally I don't like explaining jokes, but I think knowing is more important than the shitty joke in this case, but that fucker's regime started a habit of cutting off hands for failing to meet production quotas for rubber in the Congo.

And maybe surpassing is overstating it, since Britain and Spain at least were engaging more in genocide than forced labour of the natives, then they just shipped in African slaves for the labour.

And I'm only leaving France and the Dutch off that list because I'm not familiar with the specifics of how they did colonialism, though I am aware of Haiti, a French colony until the only successful slave revolt that I'm aware of happened there, so that doesn't look very promising for them.

Also why Burger King is called Hungry Jacks in Australia. Though that one is even more roundabout and interesting.

Jack Cowin had won the right to bring the Burger King licensing to Australia, but turns out there was already another takeaway place called Burger King so he couldn’t use the name. The BK parent company gave him a list of other trademarked names they owned he could use and he picked Hungry Jack (a brand of pancake mix in the US).

Then a couple of decades later after the Australian Burger King trademark had lapsed, BK tried to enter the market with their own stores and push Hungry Jacks out. They ended up losing and pulled out of Australia, leaving just Hungry Jacks.

I don’t understand why people find this to be so confusing. Especially considering it’s not a new thing, what’s so baffling about a program to encourage tourism in smaller towns and adoption of cars?