Abstract
Creative goods do not have to be useful, but they do have to make sense. They communicate something; they are messages in the most complex way possible. We who use them, take them in with our senses. Conventional art forms appeal to eyes that can read signs and texts, and to ears that distinguish sounds from noise. Performances, from music festivals to fashion shows, appeal also to the bodily senses—the touch in close encounters, the smell of the atmosphere. Products of culinary art appeal mainly to smell and taste—two senses that are still excluded from currently offered multisensory artistic experiences. The works, called “plates,” arranged in “menus,” are served and consumed, accompanied by a narrative, in the atmosphere designed for the restaurant. Fine dining chefs differ from ordinary diner chefs in the same way that art painters differ from sign painters and fashion designers from ordinary tailors.
Nonetheless, culinary art has enjoyed less prestige than musical, visual and literary art. As in the case of photography, the usefulness of the medium—image recording and human nutrition, respectively—overshadows its capacity to create aesthetic experiences. Moreover, the field is difficult to investigate. The producing organizations are highly idiosyncratic, and access to their dining experiences is costly and time-consuming. In consequence, innovation strategies in the market for works of culinary art have so far remained in the dark. From a management science perspective, however, the field offers an unusual angle for the understanding of creative processes in markets for artistic goods in general: the works are generated by small organizations, they are produced in seasonal series and they demand the incessant invention of creative surprises.
Franz Liebl, professor of strategic marketing at Berlin University of the Arts, has filled the research lacuna. He reconstructs the strategy of top gastronomic establishments and he discusses the play of food plates and wine bottles in direct comparison to the game of contemporary art and the game of high fashion. Liebl's study is the result of decades of extensive research for which he visited hundreds of Michelin-starred restaurants in Europe and interviewed many of their chefs. His participatory observation includes all the senses, but especially the senses of taste and smell. Wines—with millennia of history and globally distributed production—is wisely omitted. The book is written in German, but its unusual findings merit the effort of translation.
Liebl structures the chapters of his book like a menu, starting with amuse-bouche followed by eight courses with mouthwatering titles like The Story-Teller as an Actant in Top Gastronomy or The Fatty Liver as Avant-Garde Material, and filled with detailed examples. In the concluding chapter, entitled Mignardises (French for sweet treats), he summarizes his findings. He distinguishes three “fields of action” (p. 212): the gastronomic field, where the organization's management of production is performed; the culinary field, where value is created through sensory experiences; and the field of hospitality culture, where interaction with customers takes place both technically and emotionally.
The management performance operates on two levels. First, a network of providers is built that ensures the quality of each ingredient. Second, the ingredients are transformed into menus by the team in the kitchen, and by the team in the dining room. Decision-making in the industry's small businesses is strictly hierarchical, as in many arts and culture organizations. With very few exceptions, an individual (usually a man) determines the concept of the enterprise, implemented in procurement, processing and presentation. Liebl shows how the management of the production process of steaks and their material components is embedded in “a network of stakeholders” (p. 218) and how the stakes—the physical, psychological, and monetary commitments of the people involved in the culinary enterprise—drive top-class gastronomy forward.
The menu consumed by the guests is central. It is part of an experience that unfolds in several steps. The host creates five phases: anticipation, expectation, fulfillment, perception, and memory. Fulfillment refers to the immediate experience of the meal, through which an expectation is fulfilled—and yet appears as a surprise. This is vividly addressed in the book's numerous episodes. The complexity of these experiences of enjoyment is magnified by a story, “in the strict sense that a series of interconnected events becomes recognizable” (p. 129)—a characterization applicable to musical performances and topical exhibitions as well. The first two and the last two phases include tasks of hospitality which are missing in cultural mass productions. All the stages combine to form the “customer journey” (p. 214). The journeys vary depending on the location, but appreciation, care and generosity are fundamental.
Little is learned about the guests. Apparently, there exists a sufficiently large group of gourmets who are willing to learn, who embrace the creations of culinary artists and who turn their journeys into a lifelong voyage. There is casual mention of the “international gourmet jet set” (p. 193) and of tourists who simply want to collect culinary trophies. Prices and costs are occasionally mentioned, but not systematically pursued. This is regrettable because the question of the conditions under which businesses offering culinary inventions are profitable is central. After all, these companies operate in the strictly private sector. The perceived irrelevance of fine dining for our society's food culture is manifested in the lack of public funding.
Liebl's comparisons with high-end art and high-end fashion are helpful. In the art scene, the galleries prepare their raw material of visual works and act as hosts to those who they wish to send on a collector's voyage. They, too, tell stories that integrate memories, fantasies, discourses and cultural knowledge. Leading fashion houses operate similarly: under an imagined theme, the staging of a new collection unfolds in communal perception, first through the experience of one's own role in the fashion show, then through the experience of being noticed by significant others while wearing a designer's creations.
In the arts as well as in Haute Couture, it helps to distinguish between occasional and passionate players. Occasional players—tourists in the broadest sense—stabilize business, utilize capacity and purchase lower quality. The passionate players pay with their purchases for being part of the collector scene and are therefore invited to exhibition openings or fashion events, with subsequent dinners in an elite circle. In these invisible clubs, the subtle distinctions in the reputation of certain players come into play. A second category of passionate players includes enthusiasts of all kinds, such as art journalists, art historians, museum staff, curators, and gallery owners, who cover their losses elsewhere. All three sectors share the fundamental characteristic of selling singular objects, charged with meaning through a range of narratives, to customers who store their acquisitions as collections.
Unlike acquisitions in the visual arts, durable objects are missing in the culinary play since the works are literally consumed. Nothing remains except the memory of taste experiences and the connection with the memory of previous culinary experiences. This connection can also turn into a collection, built up by the players over the years. Since the players’ presence in the dining rooms is almost private, the extent of their collection is not manifested in museum buildings or extravagant evening gowns. Passionate culinary collectors do not cultivate a club-like atmosphere, but they often raise their stakes by (usually discreetly) compensating for the deficit of their favorite culinary artist.
Liebl's field research provides an unusual perspective on the creation of value and the appreciation of creative goods, but that's not all. He is also the creator, author, and performer of a 66-part series titled Unbekannte Theorie-Objekte der Trendforschung (unknown theorical objects in trend research). His flair for the avant-garde of cultural development has led him from early musical experiments to his current involvement with high-end gastronomy. In this usually overlooked field of the creative economy, he not only sees “the power inherent in unregulated areas … in the sense that (aesthetic) self-will can prevail…” (p. 221), he also detects a surprising strategic turn: the innovators in culinary art and management no longer present themselves as aesthetic vanguard, but as rearguard. They develop practices of preservation, maturation, the use of traditional processes, the revival of lost values, and they discard dysfunctional contemporary habits.
Rearguard practices might be of value in other sectors of the creative industry as well, with subsequent implications for their management. Entrepreneurs that deal with aesthetic commodities for eyes and ears might draw their lessons from the heritage-oriented practices currently being developed in the production and delivery of aesthetic commodities for smell and taste.