Cupcakes corner the men's market

Mancakes? Here’s a trend I can get behind. Bacon, beer, and other bro favourites dominate the flavour and designs of the mancakes showing up on bakery shelves, says a trend piece in last week’s Gazette.

Online ordering sites and bakeries specializing in cupcakes for men are quickly popping up. They serve Rum and Cokes and Old Fashions for the men, Bob the Builder decals for the boys.

“Of course, nobody's seriously suggesting baked goods are gendered. But by riffing on sexual stereotypes, business owners have uncovered a rich new market for cupcakes with cojones,”
Carolyn Dobbe writes.

Manly? Maybe. But I’ve got to tell you: this sounds pretty gay.

Via Toronto Life:

The Drake turns Japanese

Watching what’s Big In Japan is a good way to track tech trends that may make their way West in the coming weeks and months. Take a stroll through Tokyo today and you’ll find black and white boxes filled with thick pixels on everything from poster ads to take out containers.

The boxes are QR codes, short for quick read, which mobile phone users can scan. The codes lead to links, offering product information and promotions. Designed in 1994 by Denso, a Japanese car parts manufacturer, QR codes have spread through Asia and many European cities.

Canada hasn’t been so quick to take to the codes. In 2008 Vespa used the codes in Toronto based ad campaign, but the adoption hasn’t been widespread. Soon though, we will see QR codes in our city, in the lounge of the Drake Hotel.

In addition to the hotel’s presence on twitter, Facebook, and foursquare, the Drake will soon start a QR program, which will allow guests to scan a posted code and become eligible for perks like free coffee or a line bypass, says Drake marketing manager Jenn Godbout.

Godbout, whose job it is to respond to both criticism and praise of the Drake on the local web, says adopting new technologies is part of the hotel’s larger plan to stay ingrained in Toronto’s tech community. The Drake has also hosted several social media talks and meetups and even had an evening of PowerPoint Karaoke.

“We love to jump on the bandwagon for new technology,” Godbout says. “It’s a big part of our brand. It’s important we stay not just in the game, but ahead of it.”

Hear that, Japan?

via: nexklix.com

via: Cliffano.com

Coding a food community

When it comes to the web, Greg Bolton is among the earliest of adopters. He learned to code as a student of Carnegie Mellon’s Supercomputer center in Pittsburg, back in the early ‘90s, when computers were still large grey boxes that relied on dial-up connections.

Bolton’s then-rare ability to write HTML won him a job at the digital marketing agency Henderson Bas, where he helped build user-friendly sites for clients. He eventually quit when business at Pantry, the College St. coffee shop he owns and runs with his wife Liz, started to pick up, but found that what he’d learned at Bas also applied to his new business.

Pantry is currently active on twitter, hosts a blog on its site, and has plans for a rewards program for users who check into the restaurant on foursquare. Social media has provided Bolton the chance to share Pantry’s story, and invite people into the store. “What twitter is neat at is that sometimes you can promote without looking like it,” Bolton says, citing the Rosedale sandwich shop Black Camel’s feed, which updates followers as to how many buns are left, showing how rapidly they go.

Bolton knows how powerful of a marketing tool twitter can be, but still can’t always find the time to tweet—and that’s ok, he says. “If you’re on twitter too much it can look like you’re trying to promote yourself [too heavily], or like you don’t have enough cooking to do.”

While social media has brought changes to the food industry, it’s also brought it closer together, Bolton says. “It’s tied Ontario, particularly Toronto, to Prince Edward County and Niagra,” he says. “It’s made that one big blob of food trends and issues. People are much more aware of things happening outside the city.”

Since the adoption rate of twitter has risen, Bolton has seen the food community become more connected. “I’ve always been on the web and wrestled with how to turn online communities into real communities,” Bolton says. “Twitter seems to hold a key. It’s so immediate and has that many-to-many connection.”

Next up for Bolton is foursquare, but first he has an obstacle to climb over. “I’ve checked in so many times I’m going to be the mayor of here for fucking ever,” he laughs from a table near the kitchen at Pantry.

Even with Bolton’s embrace of new technology, old rules of customer service apply. If regulars don’t use Foursquare, they’ll get special treatment, he says. “If people are in here that much, you should be doing that anyways,” he says of the free coffee he plans to honour future mayors with. “Any good place does that.”

Food criticism a new media world

Ivy Knight’s first impression of twitter is common: “It sounds stupid,” she says. “It’s like your status update on Facebook, but that’s it.”

But fellow chef and writer Jeff Crump—co-author of local food bible Earth To Table—urged her to join the service, telling her how good of a networking tool it is. At first, she was resistant, moaning at the notion of more online networking. But after a few weeks she became a convert.

“You’re learning new links, updates and ideas,” she says, between sips of her beer at 86’d, an industry night she hosts Monday nights at the Drake Hotel. “It’s a message board and a community. You’re messages go out to Toronto and to the world.”

Knight, who until recently was a chef at the Drake, saw potential in twitter, both to find local information and to discuss global trends. She now uses the service to subtly deliver political messages about eating local and boycotting factory farms. But on twitter, she says toning down politics into friendlier tweets works best. “Screaming about it in a PETA way is going to turn [followers] off,” Knight says.

And unlike some irate users, if Knight has a bad experience at a restaurant, she’s not going to tweet about it. “If it doesn’t appeal to me, I’m not going to shout to the world about it,” she says. “I have no intention of taking business away from restaurants where people’s livelihoods are at stake.”

While social media has changed how restaurants do business, it’s also changed Knight’s other business, journalism. Knight writes about food for the likes of the Globe and Mail, Toronto Life, and the Toronto Star, but predicts the old media’s style of food criticism will go the way of bata tapes as social media gains prominence. “Why pay [a journalist] when you’ve got a million people doing it for free with the same credentials?” she asks.

“It’s taken the monopoly away from one voice saying ‘this restaurant sucks, this one is great,’” she says. “It’s given it to the masses. That’s now the way the world works.”

Ivy, via her site: IvyKnight.com

Some Valentines we made at 86'd:

@whetmyappetite

Geeking out in good company

Marie Nicola is a nerd. Her friend Anastasia Tubanos is a geek. If internet rants are to be believed, the two terms are most certainly not synonymous. Still, the difference is debate-able. Some say it’s that geeks get laid. Others say nerds programs while geeks game. It’s all semantics.

Both women are social media nerds, gizmo geeks, fangirls for forums, twitter, foursquare and the like. You get the point. In recent years, Nicola and Tubanos have found something new to geek out about on the web: food and drink.

Nicola is editor-in-chief of Dine.TO, a dining guide to Toronto. Tubanos is producer of the Naked Wine Show, a minute long video blog that profiles a new wine each week. As journalists in the food and beverage business, they have had to learn the ins and outs of each community. They’ve done this the best way they know how, social media.

Over three cups of joe at Balzac’s in Liberty Village we talk about what hooked them on social media, the friends they’ve made on it, and how it’s changed the industries they report on.

Nicola attended the first foodie meet up, where she says she met an amazing group of people. “It was another event that showed there were people that are not just in the industry,” she says, adding that a boom of interaction between local food lovers followed the event. “There was a food explosion on Twitter. There was a lot of foodie pride at that time, and it hasn’t let up since.”

More so than individual twitter users, Nicola says restaurants are hoping to impress more established new media, like locals She Does The City, BlogTO or SweetSpot.ca, as well as crowd sourced sites like Chow Hound, who she calls “a feared bunch.”

“A lot of restaurants fall prey to foodie opinion,” Nicola says. But keeping one ear open is smart, she says. Staying active in online conversations gives restaurants a chance to respond quickly to criticisms, adapt, and show the ever-vocal foodie community that they are being heard. “They need to be able to interact in these circles. If they have misstep, foodies cut them up.”

Tubanos chimes in with a wide-eyed taunt, “You don’t want to mess with the foodies,” she quips, only half kidding.

As a wine industry observant Tubanos has seen the age of the average wine enthusiast fall, a trend she relates partially to web 2.0, which makes information about wine more accessible and the conversation about it less stuffy. Meanwhile, she’s kept a close eye on beer, which she says is becoming more discussed and intellectualized.

The trend, she says: wine is becoming more populist, beer is becoming more elite-ist, and food is for everyone. Then the message is the same for geeks and nerds alike: eat up.

*More on Anastasia's projects here and Marie's here

Marie and Anastasia at Balzac's

Tweets of the week

Twitter allows you to take the pulse of a community at any given time. Check trending topics, influencer's feeds, and the back-and-forth conversation between your favourite foodie tweeters and you can find out everything from where the cool kids are brunching to what the Olympians are eating.

Between February 10 and 17 the chatter was largely about last Tuesday's Eat Drink and Give, Valentine's dinner date reservations, Olympic ceremonies and sports, and unbizarrely, bacon. Sample the week that was, below.

@ChefBangerter reminded followers Feb is heart month

Celeb @ChefMichaelSmth hit the Olympic sized #10,000 meal mark in Vancouver

@BusterRhinosBBQ had its own suggestion for an Olympic sport

And also tweeted some words about buying local

Foodies and industry folk alike flocked to a successful Eat Drink Give (via @TOfoodie)

@Mcutrara brought a farmer from Haiti to speak at the event

Couples across the city dined in near darkness. Chef's wives stayed home. Alone. (via @IvyKnight)

New Years celebrations were cause for cheap Chinese @LaurenDorphin

And lastly, your basic bacon-talk roundup, via @foodie411, @ortdavid, and @TOfoodie. The verdict? Bacon's better than everything but penetration.

Meeting the masses

In the spring of last year Andrea Chiu posted a tweet about how much she loved the patio at Brassaii. One of Chui’s friends, Suresh Doss, tweeted back suggesting they meet up for a drink. Because they are both foodies, he tagged the tweet #foodiemeet.

The invitation was left open, allowing other users to jump in on the plans. Doss and Chiu figured a handful of other local foodies would attend, but doubted they would need a table for more than 10. The tag caught on and was rapidly re-tweeted; a sign tech-friendly foodies in Toronto were eager to meet up in real life.

By the time the event took place the following Thursday, hundreds of people had seen the tag. Over 90 showed up, surprising the hosts. As the editor of SpotlightToronto.com, a local food and events site, Doss knew the local foodie scene was vibrant and plugged in, but it wasn’t until that night that he and Chui saw the community’s true capacity.

The two decided to continue hosting events for foodies and promoting them on twitter. Since the first event #foodiemeet has hosted a bake-off, a trip to Prince Edward County, and a tasting of the mysterious miracle berry. Each has sold out.

As an outgrowth new hash tags have appeared in recent months, organizing meet ups to sample different types of food and bring Toronto’s tweeting masses together. Soon after Doss and Chui’s first meet up smaller groups began to meet regularly for dim sum, sushi, burgers, BBQ, and spirits.

In between sips of his coffee one morning at Hank’s Doss tells me, “There’s something going on almost every week. The medium has allowed for a lot of physical interaction.”

As the centre of meetup circle, Doss’ dinner invitations are endless. Suddenly, he knows all of Toronto chattering culinary class, and they know him. “My circle has always been food-centric,” Doss says, “but Twitter took it to another level.”

Doss’ dish twitpics and 140-character food musings and reviews are incessant—the man is obviously attached to his iPhone. But Doss isn't the isolated tech-head of web 1.0. In fact, he's in great food-geek company. Thanks to twitter, his days of eating alone are over.

*For the next #foodiemeet Doss tells me he and Chui are organizing a local wine and cheese tasting. Watch FoodieMeet.ca for details.

Doss, via C Daily

Eating our words

Not so many months ago Lauren Wilton was fresh to Toronto, yet another Winnipegger who uprooted her life to the big smoke to pursue bigger and better things. She enrolled in George Brown’s culinary program, rented an apartment in the city’s west end and opened a Twitter account using the handle @WhetMyAppetite.

Wilton’s Twitter feed reads like a mix between Gourmet magazine and a much racier Cosmopolitan. In between Tweets about her favourite coffee shops and brunch spots are stories of high times and hangovers. Here’s a taste: Just woke up from our serial killer extravaganaza with a friend from Winnipeg in my bed who I didn't even know was at the party.

People quickly started to take notice. Soon restauranters, critics, and other foodies were inviting Wilton to dinners, tasting, and demonstrations. She laughs and tells me she’s smoked joints with some of the city’s top chefs, and if you read between the lines, she’s even slept with some of them.

When Wilton tweeted that her apartment had been broken into the director of catering and events at the University of Toronto’s Hart House, Arlene Stein, offered her pro bono tickets for a $120-a-plate dinner hosted by TV chefs Michael Smith and Paul Finkelstein. Another of Wilton’s followers, the food critic Ivy Knight, forwarded her resume to Hank’s—a café on Church and Front—which offered her a job interview.

Not everyone is as willing to be as unedited and off-the-hinge as Wilton when it comes to scandalous tweets. One night Wilton was at a party at Niagra St. Café that produced a stream of drunken, misspelled tweets from a crowd that included Pantry co-owner Greg Bolton and Jamie Kennedy sommelier Jamie Drummond. The next day, the tweets had mysteriously disappeared.

Still a student, Wilton’s not worried about bad publicity—yet. If she lands in a respected industry position Wilton says she’d consider censoring some of her raunchier thoughts. Until then, her red lipstick and leopard printed persona will live on, online.

“This is my shtick,” Wilton says. “I’m inappropriate. It’s who I am.”

* This is the first of many meals to be discussed, dissected, and devoured. For my final feature in my final year I’ve decided to write about food. Lunch with Lauren started the discussion on foodies and the web. Over the next few weeks I’ll be interviewing restaurateurs, critics, and food bloggers about the local foodie scene, 2.0. Coverage will follow.

Eating with the enemy

A few years back I had not-so-loved professor who was studying the blogosphere. She posed to us a question: where are all the reporter notebooks? The web is full of fact and opinion, but few journalists have used the weblog format to showcase the process of writing an article.

Any feature worth it's first few words is only a snapshot of the stacks of printed papers, scribbled up pads, tapes, and photographs that went into the final product. In an effort to showcase the individual stories of the people I interview for my final feature in my final year at Ryerson, I'm posting everything I can.

To that un-named prof: here it is, my reporter's notebook. Follow me as I'm dive into Toronto's food community and see how social media has changed its local culture. Expect posts throughout the spring on everything from my favourite Tweets to interview notes.

Content may be simulcast with Close Your Eyes--russless.blogspot.com and Ryerson In the Moment--ryerson2010.posterous.com.

The rest is as follows.