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By Root 851 0

Bon Appétit magazines, where I was amazed to see people share their own recipes—there’s the gift economy—and also share their comments and variations on the magazines’ recipes. For example, a Gourmet adaptation of a bakery’s recipe for Mexican chocolate cake brought suggestions to replace the water with espresso (many commenting cooks liked that idea, tried it, and shared their endorsements); double the cinnamon; add Kahlua or rum to the glaze; use cream-cheese frosting instead of the glaze; use neither topping but serve it with whipped cream and berries; toast the nuts; substitute milk and orange juice for buttermilk; coat the cake pan with cocoa powder (helps with the sticking, you see); and even add cayenne pepper (pepper?). With these adaptations, you could argue the dish is no longer the same; could be better, could be worse. I’m not suggesting that recipes or menus become ballots; see the preGoogle rule about too many chefs spoiling the broth. It’s the chef, not the public, who will be held to account if the cake is too peppery. So I’ll violate Jarvis’ First Law—I won’t hand over complete control. But why not gather and use the wisdom of the dining room? A good restaurant has people who appreciate and know good food. It should respect their taste and knowledge, the Google way.

People want to create, remix, share, and make their mark. Perhaps a restaurant could be their platform. Maybe it could stage bakeoffs: Try the chef’s version of the cake and Jane’s—the winner gets on the menu. The public could suggest dishes they would like the chef to cook: “I had a delicious tart at a café in Vienna and I’d kill to have it again here in Boise.” A cook worth her salt would take that as a compliment.

Of course, the best advertisement is a happy customer; this rule is truer with restaurants than with most other businesses. Local restaurants—or national networks of heart-healthy restaurants—can join in relevant conversations and groups online, not to spam them with advertising but to hear ideas and desires and make them come true. Plenty of food fans are already talking online. The FoodBlogBlog counts 2,000 blogs and that’s just a start; the U.K. has a Food Bloggers Association; Chowhound.com has outposts all across America. See Chowhound’s What’s My Craving? forum in New York, in which diners ask fellow diners where to find papusa (thick, stuffed tortillas), a proper Indian biriyani, or Korean jajangmyun (noodles with a black soybean paste). If you think of food as the basis of communities—and it is—then you’ll think like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and help them organize. Perhaps diners would like to gather parties and you can provide the forum to help. Your restaurant could become the venue for blind dates made on craigslist: get dinner, get drunk, get lucky, get married.

A vibrant online community buzzing around a restaurant will help market it. A social restaurant will soar in search-engine results as diners/users discuss it and link to its recipes. A transparent restaurant that puts much of itself online—recipes, wine reviews, taste data—will also rise in Google search, especially now that Google is making search more local (tell Google where you live and the next time you search for “pizza” it will give you joints in the neighborhood). If people search for where to have a killer soufflé in the area, the name of a restaurant where diners are discussing said soufflé and its recipe should rise as high as the dish.

A Google-driven restaurant won’t become a computer-run bistro with the algorithmic menu: roborestaurant. That’s not what Googlethink is about. Instead, these tools enable any business to build a new relationship with customers. Not every customer will want a personal relationship; most will eat and run. Following Wikipedia’s 1 percent rule, it takes only a small proportion of customers to get involved and contribute great value.

Restaurants are even being crowdsourced. Trend-tracker Springwise reported that a restaurant called Instructables, where customers will make all decisions, is launching in Amsterdam. The