Comment by dataviz1000
1 day ago
Former chef here (2 Michelin starred restaurants).
5% is beyond plenty; it is awesome!
> works for 98% of the population, that means that it won’t work for ~150 million people
If I can only cook for 70 people a night, I most likely can't serve the ~150 million people who do not have access to modern browsers. And, those who do have access to those browsers and choose not use those browsers likely will not enjoy my food either. I don't need to make 8 billion people happy for my restaurant to survive. I only need to make ~1000 people happy who keep returning for anniversaries, birthdays, and the pure enjoyment of creativity with food.
I was a yacht chef for years and only needed to make 10 people happy. The technique I used was everyone eats the same thing, crew and guests. Saving money doing my own shopping instead of relying on provisioning companies that would send me food not handled correctly, my monthly expense went from ~$30k to ~$10k when guests are on board a month -- food in St. Barts was flown in from France everyday and expensive, circa 2005, so I could afford to serve the chateaubriand, osso bucco, and everything else to the crew. Therefore, what I wanted to eat everyday which likely was balanced, had lots of fiber, and healthier choices was the thing that everyone ate everyday.
People ask if the guests and owners would tell me what they want to eat everyday. The Mister was CEO of a fortune 500 company and when retired still chairman of the board. This guy was making billion dollar decisions everyday and the Mrs. was very busy also. The last thing they want to do is answer what is for dinner every night. They delegated the decision making to me. I always cooked what I wanted to eat and was always correct.
It is impossible to make everyone happy. Don't try -- it will break you.
This reply doesn’t apply to the article, at least not the way you think it does.
(1) The article is talking about how dissatisfying 2% of your market is not a small issue. And the 2% of the market the website dissatisfies are unable to express the feedback reliably.
You are talking about cooking in the same room/ship as your customer, which has a fast and reliable feedback cycle. Your scenario has the advantage of being able to learn about and fix the issue on the current meal or perhaps as slow as 1-2 days. The article is about something which you may never know about so it may never get addressed.
(2) In my experience, each complex feature is its own circle in a not-perfectly-overlapping Venn diagram, so the 2% compounds and far more than 2% of your customers suffer failure from any one of the failures. This is more analogous to each ingredient in the food you select has a 98% chance of working and each dining utensil has a 98% chance of working for that meal.
(3) you are playing sleight of hand with that 5% figure. Your 5% are self-selecting people and highly affluent. This is a very narrow niche of the market and the attitude you take of “you can’t please everyone” doesn’t really work when our target customer is used to getting exactly what they want and you depend on repeat business from a small pool of customers.
(4) I’m guessing you didn’t simply ignore important adjustments like deadly food allergies, hence you aren’t really making a fundamentally different argument than the article. You simply worked in a field where mistakes are far more visible/obvious and the feedback cycle is faster so you learn not to make the same mistake (or people stop trusting you with their meals).
If instead of looking at the 98% figure in the article and thinking “I can’t please 100% of people”, but instead consider “what happens to my customer satisfaction if I move that slider up a little and what else happens if I move it up a lot?” You might actually learn something.
Thank you for the thoughtful reply.
I would make the argument that people would have to weigh the cost of being accessible to the last 2% vs the cost of losing the last 2%.
Anyone who delivers mail to rural farmers 100 years ago would lose money. There are 3 options. 1. If farmers want mail, they can pay the extra costs. 2. Force, by law, mail carriers to deliver at a loss to farmers. 3. Rural Free Delivery, the government taxes everyone and pays for the free delivery to farmers.
Although almost all farmers in the United States and a majority of users on Hacker News would disagree with me, the answer is the government should continue to deliver free mail to rural farmers. The collective benefit outweighs the cost.
Why would farmers disagree?
2 replies →
> It is impossible to make everyone happy. Don't try
The older I get the more valuable this lesson
>I always cooked what I wanted to eat and was always correct.
This is similar advice to what I've read recently about the target audience for technical/blog writings - only write to one person and it's best if that person is you.
man, HN is awesome
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It's spelled osso buco though.
Your comment very much makes my point.
6 replies →
This sounds very fun! I would love to hear more stories if you have 'em!
Michelin, yachts... How'd you find your way to an obscure tech forum like HackerNews?
Because they like tech? Are now working in tech?
Both fields combine creativity with technical know how. It wouldn't surprise me if there were loads of wood and metal workers here too.