Espresso: If Sushi was from Somalia or Salford - Rory Sutherland

0:01Morning, morning, or welcome. Yes, I have grown a tash, I have got a nose ring and I am covered in tattoos. I am your barista for the day. Welcome to Espresso short, snappy, espresso short podcast episodes. I've literally downloaded all the wisdom from all the founders and all the brands like Guder, Tills, Coconut Collaborative, Candy Kittens, Little Moons, Planet Organic and I've distilled it into this micro, short, snappy wisdom to give you a mahoosive edge on the day to kickstart your day so look, without further ado, let's get cracking and enjoy this espresso shot I watched a video of this, these, these, these YouTube viewers called Jolly who they go around and it's just a weird kind of human experience.

0:48They give American kids like tea and biscuits and watch their reactions and they give English kids, they're like, they put like 15, 16... Milk and cookies, isn't it? No, no, no, they give English kids Popeyes, which is their equivalent of KFC. Oh, I see. And you watch that for like, but it's just, it's a great, interesting lens into just the humans and how fucking bizarre we are. Now, I'm always fascinated by food on the grounds that there are certainly some foods which without their provenance would have gone nowhere. So the example I quote in my book is miso soup. Miso soup didn't exist. And your friend or son or daughter or whatever said, hey, dad, I've invented a new soup, okay?

1:30You go and try it and you'd be highly suspicious and probably go, don't give up the day job, you know. And so, you know, I have to admit, I'm not sure about sushi. Now, I eat sushi. I quite enjoy it. Is it intrinsically all that good? By which I mean, if you were told that there was, if sushi didn't exist and you were told that there was a Somalian tribe or a tribe up the Amazon who, you know, reduced to eating bits of raw fish wrapped in rice, your natural reaction would be, poor things, I hope that never happens to me, right? With a leaf around it. And I know, you know, without that kind of provenance, history, knowledge of its um uh you know widespread popularity would people really like it i have no idea you know to what extent are we actually eating what we eat and to what extent are we kind of eating consuming stories that it's 100 that my mate's got a business um in kennington uh like literally like on that road going up to london bridge and his dad basically brought sushi to the uk as a fishing but it's just the most genius business idea because you don't pay vat on raw fish right um you it is essentially the actual amount of fish per roll is bugger all it's wrapped in rice which costs bugger all the fact it's in a thing that looks that looks artistic and there's a there's a premium story behind it and it comes from a highly advanced country which we perceive to be rich yeah it prints it prints um it's pretty makes ridiculous margin he just sells that to into canary wharf into the big banks platters of the stuff super like a small unit but great margin but i think you're so right so all these things if you tell people sushi was from i don't know a cafe in salford they've started you'd be like they've started selling raw fish you know what sort of nonsense is this and you know i mean you know i mean yeah all sorts of things you know whether french cheeses or whatever would they succeed without the what you might call the wrapper of of marketing pipe bullshit yeah yeah yeah now don't get me wrong it patently contributes to our enjoyment of those things so it'd be absolutely foolish to turn your back on opportunities to make food more enjoyable through association and we got no choice because that's how we perceive the world anyway but um it's nonetheless kind of interesting i mean you know i mean i i mean famously i think there was an expert in the world caviar trade who said look if it cost you know if it cost three pounds 25 no i'll buy it um it's you know scarcity but of course that's interesting because like champagne for example its real function is to mark an occasion or demonstrate hospitality or generosity or thanks or gratitude and in order to do that it has to be expensive quick one guys espresso's got a brand new sponsor unleashed unleashes inventory management software that talks directly to your finance and econ software we use unleashed daily islands i bloody love it we've got our admin time in half saving approximately 30k a year why use it save money save headaches save stress get granular clarity on your margins no way stock is don't miss availability look your favorite brands literally use unleashed as their backbone candy kins tiny rebel trick always religiously look there's a link in the show notes please feel free to book a call with josh and his wonderful sales team at unleashed they're amazing even nothing comes of it and even better news you'll get your first month free if you reference hungry thank you so i mean one of the most i think astute marketing moves was i think the rescue of british sparkling wine from being completely underrated by didn't have probably the man at chapel down but we can debate who it was basically improving quality and we can't we know it's not purely a marketing thing but also ramping the price up to kind of champagne levels of 25 pounds and above which then means that it because i would argue that it is as good as often better than many champagnes okay and the soil's the same after all to a degree um and what's so interesting about that is that it doesn't matter how good the drink is if people think you've bought it for 8.99 it's not doing the job of saying thank you well done happy birthday happy wedding anniversary congratulations on your wedding which champagne does and could only do because you know you can't buy it for 7.99 it's um yeah i think we just we if there were a champagne house that started marketing champagne for 7.99 would the other champagne houses actually hire a hit to rack do you think they basically go around and get the guy iced it's i suppose the the analogous kind of thing to that is those brands that go into aldi but and and i'll have a style of few skews in sainsbury's and they'll actually create a sub-brand for aldi yes but it's like you know it's the same thing so you're like oh it's instead of watsits it's totsits whatever it's like do you know what i mean yeah but it's like it's interesting how do you how do you do that how long have you have you got a dead pause at four uh i've got no i've got a dead pause at 4 30 i think okay okay cool just because hundreds of times there's so much i mean yeah you can probably both talk i mean i mean you should definitely interview justin fatterini justin fatterini uh who is he was the channel 5 wine guy but he's both a brilliant uh he combines an extraordinary knowledge of wine with an extraordinary knowledge of wine psychology and wine psychology is very interesting because i mean one thing that always amuses me is you know people like economists bragging about expensive bottles of wine now you have to acknowledge don't get me wrong okay you know a 30 pound bottle of wine is probably going to be appreciably better although we can debate that certainly is appreciably better if you know it costs 30 pounds yeah uh than a 15 pound bottle of wine than a five pound bottle of wine but you undoubtedly hit a kind of law of diminishing returns here right you know and so bragging about how much extra you can pay for what is a relatively nugatory difference in quality of the actual drink is more likely to be an example of what freud called the narcissism of small differences that it is to be about anything to do with what you might call the price utility function you know um and so you know food's very interesting i mean precisely because i mean it i mean one mystery is people probably don't eat as much ice cream as they'd like to i mean everybody likes ice cream okay i know one or two people who don't but it's vanishingly rare thank you so so much for listening it honestly means the world to me i hope you enjoyed your morning coffee and go and have an amazing day let's be having you if you want the fun episode it will be in the show notes a link will be in the show notes the full episode thank you so much please leave friends as well means the world to me