Zagat: A Household Name
We’re taking on a titan today. Or at least a one-time titan. Like the king of comedy holding that little maroon book, once upon a time, Zagat was a name that was familiar in every house. Time has moved a bit past famed restaurant books, but they are still around and the name, like Farley, still has power.
In 1979, Tim and Nina Zagat, Yale-educated attorneys and New York denizens started up a little side hustle. A few years previously, while they both worked in Paris, they’d started compiling a list of restaurants they liked, forming the idea for their own restaurant rating guide.
When they returned to New York, they enlisted the help of 200 of their friends to rate and review restaurants in the city. Using all these ratings, they published their restaurant guide in 1982, selling them in NYC stores and eventually quitting their jobs to pursue Zagat full-time by 1984.
The following is what helped Zagat stand out:
The philosophy behind the Zagat Survey is that instead of one lengthy critical review of a restaurant, the eating public is better served by a rating based on hundreds of responses. By tabulating the responses to detailed surveys, the Zagat Survey rates restaurants on a 30-point scale in the categories of food, décor, service and cost. It also provides price estimates and a pithy, paragraph-sized description.
Yes, reviews out of 30 possible points. Unique, but possibly useful. More information isn’t a bad thing.
Over the years, Zagat grew in prominence and notoriety, hence the SNL sketch. By 2005, Zagat had expanded to feature 70 cities with ratings coming in from 250,000 reviewers.
But times change, tastes change, and the manner in which we consume (food and information) has changed a lot in the past two decades. Zagat did not escape this change.
In 2011, Google acquired Zagat, hoping to integrate the popular and useful data into Google Maps, which already featured a wealth of restaurant information. One sticking point, however, was Zagat’s unique 30 point rating system. We’ve written about 5 star systems before, so we know how conditioned we all are to 5, 10, and 100 point ratings.
So, shortly after the acquisition, Google changed Zagat’s system to a 5 point scale, while also severely reducing the reach from the 70 cities, to 7 in the United States as well as London, in addition to discontinuing the printed book.
But Google doesn’t always like to stick hard to the risks it takes (see any of the things Google has killed too early, it’s a long list), so in 2018, Google sold Zagat to The Infatuation, a food-oriented company that has a logo that combines a bullhorn with a ham. It’s glorious and it makes it clear they get food.
They brought the 30 point system back. They’re bringing the printed books back. They understand that it’s always about helping people. Any review is supposed to do just that, and with any luck, Zagat will have another day in the sun. A pandemic has hampered the restaurant industry, but if Zagat can survive being squeezed and then dropped by Google, I think they can survive this too.
