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Michelin Man's New Business Plan: Give Stars to Faraway Restaurants to Force Tire Sales
(thelemmy.club)
It is weird when you think about it.
this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2026
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Similarly, the Guinness book of records was started by Guinness the beer brand to settle pub arguments.
The early ones are fantastic too. They go into real depth on a lot of the records.
Yeah. I always assumed the name Michelin was just a coincidence. I was incredulous when I found out that it's the same company. Genuinely weird thing for a tire company to do.
Michelin also edited road maps and built milestones to help early time drivers find there way on the roads !
I miss the days when companies realized that improving everyone's lives meant they'd have more time and money to spend on their products
They did not start it for the reason in the comic. That is a complete fabrication.
It was an internal list of restaurants to wine and dine fine clients, and it was a massive success and many people who wanted to know where to take their own clients kept trying to find out about the Michelin list
Nah, originally it was just a complementary map for those who bought tires. They ended up just being the most reputable reviewer with their star system that it became a prestige thing afterwards.
I always knew because my parents had this book with the tire guy on it:
I don't remember if it mentioned restaurants in it as well, but the association with them and travel guides made the connection for me, I guess.
Nah that’s the green guide. It’s focused on sight seeing and cultural attractions.
The red guide is the restaurant one.
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i know about this but i never understood why no one thought "why do i give a shit what a tire company says about food"
edit: seems some people are missing my point and thinking this is about capability rather than motive.
Well it just so happened that the reviewers were people who knew fine dining, and the awards DID drive business to restaurants.
So it could have been a joke from the start, but accidentally became a prestigious award, that happens to be becoming a joke.
It’s also not unusual for companies to branch out into weird things like this for one-off promotional stuff. The Guinness Book of World Records was not originally intended to impress grade schoolers in the library
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The flaw in your reasoning is that you are assuming that everybody whom Michelin could hire is a tire expert. Michelin is just as capable of hiring food critics. They hired eminent critics and experts to write travel guides, and when people realised that, "hey, their reviews are actually accurate, because they have incredibly strict criteria on which to base their rating system", people understandably began to build trust in that system. The fact that Michelin still doesn't seem to have sold out is why there's such longevity to it: they have no reason to make their criteria any less strict (quite the opposite, and I've never been to a restaurant that was even mentioned in the Michelin guide that wasn't some of the best food I've ever experienced). The title of most eminent food review is theirs to lose, so they can't afford to betray that, especially in a world with increasingly-ready access to information. There's nothing that can outmatch the brand loyalty and name recognition.
Kinda similar to how an Irish beer brewery became the arbiter of world records. Yeah, the Guinness Book Of World Records is that Guinness.
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This was from the cool time when companies used their money to make things even if they're only tangentially related to their business. The mickelin guide and the gennis book of records are cut from the same cloth.
Now companies just spend money on stock buybacks and other financial chicanery.
mickelin
gennis
Jesus H. Christ
He's talking positively about major corporations, are you really surprised at the spelling and grammar?
i see what you're getting at, however along the same vein this seems like a good time to point out that it literally says in her name that she's not a he :P
Thx ❤️
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I was so confused when I realized that the restaurant thing is the same as the tire company. I'd assumed my whole life that it was just random that both happened to be associated with the same name. Honestly it still doesn't make much sense to me.
It's ok, I was today years old when I learned about this. Also about the Guinness World Records. "Wtf ever" is how I'm handling it
Michelin is the exact opposite of AMC
You expect AMC theaters and the AMC channel to be the same thing
They're not
Michelin Man
*Bibendum
that's diabolical
Saying the Pledge of Allegiance during school was a tradition that was invented by a company which made American flags, they did it as a sales tactic.
America doesn't really have a culture it just has capitalism.
Holy shit really? Do you have a source for this?
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pledge-allegiance-created-sell-flags/
Flags and magazines lol
Well damn. Amusing how sometimes something can be both funny and sad.
Kinda revealing of our country right? I prefer our old motto on money. E Pluribus Unum was what it originally said which is Latin for out of many, one. Benjamin Franklin then designed a coin that was "mind your business", and another that said "we are one". Now it's "in god we trust" which as an anti-theist I've gotta say, doesn't fit me at all.
goddammit.
Oh there's definitely more. Do you want me to regale you with the tale of how the Red suited Santa Coke invented came to be? Or do you want to keep thinking a holiday about giving gifts wasn't invented by corporations? How about how giving pre-made cards on a variety of holidays became to be a thing because of Hallmark?
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Does it actually make money for them somehow? Or does it just keep their name in the public's collective mind?
Maybe it associates their name with high quality as well.
It helped them sell more tires, it associated the tires name with higher quality, it made money by itself, and it pushed the mascot into an icon capable of making money by itself.
All for something that sounds like a dr. Doofenshmittz plan.
You have to remember that Michelin is a French company, so the Michelin star guide was originally about getting the French public to drive to French restaurants.
The French car-owning public... In 1900. So basically getting the ultra rich to drive to very expensive restaurants.
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