Apparently Mario Batali not only has a poor sense of fashion, but he might not be the brightest business person either. With tasting menus around $140, Batali has an extremely narrow customer base. The average person will not fork over that kind of dough for a night on the town. Those meals are in the price ranges of the very wealthy or those on an expense account. In NYC, that often means people in the financial markets or banks.
If you own restaurants where you are dependent upon financial market expense accounts to foot the bills, you may want to consider keeping your opinion that a large part of your customer base is like Hitler or Stalin.
Batali, who initially didn’t apologize for his remarks but lashed out at Jeff Bercovici, the Forbes reporter who wrote the story, saying that he was deliberately misquoted. Bercovici fired back with a follow-up article along with an audio clip which confirms Bercovici’s side of the story; it also includes the Time ‘Person of the Year’ debate video which started this whole Bataligate mess.
There was some significant backlash for Batali. My husband was the recipient of many emails, north of 40, from pals on Wall Street calling for a boycott of Batali’s restaurants. Rumor also has it that one bank reportedly told their employees that they would not reimburse expenses from Batali-owned restaurants.
After all the truffle kerfuffle, Batali apologized for his remarks via Twitter. However I believe that Bataligate lives on. Bankers and financial markets types are not a particularly forgiving bunch, in general. Couple that with the fact that NYC has numerous high-quality restaurants who are only too pleased to welcome the money those expenses accounts bring, Batali is going to feel the pinch.
I wonder where Batali will turn when he looks to obtain financing for his next restaurant?
Bottom line: Customers do not like to spend their money where it is clear that the business owner has nothing but disdain for them – except for when it comes to grabbing their money.
