How has Blue Hill distinguished itself as one of the best restaurants in New York?
Is it their service? The ambiance?
For the best restaurants in the world, those things are table stakes.
What really sets them apart is what goes into each dish.
They have their own farms.
Where they invest millions to grow their own crops.
So their chefs can make magic with incredibly fresh, high-quality ingredients.
And put them together in innovative ways that simply blow people away.
It's why customers book the restaurant months in advance, pay hundreds of dollars for a meal, and plan their entire vacation around a single dining experience.
It's a philosophy we share at Off-Menu: The ingredients make the meal.
It’s been written about at length how we’re in the age of blands; how everything is starting to look & feel the same.
If you want to stand out—and create something as special as Blue Hill—slow down, close Figma, and look for fresh, high quality ingredients in new places.
Doing so will position your chef (or in this case, designer) to cook up something especially memorable; interesting enough to earn people’s attention.
Here’s where we look for interesting ingredients at Off-Menu.
A simple framework for where to look for fresh ingredients outside the average market.
First place we look is inside the company.
Gathering the right ingredients starts with unpacking the vision of the team.
It’s a good first step, because it helps you figure out where to look. Ask good questions from the outset, and you’ll be surprised where team members lead you.
Sure there are a set of things you want to ask any company you work with—around their vision, dirty little secret, & POV on the category.
But the best ingredient gatherers are always scouting farms in the most unexpected places.
Unfortunately, there’s no silver bullet to this process. No “secret question” that opens up Pandora's box.
Yet the thing that seems to work: Ask questions that tickle their brain; the kind that inspire them to move beyond their normal “talking points” and think about their business differently.
A few favorites include:
“What’s a misconception about your brand that pisses you off?”
“If your brand were to have an enemy, who would it be and why?”
“What’s your dream headline a year from now? In what publication?”
“If you were CMO for a day, what message would you want to get across to your audience on a billboard?”
Next we look at the category, but quickly shift to what’s trending in culture.
If your goal is to blow people’s minds, you have to know what they expect. That’s why you should audit key competitors, to get a sense of where “their bar” lies.
But where the magic really happens when you explore new territory—finding inspiration outside of the category for key trends in the cultural zeitgeist to anchor your narrative.
For example, when designing Off-Menu’s brand, we of course took a look at how other studios positioned themselves. It was important to know what we were up against.
But we really anchored our brand in hospitality references wayyyy outside the category to deliver a brand you’d never expect.
It all comes back to the question, “What business are you (really) in?”
In a world where most companies choose to answer this functionally, the opportunity lies in understanding & leveraging the emotional.
It’ll give you a new dimension to explore—one that sets you up on a new playing field.
Last but never least, we wrap things up looking at customer behavior.
Building something people love starts with understanding how they feel.
Talk to a combination of people who already use your product in addition to potential customers you’re after who’ve never heard of you.
Treat research more like ethnography—go deep on understanding their key behaviors, pain points, & aspirations; rather than asking them what they want.
Doing so will help you understand where you fit within their lives; giving you a roadmap for how to grab their attention.
That level of insight is what separates good from especially great.
Now comes the fun part—recipe exploration.
Once you have the ingredients laid out on the kitchen table, it’s all about figuring out how they fit together.
Positioning is a lot like recipe exploration. Instead of aimlessly filling out a framework, treat it more like a creative exercise with words instead of shapes.
Good chefs find a good recipe and run with it; the best chefs experiment with several, before dialing in the one that works just right.
Each “positioning recipe” starts with a basic set of ingredient combinations—how to frame the problem, an emotional needs state to target, a key benefit to showcase, and of course a unique differentiator to highlight.
Yet every great chef knows a presentation makes a meal. That’s why they pair their key ingredients with a garnish, to make it really come alive—in this case a philosophy, mission, manifesto, thought-starters around tone to help it jump off the plate.
By taking the time to explore & experiment, a good chef is well positioned to serve something especially memorable. The kind of experience that’s so special, customers feel compelled to share it.
Time for service
By this point you’ve looked far & wide for fresh, high-quality ingredients and endlessly experimented until you’ve landed on the perfect recipe! Congratulations, quite the feat.
Yes it takes more time. Of course it’s more expensive.
But it also builds your conviction in serving the best possible dish.
When it’s time to build your brand, remember, the ingredients make the meal.