Fresh Made Burgers: the End of McDonald's?

Here in Hong Kong, there are many burger joints which offer fresh made burgers: Monster Burger, BLT Burger, MOS Burger etc.  These joints offer a different kind of service than the traditional burger joints such as McDonald's or Burger King.  The moment when you order a burger, the shop will make it from scratch.  Therefore these burgers are fresher and hotter.

One good example of fresh burger joint is the famous MOS Burger from Japan.  It is the second largest fast food franchise in Japan with shops in many Asian countries.  At the time of this blog post, there are 15 MOS Burger joints around Hong Kong.

After you order a burger, and if you decide to eat inside the shop, you pick a seat and wait for your order.  After your burger meal is made, it will be delivered to you by a waiter or waitress.  The following picture shows a fish burger at MOS Burger:

The burger was really hot and it is the way I like it.  Of course, the service offered by MOS Burger comes with a price.  A fish burger meal is about HK$37 whereas a fillet-o-fish meal at McDonald's is about HK$24.  So customers are paying more than 50% premium for MOS Burger's service.

There are way more variety of burgers at MOS Burger than McDonald's.  At the same time, the number of seats is a lot smaller.  What customers get is a comfortable (that is, not crowded) place to enjoy an expensive burger meal with relatively good customer service.  The question is: are customers willing to pay this price?

The answer is an astounding yes.  Life is short.  Take your time and enjoy your food.

A Brief Review of the Tamron 18-270mm F/3.5-6.3 Di II VC Food and Travel Lens

I am a Nikon D3000 user and I have never owned any Tamron lens before.  Last week when I went to Northeastern China, I had to take a travel lens (that is, one single lens for all purposes) with me for food and travel photography.  Before the trip, I got the Tamron 18-270mm F/3.6-6.3 Di II VC lens.  Although the lens covers a wide focal length range, to my surprise it is a relatively light lens.

For daytime landscape shots, it is a lens that exhibits extremely good clarity.  With VC (Vibration Compensation) turned on, it compensates shaky hands at the long range:

In low light situations such as inside a Buddhist museum as shown, the lens can capture vibrant colors with little loss in details:

For closeup food shots at restaurants (usually with low lights), I was able to shoot at much shorter focal lengths with all the details in the food subjects being maintained:

For anyone who needs a versatile lens for food and travel purposes, I highly recommend the Tamron 18-270mm F/3.5-6.3 Di II VC lens.

The Marketing of Art

The city of Shanghai turned a giant steel factory in the heart of the city into a huge art producing facility called the Shanghai Sculpture Space (紅坊).  If you walk around the outskirt of the facility, you can see some truly amazing work by the artists.

This is a Mercedes Benz made with bricks:

This is a steel sculpture of Albert Einstein:

This is a steel sculpture of Deng Xiaoping:

Here is a collection of feet:

Here is a steel knight:

Here is an instrument made with a laptop and an abacus:

This robotic animal looks scary:

While most people cannot buy these sculptures and put them in their homes, what does such an art facility do to help the artists?  

This place has become a tourist attraction spot in Shanghai.  Tourists are usually compelled to look at everything in a tourist attraction spot in detail because they know that they may not come back to these places in the near future.  Unlike an art gallery or show where people may need to pay to get in, these open art facilities create a superb channel to connect the general public to the art world.

A tourist attraction spot is often a place for people to appreciate beautiful things.  Art is beautiful even though for non-artists like myself, I cannot describe why a piece of art is beautiful.  Just by look at beautiful things, I feel happy.  By combining art and tourism, it is a perfect strategy to market art without doing it in-your-face.

The Myth of Green Tea

We have all heard that green tea is good for our health.  But what exactly does it do to help us improve our health?

In Hangzhou, China, there is a lake called the West Lake (西湖).  Near this lake, there are many farmers who make a living growing and selling Longjing/Dragon well green tea (龍井), which is known by many as the best kind of green tea. The tea leaves are required to be hand-fried (that is, use the bare hands to fry the green tea leaves) with a hot wok before packaging.  Below is a picture of a master who has been doing this for over 60 years:

In addition to drinking the tea, these tea leaves can be eaten as well.  Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher came to Hangzhou and tried the green tea.  She was told by the Chinese president Deng Xiaoping to eat the tea leaves.  Hesitated at first, Ms. Thatcher eventually ate the tea leaves and found them to be quite tasty.

Green tea leaves can help clean the intestines, thus having the effect of detoxification of the human body.  Therefore in addition to drinking green tea, eating the leaves is also recommended.

Making green tea is quite easy.  Just grab the green tea leaves with 3 fingers into a glass.  Pour hot water at around 50 degree Celcius into the glass.  The first glass is the best with the most powerful taste.  2 additional glasses of green tea can be made with the same tea leaves.  Afterwards, throw away the tea leaves and make another glass with new green tea leaves if desired.

A Beauty Pageant Contestant's Success Story

Here is a startup company story you don't hear every day.

Erica Yuen was a beauty pageant contestant.  She started blogging as a way to tell her relatives what's going on in the pageant.  Shortly after she won the 5th place in a beauty pageant contest, she thought she could be a star and be good at it.  Unfortunately things didn't turn out as expected.  The media pictured her as a fiery person who liked to make enemies with other female stars.

She continued to blog and somehow the media exposed her blog to the public.  Her fans started to read her blog regularly.  Occasionally she would write about a certain beauty product she used and things got interesting when she asked if anyone wanted to buy the same product.  She would bulk order the product from the USA.  She got over 300 requests through email.

Erica saw a business opportunity.  In the beginning, she would hang out at Starbucks and distribute the products to her new found customers.  But doing this was very time consuming.  She thought she needed some kind of e-commerce website that could handle the orders better.

She didn't know how to build a website.  She knew that those web design companies would rip her off.  She was wary of freelancers.  Finally she struck a deal with elle.com.hk.  Erica was a guest blogger on elle.com.hk before, so she asked elle.com.hk to build a website for her and in return, her e-commerce website would provide elle.com.hk with a few banner ads.  Her website was up in a couple of months.

Erica uses a lot of web tools to help with the marketing of her new business.  She has a Youtube channel.  She interacts with her customers through her own blog, her blog in elle.com.hk and her facebook page.  She monitors the comments in her blogs, facebook and other forums very closely to make sure that there are no unhappy customers.  Since business was so successful, she opened two brick-and-mortar stores to sell her products.  Her business has now acquired over 10,000 customers within a few months.

Erica knew in her heart that she wanted to take control of her life and be her own boss.  Her beauty pageant fame might have helped her get a head start, but it is the relentless pursuit of her goals that keeps her business moving forward.