[ This is The Coffee Shop Cafe's hot fudge pie. It looks really good, doesn't it? It doesn't have much to do with this blog, but still ... ]
Call this shameless self-promotion if you will, but I came across something recently that kind of lit me up inasmuch as it made me think "Yes! That's what we want!"
The idea came from Malcolm Gladwell's book "Tipping Point," which is sort of a study in what makes trends blow up. I definitely recommend the book. I read it several years ago but I've recently been listening to it on audiobook and that's when I discovered how one of Gladwell's points directly correlated with what we would like WacoFork to be — and what I think it has already kind of become.
"Why are the Zagat restaurant guides so popular?" Gladwell asks. "Partly it is because they are a convenient guide to all the restaurants in a given town. But their real power derives from the fact that the reviews are the reports of volunteers — of diners who want to share their opinion with others. Somehow that represents a more compelling recommendation than the opinion of an expert whose job it is to rate restaurants."
Ok, so Gladwell was speaking specifically about Zagat and not WacoFork, but I think it applies to WacoFork as well and that has nothing to do with me. It's all because of you. The WacoFork users have taken ownership of the site by writing reviews of their favorite — and least favorite — restaurants.
We will be a year old on April 7. By the way we're having a birthday party on April 14. The tickets are sold out, but I've got a few so if you really want to come to the party email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and we'll see what I've got left. It's first-come first-served. Anyway, in that year we've had about 700 reviews written. We were so pleased when we launched to see people jumping in and writing reviews by the bunch. By the time we were two months old, more than 200 reviews had been written.
The rate of reviews has slowed a bit, but that's ok. The most important thing is that the reviews coming in seem to be honest appraisals of Waco's restaurants. And therefore, because of you, we are building something that, according to Gladwell has real power.
So we hope you'll keep writing reivews and using our site and iPhone app because together we all win.
One more bite: You've got until Saturday at midnight to get your March reviews submitted. We're going to put all the reviews into a hat and the reviewer we draw out of it will win a $50 gift card to the restaurant of his or her choice.
