Jaunted

Jaunted: So, your guides are a bit different. How do you put them together?
Nina: All of it is based on surveys and has been for 29 years. People can register and vote on anything they're interested in. For any of the areas we regularly survey, people can vote all year long, and we encourage them to. When we end up publishing a book, those people who participated get a free copy of the guide.
Tim: We try to get people who are avid about the subject matter. If you're in love with food, even if you do something else for a living, you know about food. If you enjoy golf, you probably know about golf courses. So, for example, for our New York guide, we're not trying to get a cross-section of New York, but those people who go to the better restaurants.

Jaunted: Since you rely on other people for critiques, do you watch out for fake reviews?
Tim: Sure. We have a big influence on where our readers go to eat, and we have spent millions to ID cheating. We have filters. We have professional surveyors--PhD types--who look at our results.
Nina: We make sure that we get thousands of people to contribute, too.

Jaunted: Tell us about the new look of the Zagat guides.
Tim: We were the ones who were the most resistant to the new look. But even we had to give up the fight when our younger staff united against us. And God bless them, they were right--the look, the feel, the smell, they're better. We were surprised, and they're selling better.
Nina: Sales are up at this point. All these young people were right. Over time the look of some of our books got to be different, and we wanted to have a unified look for our brand in print, online and for mobile.
Tim: She didn't mention that we hired this famous type-setting firm [Ed note: Pentagram] to help. But this was all driven by young people here.

Jaunted: What else is coming up?
Tim: We have an airline guide coming out on Tuesday.
Nina: I remember talking about the first airline survey we did and we were excited about the quotes we'd get from people.
Tim: To give you an idea, one of the quotes that's coming up is "Next they'll charge for air... Oops, don't wanna give them any ideas."

Jaunted: Let's talk about dining trends. How do people feel about smoking bans in restaurants?
Tim: This whole thing has turned out to be the exactly the opposite of what restaurants feared. Even smokers say that when they're eating, they don't want to have smoke in their face. So smoking bans are taking off all over the place. In places you can't even imagine and in country after country.

Jaunted: Tim, you've said that the industry is going green. In what ways?
Tim: Almost everywhere the trend is growing. Fifty-five percent of people in New York would pay more for sustainably raised food. I don't think that even 25 percent of people knew what that was two or three years ago. All kinds of things I consider green are on the consciences of people: trans fats, organic food and of course smoking.

Jaunted: Sounds like the industry's catering well to guests. What's something that restaurants still need to work on?
Tim: Service is the weak link. The average rating for food is two points higher than service [Ed note: on a 30 point scale]. We've asked people to rate their own cities, and while the back-of-house is in the 20s on our scale, the front-of-house is around 15. It would benefit the industry to have pre-trained and professionalized staff. There needs to be a change in attitude. When was the last time you saw a maitre d' on TV?

Interview conducted and edited by Paul Brady.

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