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How a Tire Company Changed Restaurants Forever
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Mar 27, 2025
If someone where to ask you what the first thing that came to mind when you heard the word, Michelin, what would you say? Fine dining or tires? Believe it or not, both would be correct. Join Daniel as he explores how a French tire manufacturer became the Worlds' first and foremost authority on fine dining and how a star from them can make or break restaurants around the world.
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0:00
If you're a foodie and you like to travel, you've probably heard people talk about a Michelin star, or you've heard the word Michelin
0:14
But if you're like me, you probably don't know much more about it than that it means nice or fancy
0:19
That's not like the definition of the word. It just people say it like it's, ooh, it's a fancy place because it's a Michelin star
0:25
Anyway, I found out something really interesting about this recently that I want to tell you about real quick
0:29
And so I called my friend Alex, who is a chef. Mishlin is the guide that reviews restaurants
0:37
and gives them like this echelon of one to three stars. Out of like all of the culinary awards you can get
0:44
or like restaurant awards, where does the Michelin Star fall? If you have a Michelin Star, you like gain this respect
0:52
among the community. The Michelin Star is basically celestial level. Oh and good So he explained to me that the Michelin Guide is like a living breathing document where each year it gets updated and stars can be taken away and stars can be given but only up to three stars
1:10
When you get three Michelin stars, I mean, then you're playing your God tier at that point
1:14
So what I recently learned is that this highly esteemed Michelin star is given out by the same Michelin that is this guy
1:25
He's the Michelin Man. The Michelin Man. So how did this happen
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Like, how did this tire company become the gatekeeper of the culinary world
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If I'm going out to eat somewhere, I'll yelp where to go, I'll get in my car, I'll put it in Google Maps, and I'll drive on the freeway to get there
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We're currently surrounded with technology that helps us get places and know where to go
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We have to go way back in time before Google Maps, trip advice. freeways or even airplanes existed So in the late 1800s there were these two brothers that ran a rubber factory in France And they actually ended up patenting the first pneumatic tire for a bicycle
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But they were in a good business at the time because this is right as cars were being invented
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The car was invented and suddenly people could travel farther, faster. It's the year 1900, and this is the first year that Michelin releases a guidebook
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so that you can know as a driver what the local stops. the local stops are. People are traveling. They want to go eat, they want to go stay places
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and so they start reviewing these restaurants and hotels on the road to give this guide for
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people who wanted a nice place to eat, a nice place to stay. It's crazy to me because this is so normal
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for us right now, but back then consider how rare this was. Before then, guidebooks were like literature
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about traveling to some far off place. There were a couple guidebooks in like the 18th
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30s was kind of the beginning of it. But nothing really existed to this degree And so this tire company Michelin wanted to promote people to drive more and use their tires so that they have to replace them and buy new ones So they decided to make a guide of all the hotels you can stay at
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all of the things you should visit, and restaurants you should eat at
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Michelin slowly evolved and started focusing more in on restaurants. And because they were so early in on this
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when very few people were raiding restaurants in this way, they became the official
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already figure that they currently are today. I just think it's mind-blowing that this is the same company
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and I hope that this provides some context when you're traveling and when someone brings up a Michelin-starred restaurant
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If you guys like this, please like it. And if you're interested in more Bright Trip stuff
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visit our website, brighttrip.com, and we've got courses on there about how to travel to different places
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and we provide a lot of context like this about specific places that you'll be traveling to
4:01
So, anyway, see you
#Fast Food
#Fine Dining
#Hospitality Industry
#Pizzerias
#Restaurant Reviews & Reservations
#Restaurants
#Tourist Destinations