[quote]
That’s not what happened. Also, you can’t “steal” a recipe because recipes can’t be copyrighted. No-one needs your permission to cook what you cook.[/quote]
And it’s right there in your link
I didn’t say they infringed an intellectual property right. They boasted about peeking in windows and spying on them to learn their technique when they couldn’t get more detail from them directly. I’m perfectly satisfied to call that stealing in a moral sense.
This.
When I was a chef, if someone ate my food and replicated my dish, I took that as a compliment. If someone snuck into my kitchen and copied my recipes and techniques, that’s pretty rude.
In any case, it doesn’t really talk about why they closed, there was no drop in sales or anything, there was no effective boycott of their truck. But, as they said, they were fascinated by how easy they made it look, and I think that they found out firsthand it was harder than they were willing to do.
As far as the topic of the thread, I don’t really see the names as problematic, but I don’t really find them cute, useful, or necessary either. I don’t think that the downside is all that great, compared to many other social issues, but the cost is virtually nothing, so why not?
To a different point, when high schoolers are in a language class, they are often given a name in that language to be used in that class. Is that a form of cultural appropriation that should be examined more closely?
(I wouldn’t mind ending that practice. I still have people occasionally refer to me by my spanish name, after more than 2 decades.)
Did you read the link? They were on vacation in Puerto Nuevo, Mexico, and watched as meals were being prepared in all the various food joints they ate at. That’s not stealing. Is it stealing to watch your food being prepared at McDonald’s? At my local teriyaki place, I watch the kitchen guys cook my teriyaki through the kitchen opening from the counter and I know what brand of sauce they use (and what ingredients - surprise, they’re listed on the menu). Is that stealing?
Yes, I read the link. Did you read the part where the people were not willing to share their recipes, and so they instead went looking in their windows?
At your teriyaki place, if they used a sauce that you liked, you asked what it was, and they said, “It’s a secret.” would you then look in their windows to see how to make it?
As a chef, I used very few “brand name” sauces, and made almost everything from scratch, often with unique derivative techniques. An ingredients list is different from a recipe and technique.
If someone invited me to their kitchen, and let me taste a sauce that they had successfully replicated from one of mine, I would be impressed and flattered. If I found out that they put a camera in my kitchen and read my notes, I’d be pissed.
Having spent a couple decades in food service, I know how hard it is, and given that the article doesn’t actually talk about a drop in sales, my pretty well informed speculation is that they used a fairly minor controversy as an excuse to quit doing something that they found was not nearly as easy and fun as they thought it would be.
Excellent. Just so long as I’m doing my part to make this a better place.
And there are also the intellectual property concepts of misappropriation of trade secrets and industrial espionage, which don’t require you to own exclusive rights in something to have a claim against a thief.
The burrito incident probably doesn’t meet all the elements of those violations, but peeking in windows is certainly of the same class of ethical trespasses.
So, anyway, what do you think of the anti-Trader-Joe’s petition?
And, while not directly about the OP, a related and possibly analogous point:
Me llamo Ritter Deporte.
Squabbling about “cultural (mis)appropriation” again now, are we? We’ve done this here before.
Remember about a year ago, the Utal girl who wore a traditional-style Chinese gown to her prom that sparked an international conflagration?
Pit thread on the subject:
(Note, there are actually three separate links in the above-quoted OP, all of them still alive.)
Article in USA Today:
I think the issue with these names is that they are gratuitous. Nobody thinks of their stir fry sauce as a “Trader Ming” product, it’s a Trader Joe product, like everything else in the store.
Even so, the most charitable take on the petition is that it’s small potatoes. It’s the least of the micro-aggressions, basically a reinforcement of the idea of “otherness” to different ethnicities without any negative connotation.
Eventually, the names will be replaced with Joe, and nobody will notice.
Hopefully this isn’t too much of a tangent, but I’m curious about how (or if) people feel this differs from any other branding designed to broadcast a product’s place in a specific ethnic context?
Someone mentioned Le Choy and Chun-King above, but I haven’t seen much commentary here about it yet. I’m fine with it.
Is Prego OK for pasta sauce?
I wondered the same thing when I mentioned Con-Agra’s Le Choy and Chun-King brand labels. Similarly, La Preferida was created by a German immigrant to the US, because he wanted to appeal to the growing multi-cultural community of the Chicago area.
Those businesses may not be using a proper noun as their brand labels, but they are certainly using ethnic sounding labels that do not reflect their own origins to market their product lines.
I don’t have a line as you describe. Because I don’t feel it’s my place to have a line. I’m not the one being affected, so I can’t know how offensive something is. The only thing I can do is read what others say who are affected, and try to piece together my own theories on what is usually acceptable or not. But, ultimately, my theories are just that–theories–and thus have no bearing on how offensive it actually is.
That said, I saw two very stereotypical names that have been used in more racist depictions in the past. Jose was used for tons of racist Mexican depictions. And Ming has that “-ing” rhyme used for any Chinese depictions.
Now throw in that there’s no reason for your brand to have these different names in the first place–no one else does it. If you do have different names, they’re different brands altogether. And it just seems like a pointless thing that you might as well remove.
As for Yossi, even if they did keep the naming convention, that’s just Yoshi’s name in Japanese. Might not be a good idea to use a Nintendo character.
Oh, and I’m not a fan of ridicule for being offended unless they are the type that says that others shouldn’t be offended. Ridicule just make offense worse–making the people offended more adamant that things need to change. All the while it makes people who might have a legitimate point have to fight harder.
What’s wrong with just letting everyone say what offends them?
So Trader Joe opens stores in Mexico City, Tel Aviv and Osaka and names them, Trader Jose, Trader Yossi and Trader Yoshi, using correspondingly named store brand labels for their products. Offensive?
I basically don’t believe you. Here’s some nutpicking, but if this became a petition or cause, I imagine you’d find your line:
White people shouldn’t wear dreadlocks:
https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/31/living/white-dreadlocks-cultural-appropriation-feat/index.html
Should white people wear moccasins:
I don’t think these Trader X names say anything about the product’s place in an ethnic context. They don’t make the product appealing to people who prefer a specific ethnic food, they don’t indicate a respect or interest in the ethnic culture, they’re just a cutesy kitchy variance on the Trader Joe brand.
Maybe my wording isn’t clear, but I feel like you’re maybe being a bit obtuse.
To clarify: when I say “broadcast a product’s place in a specific ethnic context” I mean “indicate to consumers the specific ethnic cuisine the product comes from.”
