Writing about Michelin stars the other day reminded me of the story of the Michelin guide. It is a goodie.
It started in a small French town in Clermont-Ferrand in 1889, when brothers Andre and Edouard Michelin founded their world-famous tire company, fueled by a grand vision for France’s automobile industry at a time when there were fewer than 3,000 cars in the country.
To help motorists develop their trips – thereby boosting car and tire sales and in turn – the Michelin brothers produced a small red guide filled with handy information for travelers, such as maps, information on how to change a tire, where to fill up with fuel, and for the traveler in search of respite from the adventures of the day.
For two decades, all that information came at no cost. Until a fateful encounter when Andre Michelin arrived at a tire shop to see his beloved guides being used to prop up a workbench. Based on the principle that “man only truly respects what he pays for”, a brand new Michelin Guide was launched in 1920 and sold for seven francs.
For the first time in the 1920s, it included a list of hotels in Paris, lists of restaurants according to specific categories, as well as the abandonment of paid-for advertisements in the guide.
Acknowledging the growing influence of the guide’s restaurant section, the Michelin brothers also recruited a team of mystery diners – or restaurant inspectors, as we better know them today – to visit and review restaurants anonymously.
In 1926, the guide began to award stars to fine dining establishments, initially marking them only with a single star. Five years later, a hierarchy of zero, one, two, and three stars was introduced, and in 1936, the criteria for the starred rankings were published.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
