Brown Couch Consulting

My sandwiches are, at best, bland and every time I watch my husband take a bite of what I’ve created, I think to myself that I really need to learn to make better sandwiches.  And I might just have found my salvation: Deborah’s Kitchen spreads (www.deborahskitchen.com).   I read about them in Edible Boston and decided to give some spreads a try. 

What I like:

• The taste! There are some wonderful, creative combinations with names to match. 
• The spreads are made from natural ingredients and contain very little added sugar. 
• They are local (Littleton, MA).

What I would recommend:

1. Consider making at least a couple of the spreads organic. 
2. Sets should cost less than the combination of their individual components, i.e. giving a discount for quantity buys. 
3. Include a recipe section on the website and perhaps even distribute recipes with each purchase. 
4. The website needs more substance (no pun intended).  So far, it’s basically an order form. 

So, with some marketing assistance, Deborah may just be on her way to becoming the next Mrs. Fields.

1. Zipcar is fantastically convenient. We live in the city and there are about 25 cars within a mile walk. To get one, I reserve online (about 1 minute of my time), walk to the car (another 5 minutes, maybe), tap the Zipcard on the windshield and the car is mine.  So in about 10 minutes, I can rent a clean car, that’s full of gas, that someone else drives to the repair shop, someone else cleans, someone else takes care of paperwork.  What else could you want???  A funny side note about this. When my friend and I first rented a zipcar, on our way out of the parking lot after locking up everything and painstakingly checking that we left nothing, I said to her “Do you feel like we’re forgetting something big?” She said “Yes.”  And then, I figured out what we’d forgotten:  “Like the car?!”.
2. It’s convenient, but is it cheap???  As we’re making every dollar stretch as far as it can go, I had to do some calculations to make sure that Zipcar is actually worth its hype.  Here is my calculation. I use Zipcar for errands that last about 3-4 hours each. That’s somewhere around $30-$40 for the car. $40 you say. That’s crazy. Well – do some quick numbers. I was paying $135 in parking, plus about $100 in insurance and gas per month. That’s $235 per month, or about 6 such trips.  I use the car only once a week, which means my tab is somwehere between $160 and $200 dollars, which is less than I was spending.  Suppose I didn’t own a car and had to shell out another $300 to $400 in monthly payments, plus regular maintenance, etc.  Well, you get the idea!  It adds up fast and Zipcar is suddenly looking very nice indeed.
3. Take your pick.  Probably one of the coolest things about Zipcar is the variety of cars they have available. I happened to rent a Mazda 3 ($9/hour) since it was the closest, but they also have Toyotas, Hondas, and others in sizes small and big. The bigger the car, the more you pay, but it’s still very reasonable to rent a truck if you need to go to say, Ikea, to buy something thrifty will all the money you’ve saved from ditching your car.
4. Hybrids… One small gripe is that Zipcar doesn’t have many hybrids.  They are about $6/hour for the smaller models, which is $3 less than most others and I would rent one in a heartbeat, but there isn’t one within a mile walk of me. 

I recently visited 51 Lincoln (www.51lincolnnewton.com) located at, well, you guessed it, 51 Lincoln St. in Newton, MA.  I have to say that the experience was very enjoyable.  Their food is excellent.  The portions are sized just right, so you can share an appetizer, have an entree and still have room for dessert.   And the ambiance in the dining room makes you hungry and relaxed at the same time.   They have some beautiful modern art. 

There are some things, though, that I thought could use some improvement.   First of all, I believe that a restaurant where the average entree is $25 should have tablecloths.  I understand that this is an expensive proposition, both for the restaurant and our planet, and I would typically side with the planet on this one, but I believe that the decor in a restaurant is very important and if the owner is going to spend time and money on the decorations (as they have), they should complete the look by getting rid of the placemats (recycle or donate, please!) and get some nice tablecloths.

Secondly, if the maire’d (http://www.51lincolnnewton.com/people-moses.html) is wearing a suit and the waitstaff is wearing nice starched shirts, I believe they should also be wearing a pair of khakis at the very least.  The waitstaff at 51 Lincoln is currently wearing jeans.  They look out of place (the jeans, that is) in such a nice decor with such elegant meals and patrons.

Also, as a side note about the waitstaff, I would recommend that every nice restaurant should hand out a vocabulary list to their newly hired waiters and waitresses , so that they can describe the chef’s 5 course tasting menu as something other than cool. Let’s face it, it’s really hard to sell something that costs $65 (gulp) with worlds like “great” and “cool”.

Would I recommend them?  YES!  Absolutely.  Even in their nice blue jeans.