{"id":85,"date":"2004-02-24T00:10:44","date_gmt":"2004-02-24T07:10:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/02\/24\/mven-what.html"},"modified":"2011-10-28T15:25:06","modified_gmt":"2011-10-28T23:25:06","slug":"mven-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/02\/24\/mven-what.html","title":{"rendered":"Möven-what?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aimee took me to the Marché restaurant in the Copley Place Mall<\/A> for something different. (Wait – turns out it was the Prudential Center<\/A> – where does one mall end and the other begin?) I don’t know when I last went out in the Back Bay, much less in a mall, but it was fun, and not a little strange. I can imagine it gets pretty busy at lunchtime, but at 7:30 on a Monday, it was pretty quiet. There is something a little Stew Leonard’s<\/A> about the place, with all of the signs leading you to the different stations, each with their own specialty and personality. The rice noodle soup I had was good, and the experience was fun, but I spent some time trying to figure out what was strange about the place. I should have looked for the usual culprit: Canada. I was getting confused among the “Marché,” “Mövenpick,” and the unfamiliar-sounding “Richtree,” which also apparently has something to do with the business. I snagged a comment card on the way out, and it turns out that the Boston location<\/A> is the first in the US, with three other “Marché Restaurants” in Montréal, Toronto, and North York, Ontario, as well as three “Mövenpick Restaurants” in Toronto and five “Marchélino Restaurants” throughout Ontario and Quebec. (One note on the comment card: they ask for a rating of courtesy, facilities, competence, and other qualities, and ask me to check the “Mövenpick symbol that corresponds most closely” to my opinion. “Excellent” is symbolized by a basket full of food. “Satisfactory” is symbolized by the exact same basket of food. “Needs Improvement” features an empty basket, and “Serious Problem” is symbolized by a basket that is not only empty, but has no handle. Nice.) <\/p>\n

When I visit “www.movenpickcanada.com<\/A>,” as the card asks me to, I’m taken to a pretty amateur-looking site (for a multinational corporation, that is) advertising “Richtree, Inc.” (though don’t try following their link to www.i-love-richtree.com<\/A> – perhaps it’s not meant to be a link to a real site, but more a statement of opinion; either way, it goes nowhere). Here you can find out all about the Mövenpick “friendchise<\/a>” system. Now, when I visit “www.movenpick.com,” without the “canada” at the end, I’m redirected to a site<\/A> that takes the umlaut into account and spells itself “moevenpick.” Now, I’m all for recognizing the umlaut, but consistency is now down the drain. Imagine if Häagen-Dazs.com<\/A> became haeagendazs.com. And while you’re at it, flip the last two letters (like I did when I was looking for it, because who the hell knows how to spell a made up name like that anyway?) and visit www.haagendasz.com<\/A>; the company is so ready for your typo that not only does the site work when spelled that way, they don’t even bother to redirect you to the correctly spelled address.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aimee took me to the Marché restaurant in the Copley Place Mall for something different. (Wait – turns out it was the Prudential Center – where does one mall end and the other begin?) I don’t know when I last went out in the Back Bay, much less in a mall, but it was fun, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cambridge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2917,"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions\/2917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.doubleperf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}