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Lovin Dublin Food Blog

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    #32
    The Hill Billy
    Registered Users Posts: 22,748 ✭✭✭✭The Hill Billy


    A sweet satirical riposte from WWN... http://waterfordwhispersnews.com/2014/06/18/sunny-dutch-gold-heaven-comes-to-dublin-but-are-the-pretentious-pricks-ruining-it/ :)


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    #33
    Dizzyblonde
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Politics Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators, Regional East Moderators Posts: 12,108 CMod ✭✭✭✭Dizzyblonde


    The Hill Billy wrote: »
    A sweet satirical riposte from WWN... http://waterfordwhispersnews.com/2014/06/18/sunny-dutch-gold-heaven-comes-to-dublin-but-are-the-pretentious-pricks-ruining-it/ :)

    Brilliant :D


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    #34
    Gehad_JoyRider
    Registered Users Posts: 1,634 ✭✭✭Gehad_JoyRider


    rustyzip wrote: »
    Exactly my feelings.
    Pics are great, variety is great but the incessant cursing is a turn off.

    I agree cursing is pathetic.
    Tell them... I surf it a lot but again the cursing is a little look i want o be quiffy edgy and cool. well then right in a cleaner tone. :rolleyes:


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    #35
    Jawgap
    Closed Accounts Posts: 20,297 ✭✭✭✭Jawgap


    "Gimp" is the word that springs to mind anytime I find myself reading something associated with that blog.....
    allandanyways wrote: »
    Something Mark Zuckerberg-ish about him.

    Which can be a good or a bad thing.

    He's clearly an entrepreneur with a big vision, but whether or not Ireland is ready for this level of hipster enthusiasm remains to be seen. I still cringe every time I read one of their posts, regardless of the content, just because they are trying *so* hard to be cool.

    I'm not sure about that - it's a food blog. An extremely well promoted and marketed food blog, but a food blog nonetheless.

    There is a certain cleverness behind the marketing and media presence they've done so well to cultivate (it's being discussed on boards.ie, so they must be good), but visionary?

    I suspect it will sag and then eventually collapse under the weight of its own pretentiousness when something 'hipper' comes along.


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    #36
    artvandelay48
    Registered Users Posts: 562 ✭✭✭artvandelay48


    It looks like the lovin dublin has embraced the haters and done what people have requested and fúcked off to berlin: http://lovindublin.com/announcements/introducing-lovin-berlin-our-newest-city

    Plus, it seems that the website that aimed to "help Dubliners find the really good stuff that surrounds them on a daily basis" is following the money by doing corporate only lovin boxes.

    Glad that to see that Harbo and co have nailed their colours firmly to the mast.


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    #37
    MissFlitworth
    Closed Accounts Posts: 8,057 ✭✭✭MissFlitworth


    I'm probably one of the more easily irritated by that website people floating about but I thiiink they've just started a second website for Berlin rather than upping sticks there.

    I can't believe I'm defending them but I never really saw how the Lovinbox thing would work as it initially started out. A killer sandwich manages it but I think they're a much smaller outfit with, what I would imagine to be, less costs. It'd be tough trying to wrangle both a different restaurant every week and an order list to make sure everything went ok


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    #38
    Muahahaha
    Registered Users Posts: 19,613 ✭✭✭✭Muahahaha


    What's the lovinbox, some sort of gourmet sandwich delivered via the website ? Not sure how well that would work, is it popular ?

    I'd really love to see a Dublin based food blog that also organised foodie kind of events. It might be a mass restaurant evening with the menu comprising choices/suggestions and recipes which are voted for by participants but perfected by a professional chef brigade for one night only. Or it could be more like the Cooking Club here, but in person, where four or five people cook large dishes for everyone to have a sample and it revolves month to month. Or I'd really love to see things like a Chilli Festival or a Paella Fesrival, small scale of course but enough to taste a variety of differing ways to cook the same dish. With recipes available of course:)

    There's so much you can do with an online foodie community, possibilities are endless really.


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    #39
    artvandelay48
    Registered Users Posts: 562 ✭✭✭artvandelay48


    MissFlitworth wrote: »
    I'm probably one of the more easily irritated by that website people floating about but I thiiink they've just started a second website for Berlin rather than upping sticks there.

    I can't believe I'm defending them but I never really saw how the Lovinbox thing would work as it initially started out. A killer sandwich manages it but I think they're a much smaller outfit with, what I would imagine to be, less costs. It'd be tough trying to wrangle both a different restaurant every week and an order list to make sure everything went ok

    I was just being facetious to say that they were off to berlin. But it does seem to me that they never really cared about "bringing Dublin to the people" if they are now only offering their lovin boxes to corporate clients. When they launched, they promised 52 boxes a year (yeah right, not break over christmas) and offered a year's supply for 500e! They have changed that to 36 a month but only managed to last about 4 or 5 months selling them to the public. What happens to the people that were foolish enough to pay the 500e or to get the monthly subscription?

    It just seems like a giant money grab after all.


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    #40
    Muahahaha
    Registered Users Posts: 19,613 ✭✭✭✭Muahahaha


    artvandelay48 wrote: »
    I was just being facetious to say that they were off to berlin. But it does seem to me that they never really cared about "bringing Dublin to the people" if they are now only offering their lovin boxes to corporate clients. When they launched, they promised 52 boxes a year (yeah right, not break over christmas) and offered a year's supply for 500e! They have changed that to 36 a month but only managed to last about 4 or 5 months selling them to the public. What happens to the people that were foolish enough to pay the 500e or to get the monthly subscription?

    It just seems like a giant money grab after all.

    €36 a month still works out at a €9 sandwich, it ain't cheap that's for sure. I wonder why they dropped personal clients, surely that should have been the driver of this rather than the corporate market ? Personal touch, connecting online blog readers with offline food, all that sort of stuff


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    #41
    Jawgap
    Closed Accounts Posts: 20,297 ✭✭✭✭Jawgap


    Muahahaha wrote: »
    €36 a month still works out at a €9 sandwich, it ain't cheap that's for sure. I wonder why they dropped personal clients, surely that should have been the driver of this rather than the corporate market ? Personal touch, connecting online blog readers with offline food, all that sort of stuff

    More profit in the corporate sector - easier to drop 12 boxes to 1 location than 1 box to 12.


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    #42
    artvandelay48
    Registered Users Posts: 562 ✭✭✭artvandelay48


    Jawgap wrote: »
    More profit in the corporate sector - easier to drop 12 boxes to 1 location than 1 box to 12.

    Exactly, so their raison d'etre is to fleece people rather than show them unknown places of the city.


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    #43
    Muahahaha
    Registered Users Posts: 19,613 ✭✭✭✭Muahahaha


    Jawgap wrote: »
    More profit in the corporate sector - easier to drop 12 boxes to 1 location than 1 box to 12.

    Yeah for sure. But it just sounds like the type of idea more suited to serving their blog readers. Delivering mass sandwiches isn't breaking new ground at the end of the day. And the whole idea as artvandelay mentioned was to introduce people to food from new places around Dublin but they seem to have backtracked on that too and are now only using one supplier.

    So what started out as a good idea quickly turned into a blog partnering with a cafe to supply sandwiches to the corporate market. Fair enough so


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    #44
    Jawgap
    Closed Accounts Posts: 20,297 ✭✭✭✭Jawgap


    artvandelay48 wrote: »
    Exactly, so their raison d'etre is to fleece people rather than show them unknown places of the city.

    perhaps it's ...." to fleece people while showing them unknown places of the city.":)


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    #45
    ThunbergsAreGo
    Registered Users Posts: 10,399 ✭✭✭✭ThunbergsAreGo


    MissFlitworth wrote: »
    That blog drives me up the ****ing walls. I can't even go into everything that bothers me about it because the post would break boards it would be so long but back when it was just the one guy writing it the *rubbish* he came out with about northside Dublin gave me a facial tic. He headed to Brother Hubbard (which, if you aren't from Dublin, is both gorgeous and on a street that is only in the last few years transitioning from being somewhere you could buy a) power tools b) "adult" magazines and c) the kind of couch you'd put in a bedsit on to a place with really nice cafés and bars) and wrote a post about how he'd never had food somewhere knowing there were people browsing porn dvds over the other side of the wall. Firstly - Brother Hubbard isn't beside a porn shop and secondly on the 'posher' side of the city on South William street, around the kind of area Lovindublin writes lots of crawling reviews about, there are lots of (god forgive me for typing this) hipster restaurants & also at least 3 adult shops.



    Yes, definitely. They're trying to build the 'Lovindublin' brand and I think the sweary persona is part of that.


    Agree he really does come across someone who is trying way to hard and as a bit of a "look at me" type tool


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    #46
    dudara
    Registered Users Posts: 33,519 ✭✭✭✭dudara


    Muahahaha wrote: »
    Yeah for sure. But it just sounds like the type of idea more suited to serving their blog readers. Delivering mass sandwiches isn't breaking new ground at the end of the day. And the whole idea as artvandelay mentioned was to introduce people to food from new places around Dublin but they seem to have backtracked on that too and are now only using one supplier.

    So what started out as a good idea quickly turned into a blog partnering with a cafe to supply sandwiches to the corporate market. Fair enough so

    To be fair, I suspect that the Lovin Box idea didn't have enough longevity to sustain it long term with individual consumers and there were probably a whole heap of logistical headaches to deal with. Going to the corporate market makes a lot of sense from the perspective of running a business.

    I ordered it one day, but it was absolutely lashing rain and I couldn't walk to the pick up location. Other days I wouldn't order it as the locations were inconvenient. I'd say that the limited and varied pick up locations made it less and less appealing to the average person. It was probably turning into a product that got sold to one-off purchasers rather than building a repeat customer base.

    All this is speculation on my part, but I wish them the best with their new venture.


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    #47
    Muahahaha
    Registered Users Posts: 19,613 ✭✭✭✭Muahahaha


    If I was to have a stab at where it might have gone wrong for personal customers I'd guess the logistics part was a big headache, it certainly sounds like one if you still had to go walk somewhere to collect your sandwich. I'm not being lazy or anything but if I'm paying €9 or €10 for a sandwich I'd want it delivered to the door at that price. I think rather than going down the road of forcing people to pick it up from a location what they needed to do was use the same model the pizza companies do. If you have a small group of teenagers who know the city they can easily drop to 10 locations an hour, pay them €1 per sandwich dropped to keep them moving fast. At some locations they'll drop 5 or 6 sandwiches and make a quick €5 or €6, at others it'll be only €1 but either way they're incentivised to move quickly. Once the sandwiches are refrigerated and delivered using a cold box/bag it should be feasible to cover Dublin 1, 2, 4 & 6 by bicycle where you'd probably have in excess of 100,000 office workers on any given day.

    Which brings me to another point, perhaps when the blog owners conceived the idea for personal customers they had thought what would happen was groups of four or five or even six workmates who get lunch together would all order together through word of mouth; thus the blog readers become sellers of the idea to their work colleagues. Perhaps they were hoping it would turn out that way, a "buzz" would be created about the idea and people would make it a regular weekly ritual in the workplace. It doesn't seem to have worked out that way and my guess is that making customers pick it up rather than adding value and delivering it to time strapped workers was the downfall in the idea. Nonetheless I say fair play to them too for trying something new and innovative. It wouldn't really be for me I don't think apart from maybe once for novelty purposes but the idea in itself had merit. They've obviously realised quick enough it wasn't working so adapted to what they know does work.


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