Sustainaville. San Delicioso. Yumplace. Keith Keswicke rattles off those names as we drive the streets of San Francisco. The top of his blue-crush metallic convertible Prius is down. A cool afternoon breeze has us reaching for layers. “This is ground food zero. The mecca. Where it all comes together. It deserves great names. Those are just a few off the top of my head,” Keswicke says. “I can keep going.”
I tell him no, a magician should never reveal his secrets. He nods and accelerates up Franklin Street. Keswicke has been finding his way around the City ever since he arrived three months ago from New York, ready to open an office of what he calls his “hospitality advisory.” In other words, he charges restaurant and bar owners to help name (or re-name) their culinary hot spots along with the dishes and drinks they serve.
Within two weeks of landing here, he signed up two food-truck clients, but all they wanted was “noodle, rib and bun puns,” and he had to let them go. The client is in charge, of course, but Keswicke has one deal-breaker: No puns. “It screams, ‘Hello! Not serious!’ If you think your name is a joke, your concept is a joke,” he says. “That’s Keswicke’s Rule.”
If recent trends hold up, however, Keswicke might have to stash his rule in the back of the walk-in freezer. Ominous signs are everywhere. Analysts say San Francisco could hit Peak Foodie sometime in late 2017.
A few leading indicators:
- The average price of a shaved Monterey sardine and Sierra foothill beet salad with an en croute dusting of fennel powder masala has leveled off, remaining at $15.50 for the past nine months, according to the city’s Bureau of Menu Statistics.
- The Board of Supervisors is considering legislation to equalize the amount of market-rate and affordable cold-brewed coffees per neighborhood.
- Data aggregator Accostly reports the percentage of clean-shaven male bartenders has topped 20 percent for the first time since 2009.
The backlash has begun, but Keswicke seems as cool as an iced habanero latte: “People will keep eating, and they will keep talking about pictures of things other people are eating. That’s where I come in.”
Keswicke says in New York, where he had been working for a decade, names are like flavors. There’s an insatiable appetite for new ones. Some of the restaurants he says he has “monickered” include Under The FDR, Scalp & Mustard, Tenement, and Bottomfeeder, a “locavore East River shellfish joint.”
But if pundits prove correct with predictions of a “new farm-to-table” — that is, to the dining-room table, not the restaurant table — Keswicke could have trouble cooking up clients in California. At farmers’ markets everywhere, farmers and people who look like farmers can barely afford to rinse the mud off their heirloom parsnips. They certainly aren’t going to hire someone to name them. Grocery stores might seem like a client base ripe for a food namer, but they typically have their own marketing staff.
“We stick to our own,” says Ross Delino, manager of operations for Cal-Shop, a fixture in the city’s Portola district. When asked if old-school markets like Cal-Shop feel branding pressure from hip neighborhood grocers that have captured the imagination of young foodies with yeast-flavored ice cream and wine experts with neck tattoos, Delino points to a row of jars labeled “As Kosher As They Wanna Be.”
“In-house pickles!” he beams.
Back in the Prius, I show the jar to Keswicke, who shakes his head. “That’s so 2012,” he says. It fuels his ambition to bring his cutting-edge culinary branding to the city. “Somewhere out there,” Keswicke adds, “a restaurant is still trying to sell $32 filets of Indonesian bluegill,” referring to a fish that’s just been declared a threatened species and smells like your 4-year-old’s toothbrush. “Change it to ‘island rockhopper’ and voilà!”
We drive past a coffeehouse that seems to be doing just fine. Through the large windows, we see the tables packed with customers, laptops open. Three people with dogs on leash take up a bench outside. Keswicke points to the sign. The name is a coffee pun, one of an endless variety of plays on the word “java.”
Keswicke sighs and shakes his head. “Sit and Sip. The Serene. Morning Aaahhh. Now those are cozy café names,” he goes on. “People want to be invited, coaxed, seduced. San Franciscans might not know it consciously, but they don’t want caffeine. They want a hot liquid experience.”
