What’s Next for the Michelin Guide? Even More Growth

Sam Stone
·10 min read

Photo by Gao Jing/Xinhua via Getty Images

In 1900, the Michelin Guide published its first list of recommended restaurants. The small red booklet was given to drivers in an effort to encourage car travel and promote the company’s tires—a marketing ploy, essentially. But the guide has grown into a thriving business, and after more than a century, Michelin is arguably the most important culinary authority in the world. What began as a small compendium of restaurants and hotels in and around Paris has spread across the world: In the past two years, the guide doled out its first stars in Vietnam, Malaysia, Estonia, and the United Arab Emirates. Closer to home, Michelin brought inaugural guides to Florida, Atlanta, and Colorado. “The ambition remains to cover the whole world,” says Gwendal Poullennec, international director of the Michelin Guide. “We just need a few more years to do it.”

In an interview with Bon Appétit, Poullennec says the guide’s editorial expenses are “bigger than some of the largest newspapers in the world.” His team now includes more than 25 anonymous inspectors who, he says, each eat out hundreds of times per year. Though the mission of these inspectors remains largely unchanged since the guide’s inception—to find the best restaurants—the world they’re navigating has changed dramatically. Poullenec laments the challenges of anonymity amid the proliferation of online reservation booking systems and pushes back against criticism surrounding the guide’s financial ties with local tourism departments.

Though the organization attempts to avoid perceived conflicts of interest, the guide has faced some raised eyebrows surrounding its expansion strategy. In 2019, a report in The New York Times revealed that Michelin would be expanding into states where tourism offices had paid a significant fee. Visit California paid $600,000 for the guide to inspect restaurants in Los Angeles and other cities in California. The Colorado Tourism Office paid Michelin $300,000, while tourism boards in Denver, Aspen, Boulder, and Vail paid separate fees to be included. On the ground, some chefs were frustrated to see their cities passed over.

Poullennec, who’s been at Michelin since 2003, has overseen much of this expansion. He spent years in Japan creating the foundations for Michelin’s presence in the country, which now has 388 Michelin-starred restaurants. He’s championed the guide’s growth across three continents and its transition into a digital-first enterprise with a robust web presence and its own app. Though the storied culinary authority has been historically resistant to change, recent years have seen Michelin evolving.

Here, Poullennec discusses how anonymous inspectors maintain Michelin’s standards in a world of online reservations and digital connectedness, details the recent push to expand coverage to new areas, and explains Michelin’s decision to receive funding from tourism boards.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Sam Stone: Michelin has expanded quite a bit in recent years. What was the catalyst for that expansion, and how does Michelin decide where to go next?

Gwendal Poullennec: To publish the Michelin Guide, we need first and foremost culinary potential. Today, I have inspectors scouting about 20 destinations where we do not yet have a restaurant selection, but that we are considering for future years. It’s always a several-year process because we must see the openings and the consistency. Seven years ago, it would not have been possible to publish a Michelin Guide in Dubai, for example, because there were not enough good restaurants, and there was no consistency at all. Today the only limit to the expansion of the Michelin Guide is the people. We do not compromise with the value of our ratings, so we need to develop step-by-step and gradually. When a project is public, be sure that there have been years of work behind it.

Years ago, the guide made most of its money by selling physical copies. What is the Michelin Guide’s financial state in 2024?

We are still publishing some of our iconic paper books in France, Italy, Spain, and Japan because there is still a market for them. And over the last two years, our sales volumes have been increasing again. What’s important [now] is more of a digital audience, the community we engage on social networks, the website, and the app. Our audience of foodies is growing in the world. It’s a lifestyle. It’s becoming a more important market, and we are definitely benefiting from that.

Michelin as a group does not share financial details, but I can tell you that [the business] is sustainable. I have the resources to finance more development, to invest in digital, open [in] new countries, and to launch new projects.

Can you explain Michelin’s relationship with tourism offices?

The Michelin Guide is becoming more and more impactful in driving or creating attention for destinations. So we have partnerships with what we call Destination Marketing Organizations. We are independent and we have the trust of the customer. We’ve partnered with Destination Marketing Organizations, but they have absolutely no information about the [restaurant] selection until it’s released to the press.

We’re also doing a lot of events like the Michelin Guide reveal ceremonies, organizing private dinners and food festivals. We can do all that without compromising the independence of the Michelin selections. [That] revenue contributes to financial or editorial investment, which is quite huge. In terms of full-time employees, paying the bills, salaries, travel expenses, and cars—my editorial expenses are bigger than some of the largest newspapers in the world.

What do you say to the people who question the ethics of your partnerships with these tourism boards?

The Michelin Guide’s priority is to establish where there is culinary potential and where there is a demand in terms of traffic, tourism, and all that. So between the Destination Marketing Organization and the Michelin Guide, I think the road map is pretty much aligned. We have been working, for example, to expand the Michelin Guide in Thailand. We started about 10 years ago. And yes, we have a partnership with the government of Thailand. They’re supporting the event, and we have a real buy-in to make sure they are funding this destination marketing campaign. Today, there is no three-star [restaurant] in Thailand because we are still looking for it.

In Thailand, we have been able to expand gradually because originally there was star potential in Bangkok only. Then we looked into places like Phuket and Chiang Mai. And we have been moving gradually because the guide ignites the local dynamic and elevates the quality of the restaurants nationwide. So in a few years we will have been able to cover the territory because there will be good quality restaurants everywhere in Thailand. That was not the case before.

How has the Michelin Guide changed in your time there?

I joined Michelin 20 years ago, and at that time we were covering restaurant selection in Western European countries—France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK. Since then, we have radically expanded the footprint, not only to the US but also to Asia and now to the Middle East. And we are really continuing to expand at a very rapid pace.

When we started the first Michelin Guide in California with San Francisco [in 2007], there was one three-star restaurant. Now we have eight, and there will be more and more. The number of stars we have today is more than double what it used to be. When I joined the company, the question was “Where can we expand?” Today, as director of the Michelin Guide, my daily question is “How can I expand faster to recognize all the blossoming, high-quality restaurants across the world?” The culinary landscape has changed completely, but we’ve kept the same methodology. We have been building up our teams, and today, we have more than 25 Michelin inspectors all around the world.

How do you train new inspectors as the company expands?

Last year I received about 8,000 applications to work for the Michelin Guide. That being said, few people realize that being an inspector is a full-time job. You have to eat out for lunch and dinner 300 times a year. You need to be professional, but you need to be also really passionate and committed.

We hire people that have a background in the industry: hospitality school or culinary school. Normally, they have been working in a restaurant or hotel for about 10 years, so they have real experience in the field. When they join, the [new] Michelin inspector on average has two or three years of training with more senior inspectors so that they can get used to the Michelin methodology, our benchmark approach, and [they] can apply our criteria in a consistent way.

You need to be able to embrace all different food cultures—not only American cuisine if you’re living in America but Japanese, Indian, French, modern, and traditional. Our inspectors must be able to embrace different cultures; able to recognize the quality, whatever the food style, whatever the setting. And you need to remain anonymous—that’s quite important.

Have there been issues with anonymity as social media has become ubiquitous?

It’s becoming more of a challenge. Years ago, an inspector could eat out in restaurants, pay the bill, and the week after come back to say, “I would like to have a look at the kitchen.” At that time it was possible because [there weren’t] pictures on the internet, [or] social media.

Today, it’s impossible. You have cameras, you have WhatsApp where [employees] will immediately communicate with each other. There are also all the credit card recognition systems when you do the booking online, and more and more restaurants ask for a credit card number or a phone number. So we have to make sure that inspectors are changing phone numbers quite often—there are some booking systems that will identify the credit card or phone numbers, and immediately browse Google to find pictures. That’s the reason why today the inspectors don’t have an open discussion with chefs.

Are there other areas where Michelin is expecting to expand next?

Frankly, many. I’m not able to share the official names of projects, but of course, we are continuing to expand in China. Of course, one day India will be at the table. Last year we revealed that Vietnam would be included, and we revealed the first selection for Argentina. There is still a lot of room for expansion in South America, but there were ups and downs due to political context, and the restaurants were not consistent. Australia, for example, we’re not yet there because it’s quite big. So you need the knowledge, you need the teams, and as we do not compromise with the quality, you need the people first. Inspectors are a scarce resource.

Originally Appeared on Bon Appétit

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