Sick of "Sourcing"

[Pam R]

So, if a person's full-time job to locate quality/rare/hard-to-find ingredients, (whether from a cave or not) and ensure there is a steady supply of them to keep a restaurant going, what do you call that person?

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Broker.

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When I have to get my customs broker involved, I'd say I'm sourcing.

[ronnie_suburban]

So, if a person's full-time job to locate quality/rare/hard-to-find ingredients, (whether from a cave or not) and ensure there is a steady supply of them to keep a restaurant going, what do you call that person?

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Broker.

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Oh...you mean a ronnie_suburban!

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Sorry to disappoint but since we take title to our goods, technically speaking, we're not brokers.

Now, I've got to get back to sourcing stuff.

=R=

[xortch]

Language evolves and changes in dynamic and usually uncontrollable ways. Get over it. Nouns are turned into verbs often because it makes sense to do so. Take Google, googling, googled, for example. Some maybe more trendy than others, but it is just language. As long as people know what you are saying then there is no need to get your panties in a twist.

[Carrot Top]

The idea of nouns becoming verbs does not bother me - as you say, things alter, grow, change.

What does bother me is the attitude the words gather round them as they alter or grow, sometimes. An aura of snotty self-complacency seems to sprout in the way the word is "meant" that has a sense of either truffles or barnacles settling down upon the thing - really I can not decide which one seems better fit for what happens in the way the intent the words gain.

Edited February 8, 2006 by Carrot Top (log)

[ingridsf]

As long as people know what you are saying then there is no need to get your panties in a twist.

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I am reminded of Gordon Ramsey's remarkably twisted knickers when an underling failed to answer by using the words, "Yes, CHEF!" on "Hell's Kitchen." Hee, I would like to have seen someone tell him, "It's just language."

[Philanthrophobe]

How about "foodie?" That one makes me a little nuts, but I also acknowledge that I have Issues, Challenges, and Opportunities when it comes to certain forms of colloquial shorthand. The word "veggies" used to bug the crap out of me as well.

(See? I kept it food-related!)

[sizzleteeth]

In the context Busboy describes I believe it's called selective honesty.

A type of lying that hides things in plain site by manipulating the truth through means of perception by omitting relevant information that further sheds light on the details of the matter.

One of the hardest types to detect.

You are given enough information for you to form an opinion and feel as though the information is truthful - and in fact it is - but only partially - if you knew the whole truth you would not come away with the same perception - but you do not inquire further because you have been somewhat satisfied.

It is used in countless ways to make things look better than they actually are, I think we're probably all guilty of it in one form or another.

Titles and categorical relationships are a good examples, where someone uses the perception of a specific title or overall category to "insert" an association in someone's mind.

Sourcing and purchasing are basically the same thing, there are some instances where "sourcing" could be more tedious than "purchasing" and vice versa.

Which one implies you actually go out to the markets and hand choose things yourself and which one implies you sit in an office on a phone and order stuff via Fedex - and does it matter?

[cdh]

I Open Source my ingredients, personally.

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Does that mean I can come over to your kitchen and help myself, so long as I let anybody come over to my kitchen and take some of anything I made with stuff I got from you?

What a fun thought experiment.

[MarketStEl]

I Open Source my ingredients, personally.

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Does that mean I can come over to your kitchen and help myself, so long as I let anybody come over to my kitchen and take some of anything I made with stuff I got from you?

What a fun thought experiment.

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I think we can even coin a term for it:

Chain meal!

Edited to add: And let's not get started on reverse-engineering the dishes...

Edited February 10, 2006 by MarketStEl (log)

[Tess]

Alan Wong (Honolulu) calls it "foraging." He's quoted in a profile in the October 2005 issue of Santé magazine: "Now, an important part of my job is being the forager who get to work with the farmers closely." Author Robert Wemishner elaborates: "Proudly, he points to the radical change in sourcing food supplies for restaurants on the islands. 'Now we import from the mainland only 20 percent of what we use in the restaurants...'"

[patti]

I've been hearing "conversate" a lot lately. It makes me want to chew gravel.

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Seriously? Who has that kind of gall? Holy man. Do they mean to invent a new, obnoxious way of saying "converse," or do they just not know that the word to suit their needs already exists?

I attend the University of Nevada at Las Vegas (or, as it's called in the movie Dodge Ball, The University of Las Vegas Learning Annex) and "conversate" seems to have captured the fancy of the young'uns (I'm 48). They seem to use it when they wish to impress. Has anyone familar with the show/comedy group "The Kids in the Hall" seen this episode with the "Ascertain" skit? (click on the link, then scroll down for the transcript.--oh, and while you're there, read the transcript for the "Worst Waiter" skit, too!)

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I'm in total agreeance that conversate is quite an annoying non-word. I think conversate is used in a rap song and I've heard agreeance used by Fred Durst (of Limp Bizkit) as well as a couple of other young celebs. Somebody needs to source them some new words.

[Tess]

I think expressions such as "conversate" have a certain rhetorical purpose. They don't sound prim like "converse" or long-winded like "have a conversation." If you stick to plain words like "talk" you sound like you've been reading Strunk and White. There are times when people want to be playful. It may not be to someone's taste, but it's not completely pointless and the people who use these expressions are not unaware that others exist. (Plus, if you bust people for using back-formations like "conversate" you run into the problem of criticizing something languages have been doing forever.)

To keep this somewhat on-topic, Alan Wong's comment (quoted int he profile) reminded me that "sourcing" doesn't just refer to finding stuff but, in a restaurant for example, to the assortment of different sources you choose to get your foods from: so many local, so many imported, so many organic, etc.

[Fat Guy]

In an industry magazine today, I read the word "menuing."

I think this is a losing battle. When I went to find this topic, I typed "sourcing" into our search engine and got 18 pages of results. This topic, just a month later, is on page 3. That's a lot of sourcing.

[Pan]

In an industry magazine today, I read the word "menuing."[...]

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Yuck!

But the language is subject to change, and that's the way it is.

[jamiemaw]

I think expressions such as "conversate" have a certain rhetorical purpose. They don't sound prim like "converse" or long-winded like "have a conversation." If you stick to plain words like "talk" you sound like you've been reading Strunk and White.  There are times when people want to be playful. It may not be to someone's taste, but it's not completely pointless and the people who use these expressions are not unaware that others exist. (Plus, if you bust people for using back-formations like "conversate" you run into the problem of criticizing something languages have been doing forever.)

To keep this somewhat on-topic, Alan Wong's comment (quoted int he profile) reminded me that "sourcing" doesn't just refer to finding stuff but, in a restaurant for example, to the assortment of different sources you choose to get your foods from: so many local, so many imported, so many organic, etc.

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Fabrications like 'conversate' remind me to always lick the condescension off my beer mug: Talk is good.

[cdh]

In an industry magazine today, I read the word "menuing."

I think this is a losing battle. When I went to find this topic, I typed "sourcing" into our search engine and got 18 pages of results. This topic, just a month later, is on page 3. That's a lot of sourcing.

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What sort of context? I've heard "menuing" in computer programming circles to talk about GUI design... but I don't know without context what it is supposed to mean in a restaurant publication.

[Fat Guy]

Putting something on a menu.

[cdh]

Is it used as an active verb as in "We're really happy with our new lobster salad recipe, and we're menuing it in the spring." ???

Or is it moreused as a gerund like "All of our menuing takes into account the new food costs that our supplier gave us." ???

Edited March 13, 2006 by cdh (log)

[Fat Guy]

"Operators can capitalize on a time-honored favorite by menuing profitable Lamb"

[highchef]

So, if a person's full-time job to locate quality/rare/hard-to-find ingredients, (whether from a cave or not) and ensure there is a steady supply of them to keep a restaurant going, what do you call that person?

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A 'sourcerer'?

[Pontormo]

I have just discovered this cranky thread and love it.

The two words that bother me most in relation to food are "quality" and "healthy."

The problem of using nouns as if they were different parts of speech seems to be the biggest gripe here and the use of "quality" as an adjective conforms to that pattern. Since business culture [is this term hypocritical of me?] also gives us Departments of Quality Control, it ought to be sensitive to the need for specifying the nature of the quality. When tables and statistical graphs are not employed, shouldn't "superior," "high," "mediocre," "poor," etc. distinguish different degrees of quality? One or two adjectives sprinkled here and there is not going to transform spare, clean Hemingwavian prose into something purple and overwrought.

Speaking of a quality product is meaningless, anyway. Who's going to market something boring, shoddy or disgusting?

As far as "healthy" goes, some people eat nutritious diets and shop for healthful foods. When they pick up a bunch of spinach with dark green leaves, it's probably from a healthy plant that did not succomb to bugs or blight.

* * *

Now, as to the word "grow"--mentioned up-thread I believe--I wish speechwriters would convince their clients to stop growing the economy and leave that task to Chardgirl and Rancho Gordo.

Edited March 13, 2006 by Pontormo (log)

[chow guy]

Sorry, Busboy. When I do a catering gig, sourcing is indeed a huge part of the job and a major PITA that I work into my budget. You might say that's just because I live in West Virginia, but sourcing was a major issue even when I was the chef for a sorority in College Park, MD and had a Sysco account. It takes serious effort to get the good stuff, especially if you don't do enough volume for the seller to consider you a worthwhile investment. I take pride in my ability to source quality ingredients on a shoestring budget, but I don't like how much time I have to invest in order to do so. So yeah, I want credit for my shopping, not just my preparation and serving skillz. Or at least I want to get financially compensated for that time.

Believe me, it's a lot easier for Joe Fine Dining Chef to just buy from one or two major suppliers and call it a day. The more suppliers you deal with, the less volume you have for each one, the more time you're investing in handling those accounts. It seems piddly from the standpoint of the home cook, but it adds up.

As for use of the word "sourcing," I admit I was needling ya'll by using it so often in my opening paragraph , but I don't regard it as any different from "buying" from a linguistic standpoint.

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I'm in the same boat, I budget the PITA "sourcing" section of catering and personal chef gigs into the price. But, even with a Sysco account (when I owned a restaurant) I had to "source" to avoid their often inferior and expensive "product".

Thank Goddess! Trader Joe's opened here in Albuquerque last Friday. TJ's is going to be doing alot of my sourcing, in an amazingly cost effective way, something they do better than anyone else.

I'm all for clear, concise language and have no "beef" with nouns to verbs. In fact, I can't think of another word for sourcing. Any ideas?

[MarketStEl]

Speaking of a quality product is meaningless, anyway.  Who's going to market something boring, shoddy or disgusting?

You'd be surprised.

Want me to elaborate on the difference between "cheap" and "inexpensive"? You will find a good number of boring and shoddy products--and maybe even a disgusting one or two--in the former category. (Though from where I sit, what's really disgusting is the practice of producing overpriced products where the producer gets to collect a status premium for a product that is really no better than a similar one with a less-impressive brand.)

As far as "healthy" goes, some people eat nutritious diets and shop for healthful foods.  When they pick up a bunch of spinach with dark green leaves, it's probably from a healthy plant that did not succomb to bugs or blight.

* * *

Now, as to the word "grow"--mentioned up-thread I believe--I wish speechwriters would convince their clients to stop growing the economy and leave that task to Chardgirl and Rancho Gordo.

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God bless you, Pontormo.

Of course, you realize that you are fighting a rear-guard action all the same.

Sandy, off to see if there's a restaurant nearby that offers economy drizzled with a balsamic vinaigrette

[MarketStEl]

I'm in the same boat, I budget the PITA "sourcing" section of catering and personal chef gigs into the price. But, even with a Sysco account (when I owned a restaurant) I had to "source" to avoid their often inferior and expensive "product".

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A comment and a question. First, the comment:

--Over on the Pennsylvania board, a lot of us got a good laugh, or mighty steamed, or both, when we took a look at the producers and manufacturers who were certified as PA Preferred. Among the "preferred" producers in this state program intended to promote local agriculture and locally produced foodstuffs is:

Sysco Foodservices of Central Pennsylvania, LLC

Nota bene, folks, that one of the "Core Values" listed on the home page is "Using PA-sourced products."

--Isn't (wasn't) Cattlemen's Barbecue Sauce a Sysco product? I see that you can get this sauce in supermarkets now, and that it does have a fan base among a certain segment of barbecue aficionados. Probably the exception that proves the rule if it is (was).

[Pan]

[...]Speaking of a quality product is meaningless, anyway.  Who's going to market something boring, shoddy or disgusting?[...]

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I suspect that the word "quality" used as a synonym for "good" or "high quality" is of quite long standing in the English language, and I know that cognates (e.g., un prodotto di qualita') are used in various related languages. As for its being meaningless, would you say that the phrase "good product" is also meaningless? The fact that there are loads of synonyms for "good," all of which have somewhat different connotations, enriches the English language. Imagine if we were restricted to "somewhat good," "very good," "extremely good," etc. There are languages like that, and one certainly manages to express one's meaning in them, but I don't think they have the advantage in terms of shades of meaning. (Not in that respect, anyway; they may have many wonderfully colorful proverbs instead.)