Here’s a tip to all you businesses out there who think “guerilla marketing” should involve pretending to be a regular commenter on food blogs… if you’re going to insult the competition, you might not want to do it from a company computer.  Especially if your company mail server has the company name in the URL. (It’s kind of a dead giveaway.)  For those who aren’t technically inclined, here’s a layman’s explanation: I love your meat DeBragga, but you’re busted.

UPDATE: Somebody posted an interesting comment that I’d like to respond to…

From Lunch’er “Beast”:

“Zach, I expected better from you. This isn’t a “shill”, but you’ve spun it that way. Either that or you have very poor reading comprehension skills. She’s only lamenting that everyone in the five boroughs and beyond has been on their knees in front of Pat LaFreida lately. She didn’t “shill” for Debragga (never even mentions them) and she doesn’t even say the frites burgers are good. She only “bets” that they are better than Bill’s. I hardly think this is a shill, despite her place of employment.”

My response is after the jump…

Let me first say, DeBragga is a great meat purveyor, and this shouldn’t reflect negatively on their food, their business, or their management.  I have no doubt they are good people and mean well.

But… to your point beast – both Bill’s & the Shake Shack use LaFrieda Beef. And while I don’t necessarily think that they were trying to directly sell people on DeBragga, I do think it is wrong when people log onto websites under fake names and praise a company they work for, while insulting competitors, without letting people know where they work.  And companies will continue to do this (in increasingly more clever ways) unless they’re called out for it.

To say “I bet these street burgers are 10 times better than Bill’s Burger Bar” without letting people know that you work for the company that supplies the meat is disingenuous at best, and deceitful at worst.  I’m not doubting the authenticity of their comments.  They probably love In N Out Burger, and didn’t think much of Bill’s.  But if they had simply added “I work at DeBragga so this is opinion is biased…” we wouldn’t be having this conversation.  But whoever posted the comment didn’t do that. And they didn’t do that on purpose.

The more transparency there is, the better off we all are. I doubt DeBragga is going to suffer any from my stupid post.  But maybe the next company will think twice before they shill on Midtown Lunch.

WTF?  Possible explanations are welcome in the comments…

It’s no surprise when sucky restaurants shill, after all- if you won’t say good things about your crappy establishment, than who will?  But it *is* surprising when beloved, popular places post fake comments… which is what seems to be the case with the Quick Delight cart (on 3rd Ave. and 45th), the brand new offshoot from the owners of the famous Kwik Meal cart on 45th & 6th. These three comments were posted last night from the same computer within minutes of each other (under different names):

“It’’s been about one month since the grand opening of the quick delight, and although the “famous” lamb pita has been degraded, I have tried the same very lamb better at the 6th ave cart and witnessed it’s glory and wondered why commentors felt this way. It turns out that very week the person that supples the lamb was giving bad quality meat and this is why he was fired. Ever since then Quick delight have a new source of lamb meat and is once again tender and soft and NOT chewy. In fact I’v tried the lamb recently and it was mouth-watering. I hope that all of you can give it a second chance and try once more I’m sure you will have a change of heart.”

“The lamb just gets better. Yumm-o! It was mouth watering and not chewy at all. And the chicken shawarma was amazing as well.”

“Everyone should hang on a sec, and chill out. We have lots of fans for the Chicken and the lamb seems to be improving, but c’mon why is there not a single fan for the falafal? Seriously… if there’s no fans I’ll be the number one fan, its the best, crunchy on the outside and soft, warm on the inside. Together it makes a irresistible delight. Everyone dont lose anymore time run to quick delight and buy yourself a falafal its cheap and worth every penny!”

Cmon Kwik Meal… you’re better than this!  Your lamb is the best in Midtown, and the Midtown Lunchers know this.  You don’t need to post fake comments on blogs.  We all love your food! 

For those who don’t know, Kwik Meal’s new “Quick Delights” cart is parked on 3rd Ave. and 45th Street and the food is exactly the same as the stuff on 6th Ave.  I know it’s been freezing out, but let’s start supporting this new cart so that they don’t have to keep resorting to the shilling…

Related:
First Look: Quick Delight’s New Chicken Shawarma

“I went there yesterday.  I was so busy that I didn’t have time to post.  The food was FANTASTIC!!  Everything was fresh and delicious.  They really know how to use flavors.  I picked from the by-the-pound section.  I had duck breast with some tasty sides, shrimp wrapped in bacon, some brown rice type thing with mushrooms, and filet mignon over some humus type sauce on toast.  I cannot begin to tell you how delicious all of these were besides the shrimp.  The shrimp was average.  The Filet and the rice were absolutely spectacular!”

Then things get ridiculous…

“They also had some dessert freebies.  They have a no pumpkin pumpkin pie that is probably the best pumpkin pie I’ve ever had. The price… “$7 per half pound.”  That’s what the guy said to me.  I don’t care what the price is.  This place is worth it.  Just get a half pound of the filet and it’s pretty much a steak lunch. -Harry”

The best pumpkin pie you have ever had, didn’t have pumpkin in it?  Seriously?  The BEST YOU’VE EVER HAD. Why not just say, ”it was so good, I thought it had pumpkin.”  Or even, “it’s as good as any pumpkin pie in Midtown.”  But, best…pumpkin…pie…ever?   Has to be a shill, right?

Surprisingly this commenter has posted many comments, none of them about FreeFoods… so unless Harry has been posting “undercover” for months, in order to give his shill credibility on this very day- this comment appears to be legitimate.  Whether or not you chose to listen to him is a completely different story.

Clearly the shilling from the newly opened Empanada Joe’s (on 8th Ave. btw. 43+44th) knows no boundaries. I got the comment you see above on one of my flickr photos over the weekend. The shilling that happens in the comments of this site is well documented, and Eater makes a point of calling out all shillers on message boards, blogs, and listings websites… but this may be the first time I’ve seen it done in Flickr. Come on Joe. Give it a rest!