Stuart Robinson’s Weblog

Menus are an impossible to avoid area of information design. I don’t want to get into graphic design or typographic minutia, largely because I would have very little of interest to say. Instead, something I’ve not seen discussed elsewhere: the order items are listed in.

I’ve started to find alphabetically sorted menus boring. OK, they are optimised for findability, but surely eating/drinking out should offer a bit more mystique than deciding you want something, finding it alphabetically and then asking for it.

Signature dishes or drinks often get the top spots, but I can think of a few ways to sort the remaining offerings:

• price of ingredients / markup (helps profit)
• time to make (for cocktails - allows greater throughput)
• popularity (most user-friendly?)
• reverse chronological (to give new items a fair shot)
• random

Has anyone experimented with A-B testing on their menus? Steven Levitt thought he’d caught an example but it was just an old menu lurking.

So the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Report is out. Only a fool would dare to question Buffett’s genius… so lets get on with the foolishness…

I find it a little curious to see Buffett highlight his disinterest in investing in businesses without “an enduring ‘moat’ that protects excellent returns on invested capital” and comment that “if a business requires a superstar to produce great results, the business itself cannot be deemed great”.

In terms of Berkshire Hathaway’s minority-share investments few would question that Buffett is this superstar, but what about the many businesses it owns? With bungled acquisitions so common these days, BH is a wonder because it handles acquisitions so successfully, usually keeping the original management onboard, motivated and happy.

E-government in Dubai is surprisingly effective due to the eagerness of heads of department to impress Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoumand and be showered with his praise.

The reason the second half the BH annual letter is usually so dull is because it isn’t written for anyone other than BH’s managers. This is where they get the chance to bathe in the praise they seek.

But when the charismatic, idolized Sheikh passes and a lesser - whose praise is not sought - takes over, what happens?