The Michelin Guide

Why it works

The world's most powerful restaurant rating began as a tyre promotion. In 1900, when France had fewer than 3,000 cars, André and Édouard Michelin gave away 35,000 copies of a guide for motorists — maps, mechanics, petrol stops, how to change a tyre, where to eat and sleep — on the logic that people who drove more would buy more tyres. For two decades it was free. Then, the story goes, André found copies propping up a workbench in a tyre shop, and from 1920 the guide was sold, on the principle that people only respect what they pay for; paid advertising was dropped, anonymous inspectors were recruited, and stars followed from 1926. Michelin says more than 30 million guides have since been sold. It is studied as the archetypal brand-built institution: content so useful that it became an authority in its own right, while still carrying the name of a company that makes tyres.