Saturday, December 20, 2003
The most prolific South African pizza chain is called St Elmo’s. The name is a reference to their wood fired ovens used to bake the pizzas. I ate there yesterday, a pizza called the Carribean, topped with banana, garlic, and bacon. It tasted as you might expect, but that’s beside the point. It got me thinking that St Elmo’s is a microcosmic parable of the perils of globalisation.
They have two classes of waiter. One uniformed service ambassador to serve the food, and one ununiformed nameless drone to clear and clean the tables.
They serve bottomless cola, cheap and thirst quenching, but watered down considerably compared to the canned product.
They have their own patented pizza topping, the “Elmodew TM”. This is a spicy tomatoesque fruit, derived in some manner from the “Peppadew TM”. This god-awful fruit itself is one of the only GM products to have maintained its place on Waitrose’s shelves.
I felt like these little Elmo’s oddities represent the way in which global corporations exploit local workforces, plunder local resources, and produce global products less diverse, less healthy, and less interesting than original local products.
Obviously I am not the first person to think of this. Despite St Elmo’s being a proudly South African owned and run company, they have already been the subject of a sustained pre-al queda moslem fundamentalist anti-american bombing campaign.
They have two classes of waiter. One uniformed service ambassador to serve the food, and one ununiformed nameless drone to clear and clean the tables.
They serve bottomless cola, cheap and thirst quenching, but watered down considerably compared to the canned product.
They have their own patented pizza topping, the “Elmodew TM”. This is a spicy tomatoesque fruit, derived in some manner from the “Peppadew TM”. This god-awful fruit itself is one of the only GM products to have maintained its place on Waitrose’s shelves.
I felt like these little Elmo’s oddities represent the way in which global corporations exploit local workforces, plunder local resources, and produce global products less diverse, less healthy, and less interesting than original local products.
Obviously I am not the first person to think of this. Despite St Elmo’s being a proudly South African owned and run company, they have already been the subject of a sustained pre-al queda moslem fundamentalist anti-american bombing campaign.
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