The history of the famous Michelin Guide
It all started in 1889, in a small town in France called Clermont-Ferrand, when the brothers Andre and Edouard Michelin founded the famous Michelin tire company.
At the time they had a great vision in the French automobile industry, which had no more than 3000 cars in the country.
To help drivers on their journeys and at the same time offer their services and products, the Michelin brothers created a travel guide, it was a small red guide with information for travelers, as well as maps, information on how to change tires, where fuel up the cars, places to stay and suggestions for restaurants.
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For two decades the guide was distributed free of charge, until the day Andre Michelin discovered that a tire store owner was using his guides to support his store. In 1921, the new Michelin guide was launched and sold for seven francs.
For the first time in the 1920s, the Michelin guide included a list of hotels in Paris and lists of restaurants according to each category.
The section that recommended restaurants started to have a big influence over time, that's how the Michelin brothers decided to recruit teams of hidden shopper (now known as Michelin Inspectors) to go to restaurants and the brothers made sure that the places they indicated they were of good quality.
In 1926, the guide began awarding stars to outstanding restaurants, initially marking them with a star. Five years later the hierarchy of zero, one, two, and three stars was introduced, in 1936 the star rating criteria was published, thus making restaurants and hotels improve their services to achieve the famous Michelin stars.
Throughout the rest of the 20th century, the Michelin guide was the best-selling guide in history, thanks to its unique and serious method of classification. Today the guide ranks more than 40,000 establishments in more than 24 countries, and more than 30 million Michelin guides have been sold worldwide. The famous red-covered guide and its stars have become a symbol of gastronomic excellence, revolutionizing tourism around the world.
