What does ranch dressing have to do with employment law?

Wait, did you read that right? “What does ranch dressing have to do with employment law?” Well, quite a lot actually, as long as we’re talking about the most famous type of ranch dressing, the brand that introduced most of America to ranch dressing: Hidden Valley Ranch.

Legend of the Hidden Valley

The story of Hidden Valley Ranch dressing is the story of how a condiment we all take for granted almost never made it to supermarket shelves. The dressing was the creation of the proprietors of dude ranch resort Hidden Valley Ranch. The guests adored the dressing so much that, ultimately, the proprietors started a successful mail-order business, which came to the attention of the Clorox Company. It acquired Hidden Valley Ranch in 1972 for $8 million.

That investment was almost money down the drain for Clorox, whose food scientists couldn’t figure out how to replicate the dressing in a shelf-stable way. They worked on it for nearly a decade but just couldn’t come close to replicating the original Hidden Valley Ranch taste.

Although the product failed every comparative taste test, Clorox released its much more acidic version of ranch dressing on supermarket shelves nationwide anyway. As you already know, it was a resounding success.

Why did such a poor simulation of the original succeed? In the words of author Malcolm Gladwell, “Because consumers had never tasted real Hidden Valley Ranch dressing, and as a result had no way of knowing that what they were eating was inferior to the original.”