Now, Jamba Juice is popping up all over NYC, and they just opened one very close to my office. But something ain`t right. I`m not feeling it. The problem is: Jamba Juice is California. In California, the staff and customers are California. The California sun shines into the stores there. You get your juice and step outside into California air. Here, the people aren`t California. The staff is thinking: "I don`t know what this California shit is."

Gothamist thinking about Jamba Juice in New York City.

This is something, more generally, that I've been thinking about lately. There are so many places to eat in New York, some with pretensions of serving a bourgeois clientele. Some even have the goods to make it, but fall short in one critical area: personnel.

It happens all too often. You walk into a new place, excited to give it a try. You look at the menu, get interested, and ask the person serving you a few questions. Then you realize, not only don't they know the answers, but they don't understand the premise of the question. The attitude being "food is food."

It is shocking to see an owner put huge amounts of energy and money into building and decorating a new place, creating a menu, and marketing, only to hire people who have no idea what is going on. The swanky new gourmet salad place whose employees don't understand that fist-sized lump of goat cheese is maybe too much for a small salad, or that more dressing isn't necessarily better.

If you are running a salad place, teach the employees about salad. Get them passionate about distinguishing a Cobb salad from a Northern California salad with raisins and nuts. Likewise a coffee shop, or a juice bar. It blows my mind how many places are staffed by people who can't distinguish between good and bad food. Come on, people.

I had a Jamba Juice for lunch, by the way.