Kitchen Nightmares

Kitchen Nightmares is an American reality television series formerly broadcast on the Fox network, in which chef Gordon Ramsay is invited by the owners to spend a week with a failing restaurant in an attempt to revive the business. It is based on the British show Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares.

The show premiered Wednesday September 19, 2007. On June 23, 2014, Ramsay announced he was ending the series.

Production

The show was produced by ITV Studios America and Optomen, in association with A. Smith & Co. Productions, with Arthur Smith, Kent Weed and Patricia Llewellyn serving as executive producers.

In the UK, the series is broadcast under the name Kitchen Nightmares USA and Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares USA on Channel 4, which also produced the original UK version. Reruns, along with the British series, are frequently shown on BBC America.

Series overview

Episodes

Season 1: 2007

The first season focused on restaurants in the southern California and New York City areas.

Season 2: 2008–09

Amy's Baking Company

"Amy's Baking Company" is the sixteenth episode of the fifth season of Kitchen Nightmares, and the 82nd episode of the series overall. The episode first aired on May 10, 2013 and centered on Gordon Ramsay attempting to help Amy and Samy Bouzaglo, owners of Amy's Baking Company in Scottsdale, Arizona.

The episode marked the first time in the series that conflict with the owners prevented Ramsay from completing the restaurant's transformation. The owners' actions received negative attention in social media. Their online responses were then further spread in social media in a manner which Forbes called an example of how a business should not react to comments posted on social media.

A follow-up episode, titled "Return to Amy's Baking Company", aired as the season 7 premiere on April 11, 2014.

Synopsis

Set up

Amy and Samy Bouzaglo, the wife and husband owners, explain the history of their restaurant: Samy invested over a million dollars to build the restaurant in 2006 in order to fulfill Amy's dream. About two years prior to the episode's filming, bloggers began writing negative reviews of the restaurant's food. Amy says the reviews are "lies" and states that they cost the restaurant a "tremendous amount of business". Staff members explain that Amy does not see the problems with the food that many customers see, and that Samy will lash out at any customer who expresses dissatisfaction. The narrator also explains that only Samy is allowed to operate the POS system and handle money, which leads to many ordering errors; meanwhile, Amy only makes the food for one ticket at a time, which leads to long waits for customers.

Amy's Kitchen

Amy's Kitchen is a family-owned, privately held company that manufactures organic and non-GMO convenience and frozen foods. Founded in 1987 by CEO Andy Berliner and Rachel Berliner, and incorporated since 1988, Amy's Kitchen took its name from their then-newborn daughter, Amy. All of Amy's 250+ products are vegetarian and made with organic ingredients. The company makes over 130 gluten-free options.

Company

The company employs over 1,900 people and operates processing plants in Santa Rosa, California and White City, Oregon. A new processing plant is being built in Goshen, New York, and the company is opening a plant in Pocatello, Idaho, in 2014. The corporate headquarters is in Petaluma, California.

Both of the company's co-founders, Andy and Rachel Berliner, had prior experience in the organic food business. Rachel's family had grown and advocated organic vegetables and fruits since the 1950s. Andy was formerly the president and majority shareholder of the Magic Mountain Herb Tea company.

TMZ

TMZ is a celebrity news website that debuted on November 8, 2005. It was a collaboration between AOL and Telepictures Productions, a division of Warner Bros., until Time Warner divested AOL in 2009. The name TMZ stands for thirty-mile zone, the historic "studio zone" within a 30-mile (50 km) radius centered at the intersection of West Beverly Boulevard and North La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles, California.

TMZ's managing editor is Harvey Levin, a lawyer-turned-journalist who was previously a legal expert for the Los Angeles television station KCBS-TV. The site claims that it does not pay for stories or interviews; however, Levin has admitted that TMZ does "sometimes pay sources for leads on stories". Levin has stated that "everything is researched and vetted for accuracy." A companion television series, TMZ on TV, debuted on September 10, 2007.

Development

Seven months prior to the official launch of TMZ, America Online (AOL) had hinted that it was planning to launch a Hollywood and entertainment-centric news site that would be produced in conjunction with Telepictures Productions and had shown interest in launching a website featuring a focus mainly on celebrities. At the time of the launch, AOL confirmed that the site would primarily feature and consist of Hollywood gossip, including interviews, photos and video footage of celebrities and information pertaining to industry news on movies, television shows, etc. The site was described as "an effort to further feed the current American obsession with celebrities". Mike Shields of MediaWeek.com wrote, "the site also boasts of an expansive collection of archived star photos and videos", allowing fans to "trace changing hairlines and waistlines of their favorites performers over the years".

Nightmare

A nightmare is an unpleasant dream that can cause a strong emotional response from the mind, typically fear but also despair, anxiety and great sadness. The dream may contain situations of discomfort, psychological or physical terror. Sufferers often awaken in a state of distress and may be unable to return to sleep for a small period.

Nightmares can have physical causes such as sleeping in an uncomfortable or awkward position, having a fever, or psychological causes such as stress, anxiety, and as a side effect of various drugs. Eating before going to sleep, which triggers an increase in the body's metabolism and brain activity, is a potential stimulus for nightmares. Recurrent nightmares may require medical help, as they can interfere with sleeping patterns and cause insomnia.

Etymology

The word "nightmare" derives from the Old English "mare", a mythological demon or goblin who torments others with frightening dreams. Subsequently, the prefix "night-" was added to stress the dream-aspect. The word "nightmare" is cognate with the older German term Nachtmahr.