Because French.

Tasting History with Max Miller has a video on exactly this topic! Highly recommend it.

It’s because of british tourists. They’re so used to eating rubber-like food

Michelin Stars started out as a travel guide brochure for the best restaurants in France as a sort of advertisement for Michelin branded tyres

It was really more of a way to get people to drive more and so have to buy more tires (hopefully Michelin)

The original guide had things like maps, tire shops, gas stations, and tire repair instructions. Back then, cars were still new to a lot of people, and Michelin figured that a lot of people probably wouldn’t know where they could go get gas or new tires or whatever, but if they had that information people might be inclined to drive more. If you didn’t know where you could get gas along your trip you may not want to take that drive after all.

Then after a while they started including things like restaurants to give people more of a reason to go driving around.

How did the Michelin stars become so sought after by top restaurants and chefs?

It’s advertising. If you make it into the guide, more people are going to hear about and want to come to your restaurant. And since the guide has such a good reputation, it’s seen as a badge of honor that this restaurant/chef is good enough to be recognized with a star.

Was the head of the Michelin tyre company also a renowned food connoisseur or something?

No, they were renowned tire manufacturers. But they were French and that probably didn’t hurt the branding since French food has such a good reputation. I’m sure subconsciously on some level a lot of people are going to give a bit more weight to a French company rating restaurants than, for example, an American one.

What about other tyre companiee, why didn’t they do something similar?

Why bother when Michelin was already doing it? You don’t need to buy Michelin tires to eat at a Michelin-Stared restaurant. Regardless of where the guide came from it got people driving around more and needing new tires.

There’s other travel guides out there, some focus more on other things besides restaurants, some focus on areas not covered by Michelin, some overlap or compete with Michelin or position themselves as sort of an anti-Michelin because they disagree with the criteria Michelin rates restaurants on.

And I’m sure some of them are or have been in the past published or sponsored by tire companies. But Michelin managed to get into the game early enough and did it well enough that they just became sort of the restaurant guide.

And other tire companies have taken other advertising routes that are maybe a little less obvious. Let’s consider the Goodyear blimp flying over sporting events. I’m sure there’s a small element of “you should drive to sporting events to see our blimp ~and also wear down your tires a bit in the process~” at play there.

Are Michelin Stars still given by the tyre company, or has it been spun off into its own thing?

Yes it’s still the Michelin tire company. I don’t have any real insight into their corporate affairs, so I don’t know how much crosstalk there is between the tire-manufacturing and the guide-writing parts of their business these days, but it is still the same company.

For the same reason that the World Record Holders are decided by a brewery. They just started doing it, and people wanted to be on their list.

TIL Michelin, Nobel and Guinness have the best marketing departments

Why are Nobel prizes so highly revered when they originate from an explosives manufacturer?

There was a point where tires were expensive but they lasted a long time because so few people had cars and they didn’t drive them often. So two brothers who owned a tire company were trying to figure out how to sell more tires to the few people who owned cars.

The answer was to get them to wear their tires out faster by providing a list of places they could visit that would warrant the expense of wearing down their tires.

So the stat rating was more of a "this place is worth a visit/road trip system. And they published this list and it caught on and then restaurants wanted to get Michelin stars for the notariety and the essentially free press.

The Michelin Guide is still run by the tyre company, and for much the same reasons - advertising, and getting people to go through their tyres faster (one Star justifies a stop, two Stars justify a detour, three Stars justify a special trip?) Though inspectors do try to offer genuine reviews, because at this point people who value such things trust the Guide because the Guide’s usually pretty close to reality.

My opinion as someone who was in the restaurant industry for about 20 years.

I think it basically came down to this. If you can convince people to go to a restaurant that needs a bit of a road trip, you will sell more tyres. And if you did need new tyres, the guide conveniently pointed you to garages that, surprise, sold Michelin.

Tourism was growing quickly at the time, so the guide focused on the popular destinations of the era. France of course but also places like Switzerland and Spain. Being based in France and tied to the car industry, Michelin rode the growth of both car travel and French dining culture.

French cuisine was already becoming dominant by the early twentieth century, and after the war you had top French chefs getting hired by major restaurants in places like New York. Le Cordon Bleu started around the same time in the late nineteenth century and benefitted from the rise of French fine dining, though it was not created by Michelin, I think they both rode the same wave.

By the nineteen twenties the restaurant section of the guide was already important, and in the nineteen thirties they introduced the three-star system. Once there was a clear hierarchy, chefs began competing for stars, and the Michelin rating became the recognised standard for fine dining. So having a star meant you would get free global reach can charge a premium and knew people would actively seek you out, I guess you just had to make sure you had parking.

To promote travel by car, Michellin started testing restaurants all over the country to give recommendations where automobilists could get a good meal on their tours.

It’s WELL beyond its roots.

Because they have held a very high standard for a very long time. It is one of the few “brands” of reviews that has remained trustworthy over the years. They only award a star to excellence; nothing in the guide is bad. Indeed there is lots of good food that’s never mentioned in the guide.

And tyres aren’t cheap, which was the whole point. The Michelin Stars program was to show you what was worth wearing out your tyres more for as opposed to local stuff.

I would always advocate for finding local businesses to support, but that wouldn’t help a tyre company sell more tyres, now would it?

As for why other tyre companies didn’t do it, they didn’t need to. You don’t need to buy Michelin tyres to visit restaurants awarded Michelin Stars. The restaurant doesn’t check. They don’t even care. It’s not about the tyre brand for them. Certainly people with other tyre brands will go to places with Michelin Stars… but if you can’t afford Michelin tyres, you probably can’t afford to eat at places with Michelin Stars, either.

Does it matter where a good idea comes from?