kernels of insight

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
1

Hello everyone,

Erin Pepper is the director of marketing and guest relations at Le Pain Quotidien, a chain of bakery­-cafés with more than 220 locations around the world. Erin reads every review and comment about every location, e‑mailing them to individual store managers when relevant and necessary. (She uses software from NewBrand to help organize this process.) Erin and the Le Pain Quotidien team are adept at finding kernels of insight inside customer reviews, but her program of turning haters into advocates is so brilliantly simple and effective that people who hear the idea often say, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Does “kernels of insight” mean “the most important things/essence”?

Thank you.

2

I think that is generally correct, but here “kernels of insight” also has the connotation of small pieces of useful information among a larger amount of relatively worthless dross.

3

Thank you, Luschen.