Happy Friday! Time to fire up the barbecue.
Macro
- Another 1.8 million claimed unemployment. Partial shut downs in large states like California, Texas and Florida will exacerbate the unemployment situation further.
- A soupcon of good but somewhat bewildering news, home mortgage applications rose 5%.
- Amazon asked employees to delete TikTok from their phones over concerns about security from the Chinese owned firm. Or Evil Empire envy.
Retail/consumer
- Drone delivery of groceries is almost here.
- Organic produce has continued to grow in market share through the pandemic. Is COVID further raising health concerns when making food choices?
- Bloomberg reports consumers eat 23% more plant-based meat substitutes when it is placed in the meat aisle. 28% of consumers are getting more protein from plant sources, with 17% eating more plant-based meat alternatives. This seems to be following the path of dairy, where plant substitutes were functional replacements rather than matches and were driven by the perception that they are healthier.
Restaurant/foodservice
- Resurging COVID illneses are causing states like Texas, Florida and California to re-close restaurants and bars. There is a great deal of concern that this double whammy will spell the end of many operations.
- The availability of specialty produce, herbs and greens has forever been a challenge and limits restaurant menus, particularly in northern climates. This is changing rapidly though. Controlled environment agriculture (CEA) will soon supply chefs with practically anything they want.
- And CEA can shorten the supply chain by being near urban centers.
Lagniappe
- I learned this week of the Food Timeline. As someone obsessed with both History and Food, this may be the coolest thing ever. The timeline was started and populated by a woman named Lynne Olver. She died in 2015 and it seems almost impossible that one person could have done all this research. The links are incredible. Weeding will have to wait another weekend.