You made it through another one! Grab your beverage of choice and enjoy a fork pitch collection of articles and commentary on things of interest in the food business. Among other things this week, we learned more about plant-based burger options on the market and are sharing articles on how COVID 19 is impacting food products like Hormel and wildfire impact on the important agricultural region of Salinas, California.
Macro
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Unemployment keeps going up and so do indexes. I don’t know…
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Colleges and Universities are opening… somewhat, for now, maybe. Imagine trying to plan food service in this environment.
Retail
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If you can spell all the ingredients on the labels on Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat label, you get a PhD. They got called out this week by competitor called Lightlife, whose meat-replacement has ‘only’ 11 ingredients.
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I cooked with Impossible Burger for the first time this week. It was whelming. I think the future is limited in the current format but for burgers, it’s just fine.
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Bricks and mortar: Lidl believes that there is still is a future for grocery stores, expanding its US footprint.
Restaurants and Foodservice
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In Seoul, a Starbuck’s customer passed COVID to 27 other customers. None of the workers got sick. They all wore masks.
Food Supply
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The California wildfires are in new locations and now have affected agriculture the Salinas Valley.
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Hormel and other food producers are still struggling with the impacts of COVID
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Nobody eats more tomatoes than Americans, so many that much of the supply has to be imported. Mexico sends more than anyone else but there a potential trade war brewing.
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Speaking of trade wars, Brazil has now asked for proof from China that Brazilian chicken wings carried COVID, There is little evidence that the virus survives on surfaces or food.
Lagniappe
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Anthony. from the Prince Spaghetti commercial died. My aunt used to tell me I looked like him.
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Mukbang is a video genre that originated in Korea. It is video of people eating, just eating, often enormous amounts of food. The Chinese government, as part of an anti-food waste initiative. wants to ban it.