Happy Friday! The world of food week April 5 saw a renaissance in windows from the renaissance, a disaster for the French wine crop, a different disaster for British chocolatiers, a cat food cookbook, difficult fruits, donut globalization and mushrooms, always with the mushrooms. Enjoy!
MACRO
- The financial and job markets remain robust and food week April 5, more and more spaces are opening.
- US averaged 3 Million shots per day this week.
- The biggest wild card is the variants that are now widespread and infections are again on the rise.
RETAIL AND CONSUMER
- Um, I hate to tell you but there’s a whole bunch of sugar in Oatly. Will this mess up the IPO for those weirdos?
- Impossible Foods is going public. Projected valuation: $10B.
- Perhaps the pandemic induced home chefs to cook more lamb. Maybe concerns about climate change are forcing people to look at alternatives to beef. Regardless, lamb sales are way up.
- Quelle Disastre. 80% of French wine crop affected by early spring frost.
- Chocolate was Britain’s number 2 food export after whisky, to the tune of $1 billion in sales. Most went to Europe. As a result, Brexit is decimating the industry.
RESTAURANTS AND FOODSERVICE
- Delivery doesn’t always make up for lost foot traffic. Consequently, McDonalds is closing many locations located inside WalMarts. The pandemic accelerated the burger giant’s dissatisfaction had with the in-store locations in the super centers and the feeling was kind of mutual. The number of partnerships fell from about one thousand to only about 150.
- Panera’s coffee subscription service – $8.99 per month – looked smart when they launched it. COVID made them look brilliant as it kept people coming into their locations.
- In order to make doughnuts interesting you would have to do something like add new, international flavors. Fan-Fan Doughnuts is doing just that.
- Everyone is getting jobs. Restaurants want to pay the same crappy wages without benefits. For some reason they are having a hard time finding workers. Those who stayed at their restaurants should have access to vaccines but are struggling to find a place in line.
FOOD SUPPLY CHAIN
- Legal consequences from price fixing by protein producers continues to expand. Following Sysco’s lead, McDonald’s is going after Tysons for chicken with beef and pork next.
- OSHA is generally terrible at protecting food plant workers. One of the reasons migrant or undocumented workers get hired in food processing facilities is because OSHA does even less to protect them, allowing plants to skirt regulations at will.
- Concessions by cities to lure manufacturers have a very spotty record. Youngstown OH offered inducements to Chill-Can, which claimed to have the world’s first self-chilling can. It didn’t work out.
- Transportation costs are driving food costs more than anything else. Part is fuel, part is port dysfunction, part is COVD disruption.
LAGNIAPPE
- A tour guide had explained to me the concept of the wine window when I visited Florence, It was an innovation during the Black Death to allow wine drinking with minimal contact. It found new life during COVID.
- The Women Carnivore Tribe has a Facebook group with over 27,000 members. Some adherents eat only meat.
- Mushrooms are everywhere, not just coffee and milk. They feed you, they make you hallucinate, they can kill you, etc. Here is rundown about them and the various things that mushrooms can do.
- Cat Lady Cuisine? Fancy Feast has released a cook book. No, don’t be horrified like I was. It is not using Fancy Feast in the recipes but rather recipes that mimic Fancy Feast dinners. So you and your cat can have a lovely dinner together. Maybe that’s more disturbing.
- I have downloaded and will be reading, The Book of Difficult Fruit. It’s about unusual fruits, their circumstances and uses. Including, you know, poisoning people. Ah, the world of food.