Food Week September 6 -12, 2021

Happy weekend and welcome to Food Week September 6. High priced meat and high growth plant-based. Which cities are experiencing restaurant recovery and which aren’t. Why nutrition is always changing. And should you tiki? It’s all in there.

MACRO

• Food week September 6 finds the US is the worst country among the G7 for vaccination rates.

• As a result, Biden has decided to up the ante.

• The financial markets were slightly roiled as well.

RETAIL AND CONSUMER

• Is it inflation or is it merely profit-taking? White House attacks meatpackers for “profiteering” on groceries. This is price-fixing, made possible by the lack of true competition.

• The big growth in grocery is in plant based anyway.

• The hard seltzer fad didn’t even last as long as COVID.

• Big grocery store chains experimenting with small formats.

• At the same. a market basket analysis shows that Amazon is gunning for the traditional supermarket operations.

RESTAURANTS AND FOODSERVICE

• Clean labels have long been a goal in fast casual; now Burger King joins by banning 120 artificial ingredients.

• OK City best and DC worst in restaurant recovery.

• Did you know that Denny’s did a Hobbit based menu? That and some other fairly lazy marketing mash-ups.

• The popular TIki bar Lost Lake re-opens without the TIki. Owner concerned about cultural appropriation and imperialist symbolism.

FOOD SUPPLY CHAIN

• An agriculture aid program has so far mostly has benefited farm owners. Therefore the Biden Administration plans to distribute one-time $600 pandemic relief payments directly to U.S. meatpacking and farm workers.

• In addition to the supply chain issues everyone is experiencing, banana growers are trying to delay the inevitable decline of the cavendish varietal.

• One of the worst places to be in the pandemic was/is a meat plant. And the terrible conditions there had/have an impact on the community. Other people’s rotten jobs are bad for them. And for you.

• There is a movement to regenerative farming that is gaining momentum. They seek to lessen the impacts of farming on the environment. However it is a complicated process and requires much less efficient land usage.

FOOD WEEK LAGNIAPPE

• The difference between cultured and uncultured butter.

• A big and ambitious article about nutrition science and its development. The science is a little over a hundred years old and still evolving.

• And another long read from Mesirow about the financial status of entire food industry.