Food Week February 7 – 13, 2022

Welcome to Food Week February 7 -13. For the first time ever, Valentine’s Eve is also Super Bowl Sunday. That seems weird. Of course, it’s weird that Canada seems even crazier than the US. It seems weird that Domino’s would spend 50X as much on promoting charitable activity as the actual contribution. But then again you’ll soon be able to have a McDonalds meal with your Sim. So embrace the weird.

MACRO

• Stocks slid, mostly over Russia/Ukraine concerns.

• No vaccine imminent for kids under 5 after all.

• The busiest crossing from Canada to US has been closed for over a week now, exacerbating supply chain issues.

RETAIL AND CONSUMER

• Tyson earnings soar because of higher prices. Kellogg’s going in for another round.

• The alt-protein curious are still waiting for the economics to improve. A significant deterrent to eating more plant-based meats is that they remain expensive. It’s 2x as expensive as conventional beef (per lb.), 3x as expensive as pork, and 4x as expensive as chicken. For most, lower prices would likely increase purchase intent.

• The wine business complaining about Millennials not drinking enough.

• Hormel Foods‘ snack brands folded into $3.35B Planters acquisition. I wonder whether this is part of a diversification strategy with non-animal based proteins.

• We can talk about projection but consumers want recognizable ingredients in the foods they give their pets. Pet parents (argh) want foods similar to the ones they themselves eat. And so they want transparency in the pet food chain, to understand how clean the ingredients in their pets’ foods are.

RESTAURANTS AND FOODSERVICE

• Give local businesses $100k, Spend $50M telling people about it. Domino’s has kind of skewed this PR campaign up.

• McDonalds working to combine virtual restaurant with home delivery.

• Sysco sees double digit inflation continuing.

• Delivery still keeping Uber afloat.

• Restaurant prices increasing too.

FOOD SUPPLY CHAIN

• The word of the day is greenwashing. Food companies like Nestle are particularly exposed as their true commitments to helping with climate change are very thin.

• Back ups at Southern California ports continue to slowly improve.

• A case where the externalities of food production are literally the people just outside the processing facility. However the sugar industry in Florida does what it wants, the public be damned.

• ‘Hoarding’ has emotional (& ethical) connotations. Nonetheless, with supply chain and COVID variant uncertainty, stocking up is strategic. Shoppers are continuing their bulk-buying habit.

• Avocado production is also complicated and problematic

FOOD WEEK LAGNIAPPE

• For Food Week February 7, a brief history of chocolate for Valentines Day

• A fig tree grows in Brooklyn. Quite a few. And other boroughs too. How they got there…Italian immigrants, a hunhttps://t.co/lL44JZM6wedred years ago.

• A bountiful world of food choice… if you are a Sim.

• Making food donations easier and standardizing date labels were the two most popular consumer choices to reduce food waste. 90% supported & 80% agreed on their effectiveness. US households waste 32% of purchased food.

• About root systems.