Food Week May 2 – May 8, 2022

Happy Mother’s Day. Food Week May 2 is a strange but true edition. An automat in Brooklyn selling dumplings. An influencer in Texas for whom liver is always center plate. Stolen tractors disabled remotely. A tick that causes allergies to red meat. And ramps, because they are just weird. Bonus question: is your whopper not as advertised? Enjoy

MACRO

• In Food Week May 2, the US Economy added another 428k jobs.

• Fed interest rate increase caused market fluctuations but there is hope for a soft landing.

• A million deaths from COVID.

RETAIL AND CONSUMER

• Foot traffic slows in supermarkets; a sign inflation is starting bite?

• Coca Cola exploring pulling out of Russia altogether.

• Food safety legislation is meaningless without funding. FDA commissioner requesting funds to reverse an ongoing backslide in enforcement.

• The ups and downs of Edible Arrangements.

• Forgetting to eat your blueberries may cause you to do things like, forgetting to eat your blueberries.

RESTAURANTS AND FOODSERVICE

• Ever think that that your whopper doesn’t quite look like the ads? You are not alone – Burger King being sued for deceptive imaging.

• How the pandemic flipped the script at Starbucks, turning a generally happy workforce to one where unionization is rampant.

• More than 3000 Canadian restaurants closed in the last 12 months.

• Digital orders now 33% of all restaurant orders.

• An automat dumpling store grows in Brooklyn

FOOD SUPPLY CHAIN

• With the world’s biggest importer of meat reducing imports, you would think demand, and therefore prices, would fall. And yet no. It’s almost like market competition doesn’t exist…

• A lot of the world is going to struggle for food b/c of loss of Ukrainian wheat. And yet corn is still being turned into ethanol.

• More dead hens. The situation with Avian Influenza is bad and the layoffs of worker is terrible, but 2 points need to be made about this now-national story. 1.) The producer had no choice but to kill the hens as part of AI protocol. 2.) The birds weren’t roasted alive: the temperature was turned up to about 104F to speed their demise. The fact that there are other, less cruel methods to cull (kill) birds should be the story. Actually, cool weather is keeping the Avian Influenza outbreak going.

• Needless to say, it is not easy being a Ukrainian farmer right now.

• US farmers hate John Deere because the company prevents them from fixing their own tractors. Russian thieves hate them now too.

• Ramps are delicious but hard to cultivate. Here is a renowned smoker related his foraging experience.

FOOD WEEK LAGNIAPPE

• The Liver King?

• On the flipside, there’s a tick that makes people allergic to red meat. Am I wrong to believe there are people out there who when reading this story immediately began to think about ways to propagate this species of tick?

• Unlike dragons, liquor does not live forever. A review. Most last about a year, even sealed, before they begin to degrade.

• Bet you never thought you’d find someone opposed to office snacks.

• The discovery of the world’s largest papaya tree induces man to drink a Guiness.