Welcome to Food Week May 9. A tough week for crypto, Coke and the English pound. Promotions just seem desperate these days, with silly uses, unlikely partnerships , secret menu and the occult. Olives are (practically) forever but maybe plastics aren’t. Enjoy.
MACRO
- The only thing wilder than the stock market indexes were crypto currencies. Both stabilized by weeks end.
- Will the English pound drop below parity with the US dollar for the first time?
- Remember ‘Nobody wants to work?’ Turns out those workers just got better jobs and places that didn’t pay just got stuck.
RETAIL AND CONSUMER
- A patent is a public record. So for an entity like Coca Cola, trade secrets are a better option. Until they aren’t secret.
- People go to Farmer’s Market’s for a lot of reasons but now they are becoming a lower cost alternative to supermarkets.
- Can food delivery services solve the problem of food deserts? Probably not without subsidies.
- It’s hard to generate interest for legacy brands. So wacky, cross-functional gimmicks like Oscar Mayer face masks and mac ‘n cheese ice cream are probably inevitable. Kraft Heinz leading the way.
RESTAURANTS AND FOODSERVICE
- If knowing secret menu items is important to you, you should probably get some more meaning in your life. QSR adding mystique to the bland. I mean, brand.
- I thought DuoLingo was a language learning platform, not a restaurant operator. I was only half right.
- What do Tarot, TikTok and McDonald’s have in common? No, not a lack of credibility. A cross-promotion.
FOOD SUPPLY CHAIN
- A drop in demand because of the lock down of Shanghai leads to higher availability of containers. So transportation and rates fall.
- More on the enzyme that can break down PET plastic (source of 12% of global waste) in days rather than months. The challenge now is to create recovery stream to capture used material.
- Should North American’s forego meat to help with world hunger crisis? (Probably)
- Lastly, Pee-cycling. This seems a tough sell even if it is a good source of nutrients for crops.
FOOD WEEK LAGNIAPPE
- It would be really cool to have some of Hadrian’s olives. Olive trees grow very slowly but the trees can live thousands oy years.
- Nice hacks but why are you rinsing your rice?
- Fermented foods hold great promise as pre-biotics.