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.
Sysco and USF had very strong bounce backs in quarters.
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.
