Food Week May 23 -29, 2022

Welcome to Food Week May 23 and happy Memorial Day. While you relax this long weekend you can read about Costco and Asian Americans, mangoes and bananas, and Elon and eels. Enjoy.

MACRO

• Trending to something like a post-Covid normal as inflation fears diminish and wages appear to have peaked

• The markets bounce back

• Russian invasion of Ukraine hits 100 days

RETAIL AND CONSUMERS

• Supermarket chains like Trader Joe’s, HEB and Wegman’s among companies with best reputations.

• Dollar General experimenting with self-checkout. This struck me at first as ahead of trend. But lots of small items, similarly priced and sized makes the process easier. As opposed to Costco, where self check out is, for me, an unpleasant experience

• The beverage category is in a seemingly endless spiral of acquisition and failure. Coca Cola announces the discontinuation of Honest Tea, after 24 years of trying to make it work.

• Wholesale beef prices are down but the retail prices are up. Huh. It is almost like there isn’t any competition.

• Costco winning with Asian Americans.

• Toxic metals still finding their way into baby foods.

RESTAURANTS AND FOODSERVICE

• The pandemic is over for restaurants.

• The end of History. With the introduction of a hamburger, Arby’s has now marketed every sandwich known to man. No more worlds left to conquer.

• Musk plans ‘Tesla Diner.’ Of course he plans a lot of things.

• Starbuck’s latest to pull out of Russia. Part of these decisions are PR but if the operations aren’t that profitable it sure makes it easier.

• Aquatic dining. In, under and around the water.

FOOD SUPPLY CHAIN

• The shipping crunch is fading as the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach set records for containers handled. Unfortunately, the California ports rank among the least efficient in the world.

• The reverence for mangoes in India is deep and passionate. This year, heat is destroying the crop. A Heat Wave’s Lamented Victim: The Mango, India’s King of Fruits

• Illegal producers of bananas, here in Ecuador, not only drive the price down, they may contribute to the spread of the fungus which will one day be the doom of the dominant Cavendish varietal.

• 20 million tons of grain being held up by Russia as a kind of blackmail. People will starve.

FOOD WEEK LAGNIAPPE

• Stone crab claws are harvested from live crabs that are then returned to the ocean, where they will grow back their claws. How is sustainable this is is a matter of debate.

• Here’s how to make your own Wendy’s Frosty at home. Though, for the life of me, I don’t know why you’d bother But it sure has its fans.

• As an ex-bartender, my tendency is to make a everyone whatever drink they want. For big summer parties, this is the way of madness. Here are some big batch cocktails for summer.

• The right eel in the right place is dinner. The wrong eel in the wrong place eats your dinner. Lampreys a constant headache in the Great Lakes.