Food Week July 18 – 24, 2022

Welcome to Food Week. This edition has mushrooms, morels, Mars and monkeypox. with inflation, consolidation, distillation and devastation. And you can learn the best way to boil an egg. Enjoy!

MACRO

• Food Week July 18 brings us another global health emergency. Monkeypox is a real thing. Great.

• A strong dollar will export inflation. No winners there and US goods become more expensive.

• Jobless claims go up – sign the job market is cooling off, which should help inflation.

RETAIL AND CONSUMER

• Mars is promising to remove titanium dioxide from its candy in 5 years. For some that isn’t enough.

• German consumers switching away from meat faster than the rest of the world, driven by flexitarians.

• Amy’s Kitchen continues to struggle, closes a factory.

• If New Yorkers don’t need groceries in 15 minutes, chances are no one does. Tons of venture capital wasted on this project.

• More consolidation in protein production: Cargill acquires Sanderson Farms. 4 firms control 55% of the market. Higher prices will ensue. Welcome to the Gilded Age.

RESTAURANTS AND FOODSERVICE

• Door Dash and Uber Eats have seen a considerable slowdown as COVID fades. Delivery services have never figured out how to make money and now they have rising costs and falling demand. Prediction: DoorDash and Grub Hub merge. As for Uber, there is a reckoning coming that isn’t just about its food delivery business.

• Latest in the infinite list of lists of best restaurants in the world. Geranium in Denmark listed as number 1. Number 4 is DixerXO which we’ll be writing about this week. I have only been to 4. How’s that for a humble brag?

• Sure, it’s the NY Post but there may be some truth that restaurant offerings are being downsized like consumer brands.

• Starbuck’s threatening to close stores citing safety. But one has to wonder if this is an indirect threat to union organizers.

• In addition to slower demand from consumers than anticipated, the alt-protein industry is struggling with delivering product line expansions to restaurant chains.

FOOD SUPPLY CHAIN

• Global Food Insecurity

• I never heard of tara flour, a product of Peru. But its causing recalls and illnesses.

• California’s drought is the worst in 1200 years.

• Our skepticism proved appropriate. 24 hours after Russia announces a grain deal, they bomb Ukraine’s largest port.

• Farmland turned over to fracking. Once it is used for extraction, it is lost forever to agriculture.

FOOD WEEK JULY 18 LAGNIAPPE

• Of mushrooms and morels and the brave souls who hunt them.

• Hard Science: testing the best method for making a hard boiled egg.

• More cities are banning natural gas in new construction. The end of the gas stove is likely, if not nigh.

• High fiber diets lead to fewer antibiotic resistant bacteria among gut flora. In other words, good.

• Did you know there are 5 different classification of Tequila? What they are, how they are produced and the difference between tequila and mezcal all in one place.