soup with dimsums and vegetables on ceramic bowl

Food Week January 2 – 8, 2023

Welcome to Food Week January 2 – 8, 2023. Our first update after the long holiday. Emerging trends continue to gain steam: rising restaurant employment, failing grocery delivery services, non-alcoholic beverage curiosity and the relationship of food to health. Plus a fond reminiscence of the Arch Deluxe. Enjoy!

MACRO

  • Respectable but not torrid jobs report and slowing wage growth could mean soft landing from inflation.
  • Sectors of the economy are laying off, like tech and finance.
  • New COVID variant XBB.1.5 is the most transmissible one yet. Great.

RETAIL AND CONSUMER

  • Consumers focusing on gut health – looking for info, products from grocers.

RESTAURANTS AND FOODSERVICE

  • Restaurants still a big contributor to employment, adding 26k jobs in December
  • The FAST act about to be implemented on California. It sets standards for wages for fast food but is being billed as a way to give independent restaurants an advantage.
  • Are drones really the answer for the last mile of the food supply chain?

FOOD SUPPLY CHAIN

  • Disastrous bottleneck of perishable foods in Algiers.
  • World food cost index registers a record high for 2022, mostly driven by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
  • As bad as ocean plastic is, soil plastic pollution is possible greater and a more immediate threat to people.

FOOD WEEK LAGNIAPPE

  • The Arch Deluxe was a marketing disaster for McDonald’s but it really was a good burger. It was just a decade too soon.
  • The truffle industry is garbage. Truffle oil is disgusting and made from synthetic oils, not truffles. Most truffles are flavor-less and augmented with the fake truffle oil. The high quality, flavorful varieties are rare and extremely expensive.

Leave a Reply