Welcome to Food Week August 7. Featuring lots of bad ideas: Raw unpasteurized milk. Eating roadkill. Cutting funding for urban farmers. Subscribing to Daily Harvest. Ordering extra large fries at Chick Fil-A. And maybe gas station barbecue. Enjoy.
MACRO
- Inflation on food (and many other things) has cooled considerably. In fact, if it wasn’t for housing, we could stop talking about inflation.
- China’s economy is in the dumps and many are afraid it will starting dragging down the rest of the world.
- The wheat harvest is beginning and while the world will set a record for production this year, getting it to those who need the most will be tricky.
RETAIL AND CONSUMER
- I am beginning to think that wellness to an antonym to nutrition. Daily Harvest, a meal subscription service, has been making a lot of people sick, including 40 who had to have their gall bladder removed after consuming one of their meals. Shocking stuff, really
- As noted above, most food prices are down but beef is messing everything up.
- COVID was a golden age for supermarket profitability. That is now over.
- Does the energy drink Celsius contain Ozempic? No.
- Is Anchor Brewing bankruptcy merely the first domino for craft beer makers?
- How to read the label on a Tequila bottle.
RESTAURANTS AND FOODSERVICE
- Mocktail pricing employs the 11 Madison Park formula: take out the most expensive ingredient and then pretend that the price should remain the same.
- Is breakfast catering the next big trend for fast casual?
- Does Chick Fil-A give you the same amount of fries regardless of what size you order? An investigation.
- A Michelin starred restaurant lowers its prices, which is not something that happens ever. Most just go out of business instead.
- An extremely remote Irish restaurant with a great reputation.
- An homage for the Borscht Belt.
FOOD SUPPLY CHAIN
- Nimby-ism run amok. Cities move to criminalize feeding the homeless.
- Is the decline of meat substitutes inexorable? Even non-animal milk is struggling.
- North Dakota allows the sale of raw unpasteurized milk, which is a terrible idea.
- Members of Congress are trying to get rid of support for urban farming. In an era of food deserts in many cities, this is horribly misguided.
FOOD WEEK AUGUST 7 LAGNIAPPE
- 15 states in which it is legal to eat roadkill. Some may surprise you.
- An Army base in Texas has struggled with food supply for months.
- A climate adaptive sweet potato.
- Aging and storing wine in the ocean? Maybe a good idea. Ignoring laws regarding selling wine? Not quite as good.
- I think I would trust gas station barbecue more than gas station sushi.
- Grisly story about a woman’s death in a meat processing plant.