Happy Friday and welcome to Food Week October 20, 2023. A mish mosh of many things this week with defies any theme. Insects as food, ground bones as a supplement and sleepy tomatoes. People are sure drinking a lot in restaurants but not if you are under 25. You can also find out when people will buy a store brand and when they will eat highly processed foods. And the video from John Oliver is well worth a watch. Enjoy!
MACRO
- Is the Fed done raising interest rates?
- Halal meat at center of Senatorial corruption case.
- Americans are as good at understanding crime as they are inflation.
RETAIL AND CONSUMER
- Do your tomatoes make you sleepy? Do you want them to? Somato adding melatonin to the fruit.
- On the other hand, did you know that Coke was in the energy drink business? Well, apparently not a lot of other did either and now they are getting out.
- It appears that the floor for the discount necessary to change to a store brand from a brand-name is 15%.
- A New Jersey ShopRite adds a hardware store.
- Consumers will eat highly processed foods if they believe they have health benefits.
- And now Jelly Belly; Ferrara rolls up another company as candy industry consolidation continues.
- Reductions in COVID era assistance are hurting Albertson’s sales.
RESTAURANTS AND FOODSERVICE
- Restaurants are having a very good 2023, thank you. and a lot of it is thanks to drinking.
- However young people are cutting back on their dining out as debt payments (student loans payments are back) and inflation constrain their budgets
- Seed oils – canola, soybean, sunflower. et. al. – use huge amounts of water. Environmentally restaurants looking to switch to alternatives like algal, avocado, olive(?) and others.
- Instagram the latest locus for scamming consumers, this time with restaurant offers.
- A long list of hidden restaurant gems from around the world.
FOOD SUPPLY CHAIN
- For all you kids out there who want to be in produce, learn to watch your cash flow. A major produce supplier to Kroger and Walmart had its biggest year and then filed for bankruptcy.
- The rise of freight brokers has transformed the supply chain.
- Blueberries have tripled in price – probably due to EL Nino.
- A Finnish company is grinding meat bones into a fine powder as a nutritional supplement. Everything but the squeal.
- If you question the Nebraska Governor on hog farms, he may not respond to you but he will attack your ethnicity;
FOOD WEEK OCTOBER 20 LAGNIAPPE
- Heliobacter pylori, the bacteria that causes ulcers, also causes cancer in some people.
- Bacon as a platform for flavor continues to grow.
- The story of the Atholl Brose, the cocktail that subdued an army.
- The inimitable John Oliver on food safety. The FDA has too much to do and nowhere near the resources to do it. Fully implementing and funding the Food Safety Modernization Act – now over 10 years old – would certainly help