Michael Wright, former CEO of Supervalu, has died at the age of 81, reports Progressive Grocer. Wright served as CEO during the 1980s and 1990s, during which he shepherded multiple acquisitions, including St. Louis-based wholesaler Wetterau Inc. in 1992.
Wright is survived by his son, Adam, who is a businessman based in Minneapolis. Full Story
Ben & Jerry’s has launched three new non-dairy ice creams made with sunflower butter. The new flavors include “Milk” & Cookies, a vanilla non-dairy frozen dessert with chocolate chip cookies, chocolate sandwich cookies and chocolate cookie swirls; Crème Brûlée Cookie, which is a burnt caramel non-dairy frozen dessert with brown sugar cookies and salted caramel swirls; and Mint Chocolate Cookie, a mint non-dairy frozen dessert with chocolate sandwich cookies.
In addition, Ben & Jerry’s is launching two new almond-based Non-Dairy Mini Cups, which are available in P.B. & Cookies and Caramel Chocolate Chunk flavors.
Related: Ben and Jerry's Removes 'Happy Cows' Label; Ben & Jerry's Commits to Offering CBD Ice Cream.
In response to slowing sales growth, Unilever PLC is conducting a review of its global tea business, which includes the Lipton and PG Tips brands, reports Food Business News. During a conference call, Alan W. Jope, CEO of Unilever, told analysts that the company will consider “all options” for the business, including a full or partial sale.
“The harsh reality is that two-thirds of our tea business remains core black tea, which is declining,” said Jope. “We have really seen this trend play. It's not a short-term thing; it's a long-term trend, over a decade. We've had a lot of good effort at getting the core black tea back to growth, but we just don't see it happening.” Full Story
Related: Unilever Introduces Ruby Chocolate Ice Cream Bar; Unilever Closes Nevada Ice Cream Plant.
Animal-free dairy protein company Perfect Day is preparing for a larger product rollout in the coming months, reports Food Dive. Ryan Pandya, CEO of Perfect Day, told Food Dive the company is aiming for a “much, much broader” rollout of ice cream, which will include working with a variety of other company’s brands that will incorporate Perfect Day’s milk protein into their products.
"There would be no ice cream brand that isn't aware of us pretty much at this point. We're working with the ones that give us the best chance to reach the broad demographics that want better ice cream," Pandya says. "Every major multinational (company) is talking to us." Full Story
Related: Perfect Day Raises $140 Million in Latest Funding Round; Synthetic Whey The Key to Lab-Made Dairy.
Walmart and Amazon have launched an online grocery service for SNAP beneficiaries in Washington, reports Supermarket News. This is an extension of the SNAP Online Purchasing Pilot that the USDA launched in April 2019. Currently, Amazon and ShopRite provide the service to the New York City area, and Walmart serves upstate New York.
"We continue to be excited to be part of the USDA’s pilot program and to be able to make our grocery pickup and delivery service available to more and more people, regardless of their payment method,” Walmart said in a statement. “Access to convenience, quality and fresh groceries shouldn’t be dictated by how you pay. We have a strong presence in the states in which the pilot is live, and we look forward to expanding." Full Story
Related: States Sue Trump Administration Over SNAP Ruling; NY SNAP Recipients Can Now Shop For Groceries Online.
MediaNews Group via Getty Images https://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2020/1/31/21083162/super-bowl-2020-beers-low-calorie-ipaAnimal-free dairy protein company Perfect Day is preparing for a larger product rollout in the coming months, reports Food Dive. Ryan Pandya, CEO of Perfect Day, told Food Dive the company is aiming for a “much, much broader” rollout of ice cream, which will include working with a variety of other company’s brands that will incorporate Perfect Day’s milk protein into their products.
"There would be no ice cream brand that isn't aware of us pretty much at this point. We're working with the ones that give us the best chance to reach the broad demographics that want better ice cream," Pandya says. "Every major multinational (company) is talking to us." Full Story
Related: Perfect Day Raises $140 Million in Latest Funding Round; Synthetic Whey The Key to Lab-Made Dairy.
Walmart and Amazon have launched an online grocery service for SNAP beneficiaries in Washington, reports Supermarket News. This is an extension of the SNAP Online Purchasing Pilot that the USDA launched in April 2019. Currently, Amazon and ShopRite provide the service to the New York City area, and Walmart serves upstate New York.
"We continue to be excited to be part of the USDA’s pilot program and to be able to make our grocery pickup and delivery service available to more and more people, regardless of their payment method,” Walmart said in a statement. “Access to convenience, quality and fresh groceries shouldn’t be dictated by how you pay. We have a strong presence in the states in which the pilot is live, and we look forward to expanding." Full Story
Related: States Sue Trump Administration Over SNAP Ruling; NY SNAP Recipients Can Now Shop For Groceries Online.
In response to slowing sales growth, Unilever PLC is conducting a review of its global tea business, which includes the Lipton and PG Tips brands, reports Food Business News. During a conference call, Alan W. Jope, CEO of Unilever, told analysts that the company will consider “all options” for the business, including a full or partial sale.
“The harsh reality is that two-thirds of our tea business remains core black tea, which is declining,” said Jope. “We have really seen this trend play. It's not a short-term thing; it's a long-term trend, over a decade. We've had a lot of good effort at getting the core black tea back to growth, but we just don't see it happening.” Full Story
Related: Unilever Introduces Ruby Chocolate Ice Cream Bar; Unilever Closes Nevada Ice Cream Plant.
Michael Wright, former CEO of Supervalu, has died at the age of 81, reports Progressive Grocer. Wright served as CEO during the 1980s and 1990s, during which he shepherded multiple acquisitions, including St. Louis-based wholesaler Wetterau Inc. in 1992.
Wright is survived by his son, Adam, who is a businessman based in Minneapolis. Full Story
Plus, the Super Bowl adds up to a lot of food waste, and more news to start your day
As plant-based milks continue to dominate the market and the diary industry faces bankruptcies, dairy producers are fighting back any weird ol’ way that they can. Taking a page from the beef industry, which recently lobbied for a law that would ban meatless products from using phrases like “meat” and “burger” in product descriptions, Big Dairy is using similar tactics. In Virginia, according to The Guardian, it is now “unlawful” to describe plant-based milks as “milk.” The legal definition of milk is now “the lacteal secretion of a healthy, hooved mammal.”
House of Delegates approves bill defining milk as "the lacteal secretion of a healthy hooved mammal." Vote is 66 to 32 https://t.co/NkTIdK2E4I
— Michael Pope (@MichaelLeePope) January 29, 2020
“Our dairy farmers have been going out to the tune of one dairy farm every other week,” said republican delegate Barry Knight, adding that he hoped the legislation will help Virginia’s dairy farmers. But what this and similar legislation seem to willfully misunderstand is that no one is buying oat milk because they think they are buying milk. The fact that it’s not a lacteal secretion is precisely the point. Recently, the Ninth Circuit court ruled in favor of plant-milk producers in Painter v. Blue Diamond Growers, saying in the opinion, “Painter’s complaint does not plausibly allege that a reasonable consumer would be deceived into believing that Blue Diamond’s almond milk products are nutritionally equivalent to dairy milk based on their package labels and advertising.”
In case you were wondering, there is an exception in the Virginia law about human breast milk, so no one has to go around calling it “human breast secretions.”
fuck it... egg pb&j pic.twitter.com/ws8mPPYsEf
— sub to twitch.tv/officialbrohoss or i'll die (@OfficialBrohoss) January 29, 2020
Mr. Peanut waves to the adoring masses at the 88th Annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City. | Photo by Ben Hider/Getty Images
The Super Bowl has always been the epicenter for dumb stunt advertising, and the internet only makes it worse
On January 22, 2020, the cane-swinging, top hat-wearing, possibly gay capitalist known as Mr. Peanut was pronounced dead by Planters on Twitter. “We’re devastated to confirm that Mr. Peanut is gone,” wrote the nut brand, which has been synonymous with the iconic legume since 1916. “He died doing what he did best – having people’s backs when they needed him most.”
It is with heavy hearts that we confirm that Mr. Peanut has died at 104. In the ultimate selfless act, he sacrificed himself to save his friends when they needed him most. Please pay your respects with #RIPeanut pic.twitter.com/VFnEFod4Zp
— The Estate of Mr. Peanut (@MrPeanut) January 22, 2020
How exactly did the monocled figurehead die? In a 30-second Super Bowl pregame ad, Mr. Peanut is shown cruising down a mountain road in his Nutmobile with Wesley Snipes and Veep’s Matt Walsh. To avoid hitting an armadillo, the vehicle swerves and nosedives off a cliff, leaving all three passengers holding onto a branch for dear life. The branch threatens to snap under their weight, until Mr. Peanut sacrifices himself and lets go, falling into the canyon and presumably to his death. His funeral, according to a press release that also encourages fans to eulogize the legume on social media using the hashtag #RIPeanut, was originally set to be broadcast in a Super Bowl spot this Sunday, before the brand paused the plan — and then recommitted to it — in the wake of the deaths of Kobe Bryant, his daughter, and several others in a helicopter crash over the weekend.
The calculated demise of Mr. Peanut felt like a wild, but not totally unforeseen, ending for a 104-year-old mascot who spent much of last year tweeting things like “Silent nut. Holy nut.” and whatever this is. Users reacted with dank glee and horniness; countless jokes and memes propelled it into a trending topic; and, of course, seemingly every other corporate account in existence responded to the news in character, unleashing an orgy of human-aping Brand Twitter of a magnitude that has rarely been seen before.
For immediate release pic.twitter.com/FUTAAOgIyM
— MoonPie (@MoonPie) January 24, 2020
We, too, would sacrifice it all for the nut #RIPeanut (a real one).
— SNICKERS (@SNICKERS) January 22, 2020
No, he's dead. Thank you for checking in though. https://t.co/uZNNHEMZXl
— The Estate of Mr. Peanut (@MrPeanut) January 22, 2020
It’s fitting that Planters’ marketing coup was tied to Super Bowl, arguably the ground zero of over-the-top brand stunts. Long before brands started getting attention for appropriating millennial depression and peeing in jars, they competed to make the most memorable Super Bowl commercials, striving for just the right alchemical mixture of humor, celebrity, self-awareness, feel-good messaging, and more to become the ad with the biggest watercooler buzz the next day. At its peak, the Super Bowl reached a viewership of 114.4 million in 2015. Although ratings have fallen since then, it still remains one of the most-watched television events of the year.
But in today’s fragmented media environment, with so many other screens demanding consumers’ attention, it’s become critical to rethink the traditional TV spot so that it has legs on social media, especially if advertisers hope to get a good return on the behemoth cost of airing an ad during the Super Bowl (in 2020, that price tag is $5.5 million for 30 seconds).
“It used to be, ‘We need a Super Bowl spot.’ Then, it was, ‘We need a Super Bowl spot and program,’” advertising executive Mark DiMassimo told Billboard in 2017. “Now, it’s, ‘We need a Super Bowl stunt or event.’ It needs to be newsworthy, social and surprising — and it needs to be much bigger than 30 seconds.”
Enter: the pre-pre-pregame ad, released days before Super Bowl Sunday. Before Volkswagen’s “The Force” ad — which Time called “the ad that changed Super Bowl commercials forever” — in 2011, it was conventional wisdom to keep commercials under wraps until the game. Now, it’s common for brands to tease or outright unveil their ads early in hopes of going viral and commanding attention well before kickoff.
The Super Bowl’s convergence with social media — and Twitter, in particular, as the platform most suited for millions of users to experience the same event simultaneously — hit another milestone in 2013, when Oreo capitalized on an unexpected blackout with a viral tweet so appropriately opportunistic, it has its own oral history. “By now the cringey meme-seeking of Big Brand Twitter is so familiar that we’d probably just scroll by, but at the time, this was a headline-worthy move — one taken as an early sign that the sun might be setting on the supremacy of that primest of prime-time TV spots,” Emma Grey Ellis wrote for Wired.
Power out? No problem. pic.twitter.com/dnQ7pOgC
— OREO Cookie (@Oreo) February 4, 2013
From there, the meme-minded ads and stunts just kept coming, especially from food and drink brands, which “have a little more leeway to be entertainment-driven,” as ad executive Dan Granger told Vox in 2019. Much of the escalation seems to have crystallized in 2017, the same year that brands as personas became “an internet-wide meme,” according to Steak-umm social media manager Nate Auerbach wrote for Vulture last year. Super Bowl LI had Wendy’s debut Super Bowl spot, which translated the fast-food chain’s shittalking Twitter persona to the big screen with a dig at frozen beef; the first-ever live commercial, featuring Adam Driver and Snickers; and, although not a food brand, an encapsulation of Brand Twitter’s hallmark trait of horniness in the form of a sexy Mr. Clean ad. That year also saw a stunt tailor-made for headlines: Kraft Heinz gave its office workers the day off after the Super Bowl, and launched an online petition to make that Monday a national holiday (tragically, the petition only procured 70,000 signatures out of the goal of 100,000).
In 2018, the ethos of public beefing continued with brand feuds — Wendy’s vs. McDonald’s, Martha Stewart vs. Jack in the Box — that drew inspiration from or spilled over onto social media. In 2019, brand shenanigans got even wilder, with a far-ranging buffet of antics that included an iconically cringeworthy Kraft Heinz/Devour Foods ad about “frozen food porn”:
Skittles’ Broadway musical, directed and scored by actual professionals, and performed by Dexter’s Michael C. Hall for a real audience, in lieu of a paid Super Bowl spot:
And the World Record Egg, which partnered with Hulu to hatch an unnervingly (performatively?) earnest post-Super Bowl ad about … mental health?
This year’s lineup of Super Bowl ads features plenty of familiar names: Cheetos and MC Hammer; Pop-Tarts and Queer Eye’s Jonathan Van Ness; Doritos and Sam Elliott, Billy Ray Cyrus, and meme lord Lil Nas X himself. But so far, it’s Planters’ offing of Mr. Peanut that best embodies where brand marketing and social media intersect today: weird, disingenuously humanized, just this side of depraved.
Even more zeitgeisty is that the internet’s quasi-lust-murder fascination with Mr. Peanut — the basis of the collective schadenfreude that has garnered Planters millions of impressions and press from every publication under the sun — was originally most vocally articulated by a comedian, Luke Taylor, who was banned from Twitter for threatening to kill the anthropomorphized legume. How very 2020 that a massive food conglomerate stood to benefit from a joke that was apparently seen as so untoward when directed at a corporate brand, it was forcibly excised from the company’s mentions.
Building a multimillion-dollar ad campaign off of death was always a risky endeavor — one that threatened to fall apart in the face of real tragedy. That’s the thing about these brand stunts that leaves such a bad taste in the mouth: the novelty is in watching these inanimate, two-dimensional brands open their mouths and convince us to see the humanity in them, humor and ennui and all. But to be truly human is to be confronted with the knowledge of your own mortality; to live is to eventually die. When the world collectively loses a real person — especially one whose life and legacy are being mourned and grappled with by millions — that’s when we’re reminded of what it really means to be human.
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The Chefs’ Warehouse, distributor of specialty food products in North America, has acquired Massachusetts-based Sid Wainer & Son. Sid Wainer & Son has curated and distributed specialty products and produce in the Northeast for over 100 years.
“I would like to welcome the Wainer Family and the entire Sid Wainer & Son organization into our growing family of companies,” said Christopher Pappas, chairman and CEO of The Chefs' Warehouse, in a statement. “This acquisition offers The Chefs’ Warehouse the opportunity to build New England’s premier specialty food company. We look forward to leveraging Sid Wainer & Son’s incredible product lines and produce expertise to offer the market exceptional assortment. For 35 years, we have prided ourselves in supplying the world’s greatest ingredients to North America’s best chefs; this acquisition deepens this commitment.”
Related: Molson Coors Acquires Michigan Brewer; TreeHouse Foods Terminates Agreement with Post Holdings.
The Chefs’ Warehouse, distributor of specialty food products in North America, has acquired Massachusetts-based Sid Wainer & Son. Sid Wainer & Son has curated and distributed specialty products and produce in the Northeast for over 100 years.
“I would like to welcome the Wainer Family and the entire Sid Wainer & Son organization into our growing family of companies,” said Christopher Pappas, chairman and CEO of The Chefs' Warehouse, in a statement. “This acquisition offers The Chefs’ Warehouse the opportunity to build New England’s premier specialty food company. We look forward to leveraging Sid Wainer & Son’s incredible product lines and produce expertise to offer the market exceptional assortment. For 35 years, we have prided ourselves in supplying the world’s greatest ingredients to North America’s best chefs; this acquisition deepens this commitment.”
Related: Molson Coors Acquires Michigan Brewer; TreeHouse Foods Terminates Agreement with Post Holdings.
Nestlé Waters North America is supporting an amendment to a bill in Maine that would set minimum post-consumer recycled content requirements for plastic beverage containers sold in the state, reports Food Dive. The amendment calls for altering targets to begin at 25 percent by April 2025 and increase to 30 percent by April 2030. The original bill called for the containers to have a post-consumer recycled content of 15 percent by 2022, increasing to 25 percent by 2024.
Tomra, a recycling company, has endorsed the new language, in addition to the Natural Resources Council of Maine, the Conservation Law Foundation, and other environmental groups. "Recycled content legislation supports plastic recycling markets because it creates more demand than would otherwise be created because of the relative low-cost of virgin plastic," said NCRM's sustainable Maine director Sarah Nichols in a statement to Waste Dive. Full Story
Related: Nestlé Partners with Plant-Based Ingredient Companies; Nestlé Restructuring Water Business.
Price Rite Marketplace will unveil fresh new looks and shopping experiences at grand reopenings of locations in Chicopee, Pittsfield, Springfield, West Springfield and Westfield, Mass. This is after other successful store rebrands in Connecticut, Maryland, New Hampshire, New York, and Pennsylvania, and other Massachusetts locations.
The rebrand features bright, revitalized decor, including market-style produce departments. Each store will also include the new “Drop Zone” stocked with special surprise buys on must-have grocery and private label items, and lower prices that extend across hundreds of products.
“Our customers have embraced the marketplace feel, focus on fresh foods, and amazing deals at our rebranded stores,” said Jim Dorey, president of Price Rite Marketplace, in a statement. “We are excited to bring this streamlined shopping experience to our shoppers in Chicopee, Pittsfield, Springfield, West Springfield and Westfield.”
Related: Price Rite Adds Plant-Based Protein Offerings; Price Rite Rolls Out New Store Model.
Motif Foodworks is partnering with the University of Massachusetts Amherst to characterize the functional properties of food proteins, including their solubility, stability, color and other properties critical to the production of successful plant-based products. This research will help Motif’s protein formulation process.
“When it comes to protein functionality, there are certain physical and chemical attributes that are critical to the ultimate success of a plant-based product — things like solubility, or how the protein will emulsify. These characteristics become key pieces in the roadmap to ultimately formulating a protein that will perform the way you need it to,” said Stefan Baier, head of food science at Motif, who will lead the two year initiative, in a statement.
Related: Motif Ingredients Raises $27.5 Million; Motif Ingredients Raises $90M for Plant-Based Products.
Lakeview Capital, Inc. has acquired The Mochi Ice Cream Co., maker of My/Mo Mochi Ice Cream. Lakeview acquired the company from Century Park Capital Partners. Craig Berger, president and CEO of The Mochi Ice Cream Co., along with the management team, will remain with the company in their current roles under the new ownership.
"Under Lakeview's ownership, we are very excited to continue building on the incredible momentum we have generated," said Berger in a statement. "Lakeview has a proven track record of success, and through our shared vision and collaboration, we will continue to grow and expand our business."
Related: Food Entrepreneurs Share Brand Building Strategies; Bubbies Ice Cream Operations Coming to Contiguous U.S.
Nestlé Waters North America is supporting an amendment to a bill in Maine that would set minimum post-consumer recycled content requirements for plastic beverage containers sold in the state, reports Food Dive. The amendment calls for altering targets to begin at 25 percent by April 2025 and increase to 30 percent by April 2030. The original bill called for the containers to have a post-consumer recycled content of 15 percent by 2022, increasing to 25 percent by 2024.
Tomra, a recycling company, has endorsed the new language, in addition to the Natural Resources Council of Maine, the Conservation Law Foundation, and other environmental groups. "Recycled content legislation supports plastic recycling markets because it creates more demand than would otherwise be created because of the relative low-cost of virgin plastic," said NCRM's sustainable Maine director Sarah Nichols in a statement to Waste Dive. Full Story
Related: Nestlé Partners with Plant-Based Ingredient Companies; Nestlé Restructuring Water Business.
Lucky’s Market has entered into an asset purchase agreement with a group led by company founders Bo and Trish Sharon for seven locations that will continue to operate under the Lucky’s banner, reports Progressive Grocer. The stores, which currently employ about 600 people, include Traverse City, Mich.; Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio; Columbia, Mo; Melbourne, Fla; and North Boulder and Fort Collins, Colo.
“We are grateful to our wonderful team members and customers for all their support, dedication and loyalty over the years,” says Bo Sharon. “While this is a difficult situation across our company, we remain passionate and optimistic that we can continue to offer our communities access to healthful foods in this smaller footprint, preserving hundreds of jobs.”
In addition, according to a published report citing documents filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware, Lucky’s Market owes The Kroger Co. more than $301 million. The Daily Camera, a newspaper in Boulder, Colo., reported, “In September 2016, Kroger provided Lucky’s with a secured loan of $23.3 million, followed by a $25.2 million loan in August 2017. Later that year, the companies ‘entered into agreements subsequently to, among other things, lend [Lucky’s] additional amounts over time,’ according to an affidavit from Lucky’s CFO Andrew Pillari.” Full Story Full Story
Related: Lucky's Market Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy; Lucky's Market Confirms Store Closings.
With Sweetgreen officially out of the running, bibimbap, Cava, Chipotle, and Panda Express are dishing out pain for gain in the semifinals
Folks, I’m shocked. I’m stunned. Heavyweight Sweetgreen lost in the Elite 8 to bibimbap, a dish adored by all but without an official fast-casual home. Meanwhile, Cava, a fast-casual bowl restaurant that uses the fallen Sweetgreen model for ordering and eating, HAS persevered into the semi-finals, beating out poke bowl chain Pokéworks. Is this what the Creed movies, spin-offs of the Rocky series, are about? No, not really! But let’s take a moment to think about Michael B. Jordan anyway, because after this, it’s gonna get ugly.
Facing off in the Final 4, we have bibimbap going toe-to-toe with Cava and fast-casual titan Chipotle facing off with Panda Express, a Chinese-American fast-food staple. Do NOT reach over the sneeze guard, please. It’s unsanitary and you might lose a hand. Judging today’s matches is one of our most intimidatingly discerning judges, Eater restaurant editor Hillary Dixler Canavan.
There’s no doubt bibimbap is a culinary treasure and represents the best of what bowl eating can be. There’s a symphony of texture: crispy rice on the bottom, soft rice up top; crunchy pickled veg; chewy meat; oozing egg yolk. And it’s flavor-packed, a jumble of savory heat and bright acidity that mingles as you mix it together. Just thinking about it has made me hungry, even though I just ate a slice of pizza reheated the good way (in a pan with tin foil on top).
Meanwhile Cava is standard fast-casual fare, a DIY salad situation that leans heavily on spreads like hummus, harissa, and tzatziki for flavor-building. Its vaguely Middle Eastern, vaguely Mediterranean, and vaguely boring. One colleague described it to me as extremely goop-y, and not in the Gwyneth sense.
But comparing a dish to a specific brand isn’t really fair. Us judges are free to imagine bibimbap the way we like it to be, but it’s as-yet unproved whether a fast-casual or fast-food chain can figure out bibimbap at scale. Will the rice be crispy? What will they do about the runny egg yolks? WILL THERE BE ACTUALLY SPICY KIMCHI AVAILABLE?
A Cava bowl is what it is. It’s real. And real things are both good and bad, unlike whatever idealized version of bibimbap each judge is assuming to be in competition here. Sorry to rain on the parade, friends, but I’m picking Cava because at least we know the specifics. Winner: Cava —HDC
There’s a lot more than meets the eye at Panda Express. Even with huge lines I’ve never seen the staff be anything less than chipper, eager to offer a sample of anything you’d like to try. The chain is uniquely expert at frying, which means that, especially during high traffic times, it’s easy to find a pleasing crunch from a hot batch of its famous orange chicken or, my personal favorite, sweet fire chicken (ever-so-slightly spicy, highly citrus-y fried chicken chunks). The options for customization are particularly compelling, especially if you go the route of halving rice with the steamed super greens mix of broccoli, kale, and cabbage. For New Years Eve 2019, I paired Panda Express with Champagne and honestly it was perfect. I should do that again without the holiday excuse.
But here’s the thing: I live in Los Angeles and Panda Express here is a completely different experience than the Panda Express mall-court experiences I had growing up in New Jersey. The East Coast mall-court Pandas are pretty grim. The food sits, it’s too sweet, and even the astoundingly cheap price doesn’t make up for how bad it is. Chipotle is far more consistent nationwide.
Chipotle has always been an easy option because it’s so customizable — even before it released specific bowls designed to be Keto or Whole30, plenty of us had figured out how to make the Chipotle bowl tick whatever restrictive boxes we needed it to. My go-to order has been either salad greens or brown rice with a half-portion of black beans, plus steak, double serving of grilled veggies, fresh tomato salsa, tomato-tomatillo salsa, and guac. Feeling particularly festive? Add an order of chips, throw some on top of the bowl and use the rest to scoop out the contents.
And yet. I didn’t recently wake up to news that Panda Express was massively fined for violating child labor laws. I’ve never had to write blog posts about how Panda Express greenwashed their business model. I don’t have to do nearly as much soul-searching about questions of appropriation at Panda; its founders are not white men who hugely profited off another group’s food culture. And most importantly, I’ve never had to go LITERAL YEARS avoiding Panda Express because of frankly legitimate concerns over foodborne illness.
Plus, have I mentioned how good the sweet fire chicken is? Winner: Panda Express —HDC
Here, going into the finals, is the bracket as it stands:
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Come back Friday to find out what bowl restaurant — Cava or Panda Express — is crowned the winner of the Eater Bowl Bowl.
Photo credits: Chicken grain bowl: Lauri Patterson/Getty; granola smoothie Bowl: zeljkosantrac/Getty; veggie bowl: vaaseenaa/Getty; salad: Westend61/Getty; bowl icon: Crystal Gorden/the Noun Project
https://dc.eater.com/2020/1/30/21115051/brett-kavanaugh-adds-pizza-supreme-court-cafeteria-menu
Photo by: Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Plus, Joe Biden supporters are less likely to enjoy Indian food, and more news to start your day
While Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat are the big names in the plant-based meat industry, basically every grocery store has been trying to market its own version. Costco, H-E-B, and Kroger’s have all brought in plant-based brands unique to their stores, and now Trader Joe’s is throwing its hibiscus-print hat in the ring. The store’s new “Protein Patties” are made with pea protein, sunflower oil, and beets, resulting in what’s supposed to be a “meaty texture.” “Folks are increasingly going for meatless burgers for all kinds of reasons, but we like to think that one reason in particular is primarily responsible: plant-based burgers have gotten really, really good recently,” the brand told Food & Wine.
Experts told Grocery Dive that demand for plant-based meat shows no signs of slowing down, even as beef lobbyists are fighting against the industry. According to a reviewer at Popsugar, TJ’s burgers are less textured and “meaty” than Beyond Meat, which might actually be a boon for vegetarians and vegans who don’t eat meat because of the texture. At this point, it’s clear that meatless meat is taking over for the veggie burgers of the world. I still love you, Boca Burger!
Breaking: Salt Bae is a union buster pic.twitter.com/yiAS153ddb
— Tom Gara (@tomgara) January 30, 2020
Christina Tosi’s once-groundbreaking Momofuku offshoot feels fully corporate in its new Nomad digs
https://ny.eater.com/2020/1/30/21082900/milk-bar-review-christina-tosi-ace-hotel-nyc-restaurants
The junior justice sits on the Supreme Court’s cafeteria committee
Your weekly dispatch from the ‘Add to Cart’ newsletter
This post originally appeared on January 28, 2020, in Add to Cart — the weekly newsletter for people who love shopping (almost) as much as they love eating. Subscribe now.
Very good food take of the week: When traveling, always hit the grocery store.
As my Eater colleague Brenna Houck wrote this week in The Move, another Eater newsletter (it is great, sign up here), trawling supermarket aisles while in a foreign country — or even just Texas — is the best way to get to know a place: the distinctive flavors, the ubiquitous snacks, the homegrown brands.
It’s something that was second nature for me growing up, when every family vacation included a Friday-afternoon supermarket run, where we bought food — ingredients to prepare a meal if our lodging had a kitchen, or just yogurt and readymade items to stash in the minibar fridge — to hold us from sundown on Friday through sundown on Saturday night. Not being able to shop, dine out, or cook on the Sabbath meant we needed to be ready, which also meant we got a thorough tour of the local grocery store’s aisles.
I tend to travel without my family now, but on vacations, I still spend Friday afternoons — and other days of the week, too, for souvenir-shopping purposes — at the supermarket.
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Tim Hortons has removed Beyond Meat products from its locations in Ontario and British Columbia, Canada, reports Reuters. This comes after the chain took Beyond Meat’s burgers and sandwiches from its menu back in September from all but the two provinces.
“We may offer plant-based alternatives again in the future, but we have removed it from the menu for now,” said a spokeswoman for Tim Hortons. She added that “the product was not embraced by our guests as we thought it would be.” Full Story
Related: Tim Hortons Tests Plant-Based Egg; Tim Hortons Launches Espresso Menu in US.
Twenty-three percent of Americans report they have eaten less meat in the past year than they had previously, according to a new Gallup poll. The vast majority (72 percent) say they are eating the same amount, and 5 percent say they are eating more meat than in the past.
The biggest factor in reducing meat consumption is health concerns; nine in 10 say it is a major (70 percent) or minor reason (20 percent) they are cutting back on meat. Environmental concerns are the second biggest factor, with 49 percent of Americans saying it’s a major reason they cut back, and 21 percent saying it’s a minor one.
Related: Memphis Meats Raises $161 Million; Consumers Believe Plant-Based Food Becoming More Mainstream.
Tim Hortons has removed Beyond Meat products from its locations in Ontario and British Columbia, Canada, reports Reuters. This comes after the chain took Beyond Meat’s burgers and sandwiches from its menu back in September from all but the two provinces.
“We may offer plant-based alternatives again in the future, but we have removed it from the menu for now,” said a spokeswoman for Tim Hortons. She added that “the product was not embraced by our guests as we thought it would be.” Full Story
Related: Tim Hortons Tests Plant-Based Egg; Tim Hortons Launches Espresso Menu in US.
Danone North America is partnering with Replant Capital, a financial services firm dedicated to reversing climate change to encourage farmers to use regenerative or organic farming practices. Over the next several years, Replant will invest up to $20 million to support Danone North America’s farmer partners with expenses relating to converting to regenerative or organic farming.
"As a company that is passionate about climate activism, we are pleased to be partnering with rePlant to support our farmers and bring new, innovative financial solutions to address climate change," said Mariano Lozano, CEO of Danone North America. "Providing these loans mitigates the financial stress that transitioning to regenerative and organic farming practices places on our farmers and allows them to focus their energy on driving sustainable agriculture on their farms."
Related: Danone Water Brands Pledge To Reduce Carbon Emissions; Danone Invests in Plant-Based Dairy Company.
Tim Hortons has removed Beyond Meat products from its locations in Ontario and British Columbia, Canada, reports Reuters. This comes after the chain took Beyond Meat’s burgers and sandwiches from its menu back in September from all but the two provinces.
“We may offer plant-based alternatives again in the future, but we have removed it from the menu for now,” said a spokeswoman for Tim Hortons. She added that “the product was not embraced by our guests as we thought it would be.” Full Story
Related: Tim Hortons Tests Plant-Based Egg; Tim Hortons Launches Espresso Menu in US.
Snap Kitchen, a ready-to-eat meal delivery service, has introduced free ground shipping across 38 states and debuted its chef-prepared meals in Whole Foods Market stores in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. This is in addition to the 34 Whole Foods Market stores that sell its meals in Texas.
"We've been pleased with the overwhelmingly positive response to Snap Kitchen's offerings in our Texas stores and are excited to introduce their line of healthy, ready-to-eat meals and beverages to Whole Foods Market customers in other markets," said Jessica Johnson, regional vice president of the Southwest region at Whole Foods Market.
Related: Snap Kitchen Rolls Out Compostable Packaging; Snap Kitchen to Exit Chicago Market.
Siete Family Foods, maker of grain-free tortillas and tortilla chips, is expanding its product portfolio with the addition of taco seasonings and enchilada sauces, reports Food Business News. Expanding into these two new categories “will further cement the company’s momentum as a fast-growing brand of heritage-inspired products inclusive for people with dietary restrictions,” the company said.
The taco seasonings come in mild and spicy varieties, and the new Whole30 approved enchilada sauces come in red and green varieties. Siete is also launching Grain Free Dip Chips, Jalapeño Lime Tortilla Chips, Chipotle BBQ Tortilla Chips, and Grain Free Burrito-Size Tortillas. Full Story
Related: Siete Foods Experiences Distribution Boom; Mexican-American Food Brand Raises $90M.
Twenty-three percent of Americans report they have eaten less meat in the past year than they had previously, according to a new Gallup poll. The vast majority (72 percent) say they are eating the same amount, and 5 percent say they are eating more meat than in the past.
The biggest factor in reducing meat consumption is health concerns; nine in 10 say it is a major (70 percent) or minor reason (20 percent) they are cutting back on meat. Environmental concerns are the second biggest factor, with 49 percent of Americans saying it’s a major reason they cut back, and 21 percent saying it’s a minor one.
Related: Memphis Meats Raises $161 Million; Consumers Believe Plant-Based Food Becoming More Mainstream.
McDonald’s
Plus, Amy Klobuchar hopes her hot dish will win over votes, and more news to start your day
McDonald’s has been going through an identity crisis lately, having watched Chick-fil-A and Popeyes gain obsessive fans over their chicken sandwiches, whereas McDonald’s just can’t seem to get it right. In December, McDonald’s introduced a Crispy Chicken Sandwich that’s being tested in Houston and Knoxville to not much buzz. Before that, its BBQ Chicken Sandwich received a resounding meh from diners. But the company is hoping its new breakfast sandwiches will help.
According to Business Insider, McDonald’s is releasing two new chicken-based breakfast sandwiches nationwide: the Chicken McGriddle and the McChicken Biscuit. The McChicken Biscuit like a dryer, beige-ier take on Chick-fil-A’s famous sandwich, and is somehow different from the Southern Style Chicken Biscuit it offered over a decade ago. McDonald’s says the offerings are for a limited time only. It’s a valiant effort, and a Forbes reviewer says that while the McGriddle is sort of spongy, the chicken pairs nicely with the biscuit. However, it’s just “another daytime option” if a Chick-fil-A isn’t around. Looks like McDonald’s still needs to “stay focused”!
Reviewed by Unknown
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January 29, 2020
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American households waste approximately $240 billion worth of food every year, according to a new study from researchers at Penn State University, reports Food Business News. The research analyzed data from 4,000 households that participated in the USDA’s National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey.
“Our findings are consistent with previous studies, which have shown that 30 percent to 40 percent of the total food supply in the United States goes uneaten — and that means that resources used to produce the uneaten food, including land, energy, water and labor, are wasted as well,” says lead researcher Edward C. Jaenicke, Ph.D., professor of agricultural economics in the College of Agricultural Sciences. “But this study is the first to identify and analyze the level of food waste for individual households, which has been nearly impossible to estimate because comprehensive, current data on uneaten food at the household level do not exist.” Full Story
Related: Meijer to Expand Food Waste Program; Report: Food Waste Happens Between Harvesting, Retail.
The Consumer Brands Association has launched an advisory board to guide the organization’s work to enhance safety and ensure appropriate oversight in the CBD market for consumer packaged goods. The board includes Mick Cornett, former Oklahoma City mayor; Edward Davis, former commissioner, Boston Police Department; Tom Galvin, executive director, Digital Citizens Alliance; Karen Tandy, former administrator, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration; and Michael Taylor, former deputy commissioner, U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“The individuals that we have assembled have decades of experience in tackling issues like the one we face today — the smart regulation of CBD,” said Consumer Brands Association President and CEO Geoff Freeman. “Each of the advisory board members brings a unique perspective that will be crucial in helping inform and guide the CPG industry’s advocacy approach on this rapidly evolving issue.”
Related: CBD Offers High Risk, Reward; GMA is Now Consumer Brands Association.
The Consumer Brands Association has launched an advisory board to guide the organization’s work to enhance safety and ensure appropriate oversight in the CBD market for consumer packaged goods. The board includes Mick Cornett, former Oklahoma City mayor; Edward Davis, former commissioner, Boston Police Department; Tom Galvin, executive director, Digital Citizens Alliance; Karen Tandy, former administrator, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration; and Michael Taylor, former deputy commissioner, U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“The individuals that we have assembled have decades of experience in tackling issues like the one we face today — the smart regulation of CBD,” said Consumer Brands Association President and CEO Geoff Freeman. “Each of the advisory board members brings a unique perspective that will be crucial in helping inform and guide the CPG industry’s advocacy approach on this rapidly evolving issue.”
Related: CBD Offers High Risk, Reward; GMA is Now Consumer Brands Association.
Hy-Vee will acquire six former Shopko locations in Iowa that will re-open under the Dollar Fresh brand by late summer. The locations include Hampton, Cresco, Oelwein, Waukon, Dyersville, and Vinton.
As we continue to innovate, we’re taking a look at the needs of our rural communities,” said Randy Edeker, Hy-Vee’s chairman of the board, CEO and president. “At our Dollar Fresh stores, our customers will be greeted with helpful smiles that deliver a great customer experience while also encountering a wide selection of quality products at low prices.”
Related: Hy-Vee's Marshall Named Vice Chairman; Hy-Vee To Open Coffee Shops.
American households waste approximately $240 billion worth of food every year, according to a new study from researchers at Penn State University, reports Food Business News. The research analyzed data from 4,000 households that participated in the USDA’s National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey.
“Our findings are consistent with previous studies, which have shown that 30 percent to 40 percent of the total food supply in the United States goes uneaten — and that means that resources used to produce the uneaten food, including land, energy, water and labor, are wasted as well,” says lead researcher Edward C. Jaenicke, Ph.D., professor of agricultural economics in the College of Agricultural Sciences. “But this study is the first to identify and analyze the level of food waste for individual households, which has been nearly impossible to estimate because comprehensive, current data on uneaten food at the household level do not exist.” Full Story
Related: Meijer to Expand Food Waste Program; Report: Food Waste Happens Between Harvesting, Retail.
