Sometimes the news comes so thick and fast that all you can do is sit back and marvel. And make snarky comments, of course.
Honest Tea Flavors Get Resurrected
In our September cover article on what happens to entrepreneurs and their companies post-sale, we look at the case of Seth Goldman, whose Honest Tea was bought by Coca-Cola in 2011 and discontinued this year. Goldman went on to co-found Eat the Change, a company devoted to healthy, plant-based products.
One of these is a line of, yes, iced tea. And some of the tea SKUs will have the same or similar flavors as the moribund Honest Tea line, such as Black Forest Berry.
When I interviewed Goldman for the cover piece, it was obvious that he’s a nice man and a consummate professional who doesn’t take business setbacks personally. Still and all, it’s hard not to see the resurrection of Honest Tea flavors as a nice thumbs-in-ears-fingers-waggling gesture toward Coca-Cola. Well done and godspeed, Mr. Goldman.
Give Hungry People Money and They’ll Buy Food
A USDA study on food insecurity during the pandemic revealed that the rate dropped among households with children, from 7.6% before it hit to 6.2% last year. But for the elderly, it jumped from 8.3% to 9.5%. Single adults, especially women, also experienced an increase in hunger.
The USDA didn’t speculate on what may account for this phenomenon, but others were willing to. Under the enhanced child tax credit passed as part of the American Rescue Plan Act, households with children received an extra $300 per child per month from July through December 2021. The elderly, on the other hand, received an increase in Social Security payments last year of 1.3% – less than one quarter the rate of inflation. As for single adults, well, they never had much of a social safety net in the first place.
This reinforces something that I’ve believed for years: Food assistance in this country is needlessly, ridiculously convoluted. There’s no need for food banks, food stamps, WIC, lists of approved and unapproved foods, etc. The best, most efficient way to help hungry people is simply to give them the money they need to eat. They’ll know what to do with it, and the benefits will flow to retailers, processors and upwards through the food chain.
Plant-Based Sausage Over a Barrel
Cracker Barrel restaurants appeal to a certain demographic, which you can probably guess from the name. And many in that demographic were not happy when Cracker Barrel started offering Impossible Sausage as a breakfast option.
Cracker Barrel’s Facebook page was flooded with denunciations of having gone “woke.” "I just lost respect for a once great Tennessee company," went a typical comment quoted by CNN.
Several commenters pushed back by pointing out the obvious, which is that neither Cracker Barrel nor anyone else is forcing anyone to eat the stuff: "It's amazing the snowflakes here getting triggered by a meat alternative showing up on a menu. Y'all can still order regular meat, you know that right?"
This may be a tempest in a sausage casing, but it reinforces my belief about the kind of people who complain about something being “woke”: They object to its very existence. Not only would they never choose to do, or say, or eat whatever it is they’re complaining about; they firmly believe that no one else should ever have the choice.
I have my doubts that this will really affect Cracker Barrel much. Undoubtedly some hard-core anti-“woke” types will stay away. But I’d be interested to know how much the restaurants’ staffs will miss those folks. Something tells me they weren’t that much fun to wait on in the first place.
Pan Demetrakakes is a Senior Editor for Food Processing and has been a business journalist since 1992, mostly covering various aspects of the food production and supply chain, including processing, packaging, distribution and retailing. Learn more about him or contact him