Welcome to The Lempert Report LIVE
Welcome to The Lempert Report LIVE
Welcome to The Lempert Report Live. Today Japan’s Biggest Food Trend, Food Shortages are Coming to Your Shelves, Is the fall of delivery services here? More accolades for Trader Joe’s and Cornell’s new program is a boon for food entrepreneurs. A reminder to check out Food News Today on SupermarketGuru.com for the most up to the minute newsfeed courtesy of our partnership with Cision. Check it out. Last week Walmart CEO Doug McMillion told the Morgan Stanley Global Consumer& Retail Conference that the retailer is rethinking its approach to center store– asking suppliers to cut costs or they risk the chain reducing the number of facings for the brand on the shelf. He also added that they will allocate space to private and tertiary brands to the“degree we need to” to make prices work for families. Walmart want to lower prices! Also last week, Campbells on its quarterly earnings call announced it is pushing through a fourth round of price increases this year to offset core inflation– 16% increase in snacks& beverages. On the same call they announced that their quarter ending October 31, 2022 was strong– organic net sales grew 15% and expect the full year growth to be 7-9%. We’ve seen the Walmart-Campbell fight before– wonder who will win this time? Let’s get started. So, Sally, out of Japan, there's this annual event where they have the dish of the year. This is an award that's given out every year by the Gavi Research Institute. They run a popular website, which allows users to search for the top restaurants across Japan, and every year they create a dish of the year. What's the 2022 Dish of the Year?
Sally:Drum roll.The 2022, dish of the year is frozen food. Phil, apparently the pandemic has really had an impact on Japanese shoppers and frozen foods have actually gone up 20%. And so what's happening is retailers are getting more into frozen prepared meals for people. And what I love about hearing about this is that the convenience stores are really getting into this too, which Japanese have always had really cool convenience stores.
Phil:Yeah, they have. And there's one new one that is called at Frozen. It opened in August. They sell 1500 frozen food options in 420 square meters. That's about 4,000 square foot. There was a, there was a store in New York City a few years ago. I don't know, even though if it's still open, that only sold frozen foods. But to your point, I think what's really interesting about this, it's not your run-of-the-mill frozen foods that, that you would find in, in a Kroger or a Walmart. These are frozen foods that are frozen by restaurants and chefs to really bring up the whole high quality to a whole different level. And talking about that there's a new trend that's going on here in the US called thaw and eat foods. So these are frozen foods t hat all you do is you thaw them and you eat them. You don't have to microwave them. Why, why do we need this?
Sally:It seems like it requires some really advanced planning too. You know it conjures up memories of not throwing th thawing that Turkey out in time. You know, you've gotta start the day before. So yeah, I'm not sure about that trend, but it does seem like people are looking fordifferent options when it comes to food convenient foods, things that they can prepare quickly and that they don't have to go and buy a bunch of different ingredients for.
Phil:So, you know, if we look at major companies getting into this thaw& eat food category, Nestle has actually coined a term called Smeals S M E A L S to refer to small meals that were catering to modern consumption habits. Smuckers has a new line of Uncrustables, that go well beyond that whole peanut butter thing. T hey're, they're filled with meat and cheese they're called. And also Nestle has a new brand o ut called Deli W itch, a line of soft crusted hot pockets that don't require heating. U m, c raft H ines has a product called Launch B ox. E c ho now has ec ho w affles that are frozen, but you don't have to put'em in your toaster. I'm not sure how, how difficult it is t o put an ec ho i n your toaster. Marie Ca lendars h as frozen pies. Edwards has frozen pies. I guess what, what I'm curious about is whether or not, you know, this trend really is go nna c hange the way we eat. I mean, the reason that we microwave things or we put the echo waffles in the toasters to make them warm or hot because we like, you know, hot foods and, and so on. Now we're just getting these foods that are gonna be at room temperature. And I'm just wondering what the impact of that's gonna be. And also will there now be a new backlash towards microwaves? When microwave ovens first came out, a lot of people really didn't want to use them cuz they were afraid of those, the microwave energy, you know, zapping into their food and then into their bodies. So I'm just wondering whether or not, you know, we change our, our eating habits to go for non-war food and also whether the microwave manufacturers are gonna be in trouble.
Sally:Yes. It will be interesting to see. And of course, Phil, I agree with you, like the wanting your food warm. I can't imagine thawing out a waffle and eating it. Yeah. You know, not warmed up
Phil:Yeah, I, I agree with you. So, you know, there's a lot of food shortages that are anticipated this holiday season because of our weather floods, hurricanes, extreme heat, drought, large bouts of rainfall. In fact, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that in 2022 there have been 15 climate disaster events in the US. The losses are about a billion dollars each. So we, we go down the list of what products are gonna be in short supply. As a result of this, we have rice. Obviously, you know, when you're growing rice, you need a lot of water. Most rice comes from California. We have a major water shortage here in California, so a lot less rice also because of the hurricanes in Florida, a lot less citrus. That means a lot less orange juice. Iimported orange juice, obviously from Brazil will still be on the shelves, but that's it Also, beef. Now here's an interesting stat. The beef slaughter is up 13%. That's the good news. But because of the weather problems, there's not enough grass or other feed is too expensive for the cows, so they're actually culling the cows, meaning killing the cows because they can't feed them. So we're gonna have that problem upon us as well. I mean, we've been talking for a long time here about how climate change is really affecting our food supply, both price wise as well as shortage wise. But I think that a lot of people are gonna be very, very disheartened as they walk in the supermarket over the next few weeks during the holiday season and really seeing these shortages again. We saw them in the beginning of the pandemic, people freaked out. I don't think people are gonna freak out now and stores are doing a great job to avoid that by fanning out products on a shelf so we don't see empty shelves. But still, I think, you know, I think it's a, a major problem. Also what we have to talk about is there's a fight going on now to pay food delivery workers$23 an hour. So in New York City, there are 60,000 app-based food delivery workers, 60,000 people. And what they're talking about is certainly during the pandemic, everybody's getting delivery, everything, now they're not getting delivery. And you know, this group wants to, you know, up it to, to get$23 an hour not including tips by 2025. And I just have to wonder if the price does go to, to that amount of money, 23 bucks an hour, whether or not there's gonna be a lot of people who stop delivering just cuz they can't afford to pay that. Right now, on average they make about 14 dollars and 18 cents an hour. So we're talking about a significant increase. Do you think that this is gonna kill the, the whole idea of delivery by raising these hourly wages?
Sally:Well, I'm not sure that it will kill it, but yes, these, you know, we, there are, there are consequences for that. And you know, we've heard from some of the CEOs of these app delivery companies that, you know, that they would have to rethink their services, cut back on services, raise prices, but then we also have to think about, you know, about people. And we have to think about that. You know, everyone deserves to make a living wage. And thinking about people that are, you know, working so hard, especially these delivery workers, you know, who we've seen in, you know, one of our most difficult times in this country during a pandemic, what would we have done without these people? And many of these people are still living in poverty because they are not making a living wage. And to add to that, you know, part of that$23 an hour, there is a portion that's just under$2 that would, would allow for them to have some workers' compensation. So as a contract employee for an app delivery based company, you don't have the same benefit as a regular full-time employee. So with, with that raise, you would also get the work workers' comp.
Phil:Yeah. And also it can be a dangerous job if you take a look this year or since 2020 in New York City alone 33 restaurant delivery workers have been killed. Whether people wanna steal their bikes or I guess steal their food or whatever else, but it's amazing to me, you know, and we don't have the amount of workers that have been attacked or robbed have their expensive e-bikes stolen but just 33 people getting killed. It just doesn't make sense. And I, and I don't think that the answer is gonna be robots. You know, everybody's talked about drones and robotic delivery and yes, to your point, everybody deserves a living wage, but somebody's gonna have to pay for this. And that means that when you're, you know, gonna be watering from Uber Eats or GrubHub or whatever else, you're gonna see some charges there. Let's talk about Trader Joe's on a much happier note. Trader Joe's just won an award, not an award. They came out number one in a survey from the brand intimacy study from M B L M. They have an analysis of 1.4 billion words that are used by consumers in discussion of brands. And they found that Trader Joe's is the leader in creating emotional connections with its customers. No surprise, I mean, every time I go to Trader Joe's, I wanna wear one of those shirts and I wanna ring those bells.
Sally:Yeah, you just wanna hang out with the people that work there, don't you? They're always so happy. And the store is colorful and friendly. They vary their products that they're offering at d different times and they create a lot of hype and excitement around new products. So it isn't surprising. Now, what do you think of Costco being second on the list? Phil?
Phil:I was shocked. Because I like Costco. I think that the Costco, meat department is probably the best meat department in, in the nation. But you know, as far as friendly service or, or just having, you know, the same camaraderie in the store, I don't get that from my Costco
Sally:<laugh>.
Phil:Do you?
Sally:We we don't shop at Costco cuz we don't have one close to us. So, it's been a long time since I've actually been in a store, but I remember it as being, you know, a, it's a lot bigger than a Trader Joe's. And so I was also surprised to see Costco as number two.
Phil:And last, Cornell University has this Cornell Food Venture Center, this is designed to help entrepreneurs take their family recipes, their, their homemade eats into commercial food production. I think that this is great. And what they've now done is they've created the food product development certificate. Talk to us a bit about that.
Sally:Yes, this is very exciting for people who are developing new food products, trying to get, get into the industry because there are a lot of things to learn beyond coming up with an idea or coming up with a product. And so what this certificate is, it's an online course and we already know Cornell has great credibility when it comes to their programs that revolve around the food business and their research. So what, what you can learn if you sign up for this online course that takes about 35 hours, I think is is what it said. But what you can learn is you can learn about, you can learn about costs, you can learn about safety, you can learn about scaling, you can learn about all of these things that you know that, that you won't learn just coming up with an idea for a product, but that you need in order to successfully get your product out there.
Phil:And also, you know, with, with our new product reviews, we see these legend companies all the time that if they had, you know, someone like Cornell holding their hand, they would probably do a lot better. So kudos for Cornell for coming up with this certificate. On Farm Food Facts. I spoke with USFFRA's CEO, Erin Fitzgerald about Cop 27. She was there and gives us the insider scoop for the complete episode. Just go to US farmersandranchers.org. Let's take a look. The farmers are there, the farmers are part of the conversation and dialogue, but what I'm hearing you say is they're not really being heard. They don't have the presence that they've got. How do we change that? How do we, how do we instill both domestically here in the US to farmers and ranchers that say you gotta be at these events. And also how do we tell these events that if you don't have this farmer voice, you know, you're not gonna come up with something that is realistic, accurate, and workable?
Erin:Yeah, well we had Marilyn Hershey, from US farmers and ranchers. She's great, included in the dialogue and she did a great job really saying bring it down to reality of what, of actually what she's doing on her farm to both be a solution to mitigate methane. That was a key conversation and as well as food waste, right? She's taking food waste combined into her digester and generating renewable energy in her community. I think it's a perfect example of what, and many in business call circular economy, our farmers have been doing that for some time. So really getting those practical on the ground insights from our farmers. And then second, just like really having the authenticity, if you're gonna have a food pavilion and you're gonna have conversations to really make certain that I was walking around and I was hearing quite a bit like farmers should, farmers should, you know, we need to make certain that every single time in a session panel or a discussion that you have the entirety of the value chain represented. And that may concern that our farmers are included in that. So that's gonna take more farmers to be emitted into the climate change discussion. We wanna make certain that the farmer's constituency amount of badges as an NGO constituency is really increased. And that, whenever there's a pavilion or entities that are, are working on food systems, that they include farmers and ranchers in that dialogue, we've, we saw, certainly saw an increase in that this year. But for the how stake, how high the stakes are, I would say that we still have a long ways to go. But it was definitely an improvement from from the prior year. You know, last year we, we, we called on that, we said it needed to happen for nag and this year we did see quite an improvement, at least food and agriculture be included in the conversation. Now we have a job to do, get our farmers completely included
Phil:On today’s Bullseye– Hellman’s has teamed up with Muddling Memories an experimental mixology company in Brooklyn. What did they come up with? A recipe for holiday eggnog using Hellman’s mayonnaise instead of eggs. Guess they should rename it to Mayonog? Eggnog’s origins date back to Britain back in the 13th century. Traditionally its eggs, milk, spices and of course rum. One note– George Washington– yes, THE George Washington– had his own recipe that in addition to rum included brandy, whiskey and sherry. Back to Hellman’s. Let’s not forget that Hellman’s ingredients include eggs and egg yolks– in fact they are the third and fourth ingredient after oil and water. This Mayonog recipe is¼cup Hellman’s mayo, 3 oz whole milk, 3 oz heavy cream, 3 oz simple syrup,½tsp nutmeg,½tsp vanilla extract, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1½oz Rum, 1½oz apple Brandy and 1½oz Cognac. I haven’t made it– so I have no idea how it tastes but review that I saw, for the most part, give it kudos. By the way the brand also suggests that you can use mayo to make Snickerdoodle cookies. I don’t expect either recipe to be the most important holiday food trends– but I do applaud the brand’s marketing prowess. Not many of us think about mayonnaise– or Hellman’s around the holidays– especially as a featured ingredient– but this promotion is smart. It has us talking about one of America’s iconic staple brand in a hip new light. They even partnered with Amy Fontaine’s New York City bar& restaurant to add it to the menu till December 15th– so you New Yorkers will have to hurry and get to 922 2nd Avenue before Thursday. It’s a cool place that specializes in adding a twist to classics like Ribeye French Dip, Prosciutto Mac& Cheese, fabulous pizzas and a double smash burger made with a blend of dry-aged rib cap and wagyu beef. Normally the brands that utilize marketing gimmicks are lame and goofy. Not this one. It’s smart. Good for you Hellman’s! Thanks for joining us today on Lempert Report Live. Looking forward to seeing you back here next week, same time, same place. And in the meantime, don't forget to visit supermarket guru.com to look at our archives as well as our daily postings. Thanks for joining us.