Welcome to The Lempert Report LIVE
Welcome to The Lempert Report LIVE
Welcome to the Lempert Report Live. On today’s broadcast we look at the latest school lunch scam, the New York City Delivery Wars, yet another reason to follow the Mediterranean diet, why you should have a food forest in your city, food styling makes all the difference and on the Bullseye, we just might have found the reason for Coca-Cola’s price increases. Let's get started. So, Sally, what we have is we have a new school lunch program that they're actually gonna be serving kids two versions of new improved nutrition Lunchables. What do you think about that?
Sally:Well, I have mixed feelings about it. Phil, the Lunchables are really popular with kids. I have kids and my kids want want to eat them. So I can see this being, being something that the kids are really happy about. also, we know that there is a lot of waste going on in schools. we hear reports about big numbers of, of food being wasted, and so, maybe this is a way to keep, food from being wasted. And also there are staffing shortages, school cafeteria as well. And so this cuts down on being able to, on having to prep a lot for lunches for kids. However, the issue for me, Phil, is the nutritional content of these. Now, I will give them this. They have raised the amount of w hole grains in one of these, they're gonna be serving the Turkey and cheddar cheese sliced Lunchables, and then the pizza Lunchable. And they have increased the whole grains to two ounces, w hich is great. But the problem is that the sodium content is still at 930 milligrams. So I am concerned about that.
Phil:Yeah, I agree with you. Totally. So when we look at the Turkey and cheddar cheese stackers, and we don't have this product, we don't know what the nutritional information is on the product, but as it says, it contains 930 milligrams of sodium. And, to be honest with you, that's more than the regular Turkey and cheddar Lunchables are. We'll get to that in a minute. But the basic meal requirements for the school lunch program is fruits, vegetables, including grades K through 12 weekly requirements for vegetable variety with minimum requirements for each of the five vegetable subgroups, including dark green, red, orange, beans and peas, starchy and other vegetables, grains, meat and meat alternatives, and fluid milk. And just to give you some idea on a, and I'm just gonna take grades six through eight because there's different levels. Grades K through five, grades nine through 12, but I'm gonna focus on grades six through eight. The amount of food per week that they're supposed to get is two and a halfcups of fruits, three and three quarters cups of vegetables, grains eight to 10 ounces, meats and meat alternative nine to 10, fluid milk five, and sodium less than 1,360, per day. That's not per week. And if we take a look at the Lunchables, the back of the Turkey and cheddar stackers the nutritional information on this product, and now again, this is not the new one for schools. This is the one that you just buy at any supermarket, 14 grams of fat, seven grams of saturated fat, 740mg of sodium. And again, that's less than what they're saying is in the new improved one. So I don't understand where new and improved is three grams of added sugars, 13 grams of protein. And if you take a look at the ingredients, what's really interesting, roasted white Turkey cured flavor added, I'm not gonna read all the ingredients there, but you can read'em yourself. Then cheddar pasteurized prepared cheese product. This is not cheddar cheese, it's not even American cheese. It's cheddar, pasteurized prepared cheese product. And then crackers. I'm assuming that the new one they've opted to whole wheat instead of just the enriched flour. And that's it. So I am equally as concerned about nutrition and also from a societal standpoint. What are we doing when we have kids, for lunch, building little crackers and little pizza things and stuff like that versus having like a real meal? Are we training these kids just to be snacking versus eating foods?
Sally:Yes. That is a very good point, Phil. And I also wonder, if there are two options to these Lunchables, there's five days a week at school, so what are we gonna be serving these same items? And what about the kids that don't eat meat? And those deli meats, we've seen a lot of studies over the years linking, overprocessed meats to certain types of cancer. So, I mean, we eat deli meats here sometimes at our house, but it's not something that we want our kids eating every single day.
Phil:Yeah. And, to your earlier point, according to the School Nutrition Association, 93% of school nutrition programs report challenges with staff shortages. So clearly, w e've got two issues. One is there's no workers. And in fact, when we used to work with Michelle Obama on the Chefs Move t o School program, what we found is most schools didn't even have kitchens. They couldn't prepare hot foods and so on. So it's a very big issue. But, o h, the last issue about labor. So the median weekly wage from 2014 to 2019, for the people who work in K t hrough 1 2 cafeteria workers,$331 a week, v ersus the median weekly wage for the average U S worker is$790 per week. So clearly one of the reasons that we don't have enough cafeteria workers is they're not being paid very well to be there. So they've got to, in order to sustain themselves and their families, they've gotta find other jobs, as well. So, we, we have a real big issue as it relates to labor. And that leads us to the New York City delivery wars. What we saw is last November, two years ago, November, all the delivery workers in New York got together. They were looking for higher wages. There's 65,000 delivery people in New York and that includes the five boroughs of New York, and they were talking about getting$24 an hour. Currently, according to the city of New York, including tips they make about$11 an hour. So this would more than double that, but it looks like there's a war going on now with the workers, within the workforce. So tell us what's going on there.
Sally:Yes, it's a little bit complicated. Phil, there's an organization called Los Deliveristas Unidos, which has been fighting for these wage increases and worker conditions for a while now. And they are also under what's called the Workers' Justice Project. So we've got these great organizations that want fair working conditions and better pay for New York City delivery drivers. However, they're apparently as a segment of these drivers that are pushing back against the request for these wage increases. The reason being is they are afraid that they're going to be what's called gated. This is one of the reasons, and what gating is when there's not enough demand on the food delivery app, for all the workers that are trying to get on, then some workers will just get locked out of the app and not be able to work at that time. So they're really concerned about this. They're concerned about also the price going up for customers. So that will affect their tips and their ability to work. They are also concerned just about having to compete with other workers and also not being able to have the freedom to turn down a delivery. So, in other words, what comes with these higher wage conditions is that they also have to commit to accepting all deliveries that come through on their apps. So these are legitimate concerns. However, the other side says that these are not true concerns. These are not factual concerns that these are the ideas that are being marketed to them by the delivery companies that are anti-union.
Phil:Yeah. And when we take a look at delivery, certainly if the price does go up, or their wages goes up, whether it's$19 is what they're talking about now, or$24 that will have an effect. On the price of food and food inflation has taken the prices up already. So I'm just wondering if, in fact, regardless of whether it's$19 an hour or$24 an hour, what happens is delivery ends this push for delivery now, there's always been bicycle delivery in New York City. Also, on every street corner there is a deli or there's a green grocer or a supermarket or something. So I'm just wondering if, in fact, the backlash to this is people are gonna walk a block and pick it up themselves instead of dealing with this whole delivery. The other part of this problem is what they had planned to do is take some rest areas on the Uupper West Side of New York and elsewhere, basically newsstands that have been abandoned since the pandemic. Turn those into recharge stations for the e-bikes, turn'em into rest areas for it. And also, one of the biggest problems, one of the biggest complaints that these people have is a lot of the restaurants won't let them use their restrooms. So, you're working out of a restaurant, but they don't want you to go into their restrooms, so they're fighting that as well. So we're gonna watch this story, but I think delivery in New York is gonna change dramatically. A new study, that was just published in advances in Nutrition, explored biodiversity and analyzed food plant diversity between the Western diet and the Mediterranean diet. No surprise, the Mediterranean diet, which is primarily plant-based and has lower quantity of animal products in it, found that they have a lower environmental impact and biodiversity conservation. So yet there's another reason that we should be looking at the Mediterranean diet, not only for our health, but in order to save the planet.
Sally:Yes, the Mediterranean diet has always been the winner when it comes to our health, and now it seems that it is, as far as our planet's help as well. In this study, Italy was observed as having the most biodiverse cuisine, which I loved reading that, particularly since we were talking about Italy last week, and about how they do not want lab grown meat coming into their country. They think that that it sacrifices the integrity of their traditional food. So, that was an interesting one to read. But yes, the idea here is that, being a biodiverse diet, that it is better for the environment. The study talks about how in these countries where they have these biodiverse diets that they find, now I'm not a farmer, so I'm gonna try and say it in in the best way I can, but they are better at crop utilization and better at taking that crop residue that is what is left in the fields after crops have been harvested, letting what is left in the fields go back into the soil to keep the soil healthy. And that's a big part of healthy agriculture and farming practices. From what we're hearing.
Phil:And as we're talking about healthy soil, one of the biggest trends right now are food forests. Taking place. This comes from the New Hampshire Bulletin, that have studied food forests. Basically, these are edible parks, usually on vacant lots where they have large and small fruit trees. They've got vines, different plants that produce fruits, nuts, other edible products. And what I really love about this, and there's a bunch of them around, we've got it in Boston, we have it in Seattle, we have it in Atlanta. So a lot of these are coming up. In fact, they're saying that right now there's about 85 of these community food forests from the Pacific Northwest to the deep south. But what I love about this is it's really helping the people not only get food, it's helping the earth because they're taking vacant lots and they're having all these biodiverse crops on them, but also it's building society and it's a throwback to when a lot of us were growing up and your neighbor had raspberries, my parents had blueberries, and when they came in season, you traded. And it was much more of a community affair. And I think in today's world, with all the stress that we're having with all the issues that we have, having a food forest in my city, I would love that.
Sally:Yes. I am hoping that we get one, one day here in Nashville. I love this. There's one that's amazing in Atlanta, and there's one in Seattle, and Boston has 30 planned, they've already built nine. So they're well on their way. Yes, these not only beautify our cities, but they are open to people to come and go from sun up to sundown. These are different from community gardens because community gardens generally require a membership of some sort, but this is open and they're also allowing the residents to volunteer and get involved and decide what is planted and take part in taking care of it. Another interesting thing about Boston and their plans to build 30 of these is that they did a study and found out that because of past redlining in communities of lower income and communities of color, they found that it was actually hotter in these areas of the city, that these forests, these food forests could provide shade and could cool off those areas better for those communities. So there are so many benefits to this.
Phil:There are, and it just makes our population and our world a better place. Talking about a better place. A new study was just written up in the Washington Post by Erin Blakemore. I love this story. It's how to Make Healthy Foods Instagram ready. There's a study in the journal health communication that basically found that the most successful food photography are the ones that are the worst for us. So what's that all about?
Sally:Yes. Our brains naturally immediately love those photos of those foods that are not good for us. But what this study is telling us is it's giving us some tips on how to make our healthier foods more appealing to people when they're looking at them on Instagram. And some of the suggestions were that warm colors were more inviting instead of very bright pictures. And simplicity is better, less complexity and repetition within the images. So I think the basic idea is that if you're gonna be putting healthy, pick pictures of healthy food up, let's keep it simple and make those colors really nice and warm and inviting.
Phil:Yeah. And it's something that, for example, retail dietitians and culinary people that work in supermarkets should really pay attention to because so many of them are now posting, whether it's on Instagram or Facebook or they're doing videos. So it's a great read in the Washington Post. How to Make Healthier Foods Instagram ready. So it's a must read for everybody in the food industry. Thanks. Sally. is r g m. Just about price. Let's hear from the Vice President of Revenue Growth Management at BIC on how their team approaches working with sales and other teams to optimize all four Ps. Members of the C can access the full replay of the webinar and the resource library. Non-members can visit catman.global to contact the association about membership. And here's what they had to say.
Kelly:I have senior leaders on my team that are aligned to our key markets around the world because I have a belief from my prior roles that you can't really do R GM unless you know what's happening in the, in the market. So yeah, the road shows were based on educating the organization. So we, yes, we, we went through the five pillars, but typically when we did, did a road, we got into the marketplace and we went into the storage and saw what was happening on shelf. We did that listening exercise. So then when we walked through the pillars, we could say, in portfolio, you have some white space here where you may wanna introduce something that's already in our portfolio that you don't have in your market or in product assortment and mix. These skews aren't really working for you. And we have a few really easy to use, easy to use tools. Now you can either choose to rationalize that skew or make it work harder for you by investing behind it or trying to get more distribution. What does execution look like that, I talked a little bit about pricing strategy and when I joined Vic r GM was price. Ok. and more and more than anything, it was taking price. And really and truly, when you get into the market and you look at the shelf and you understand what a shopper is, is interacting with at the shelf when they're making that decision, it's not always about taking price. It might be about reducing price in order to make sure you're at the right price point. And ever side has been a really great tool for us to help us understand that.
Phil:On today’s Bullseye– Coca-Cola, you know the brand that in 2020 was selling a 12 pack of Coke for$4.79 at Target and now sells a 12 pack of cans of Coke for$8.99 at my local Ralph’s- has announced that their prices are still on the rise. We might finally have one of the reasons. More on that soon. In February of this year Coke announced that it would raise soda prices again in 2023 to combat stubbornly high costs. It also forecast annual profit growth above Wall Street expectations and it’s CEO James Quincy said they would continue raising process across the world at a moderating pace. In 2022 Coke’s average selling price rose approximately 11%. No one seems to know exactly what it costs to make a 12 oz can of Coke, and I certainly don’t, but according to an article published by ICSID, a business and design blog in April 2022, the total cost to produce a can of Coke is about 26 cents which includes the cost of raw materials, packaging and shipping– but not advertising. Coca-Cola an average of 4 billion dollars a year on advertising worldwide according to Statista. I share all this to emphasize that Coke is a very profitable$43 billion company that is projecting a 4-5% higher profit in 2023 than it was in 2022. It’s gross margin as reported by Barron’s is 57.91%. So how to spend all that money instead of keeping– or lowering prices– to help their consumers? Last week the company announced its new global ad campaign, called“A Recipe for Magic”, sorry polar bears I guess you will be pushed to the side by the likes of supermodel Gigi Hadid, Chinese actor and foodie Yang Yang, Mexican food influencer Oscar Meza and other food influencers. The campaign, according to a press release from Coke, will be in the US, Canada, Latin America, Europe, Japan and other key markets. In a 2021 study, Coke x Meals x Inclusivity in May 2022, Coke says that 1 in 2 global shoppers surveyed agree that CocaCola helps make gatherings more enjoyable and approximately 86% of the brand’s global shoppers surveyed agreed that CocaCola makes any meal better. By the way TCCC Human Insights stands for The Coca Cola Company Human Insights.“A Recipe for Magic” according to the company is the moment of connection, the meal and an ice-cold Coca Cola; and celebrates the human bond formed by family members, friends and even strangers while breaking bread. How about making a connection with shoppers at the checkout and NOT raise prices again? The Lempert Report is all about inspiring ideas, making our industry think and challenging each other. Let’s think about“being the shopper” and how we can bring our supermarkets and restaurants closer to meet their needs. I hope you’ll come back to join us on next week’s installment of The Lempert report LIVE when we focus on the biggest and best insights– and the things that really matter. Be sure to visit SupermarketGuru.com for the latest marketing analysis, issues and trends and don’t forget to join us back here next Monday at 2:30pm Eastern for more.