Amazon Whole Foods. Tech is our pimp and even strung out vegan Daddy John Mackey needs a fix.
“These people, they just want to sell Whole Foods Market and make hundreds of millions of dollars, and they have to know that I’m going to resist that,” Mackey said to me at one point. “That’s my baby. I’m going to protect my kid, and they’ve got to knock Daddy out if they want to […]
New Food Podcast, Cornucopia-The Cult, Culture and Business of Food
Check out Cornucopia – The Cult, Culture and Business of Food, a new podcast with NBN’s Matt Levine and Jeremy Spiro-Winn. Food isn’t just fuel. It’s a part of culture. A ritual we share with others. A unifier. Cornucopia will explore these meanings and myths, the influencers and the influenced. Why people eat this and not […]
Open Letter to Natural Products Expo West Attendees
Once again we reprint an NBN classic. ‘Confessions of a Booth Babe’ first appeared in March, 2006. Submitted by An Anonymous Body Care Booth Babe: Dear Retailers and Expo West Attendees, I had the dubious pleasure of working in a booth in the Personal Care Pavilion at Expo West earlier this year. Initially I was […]
Rumors of Our Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated. Cornucopia, Our New Podcast Launches March 10th
If this website was a bear we’ve been hibernating irregularly. While NBN has been on top of trends our insights and commentary have been directed elsewhere, namely to clients and others that pay the old fashioned way, with checks rather than clicks. Yet we’ve got some exciting news. We’ll be launching a new podcast that […]
Legacy Brands Offer Lebron Limited Edition Soda and Doritos Roulette, Tiny ReGrained Offers Dull Giants Insight on How to Innovate
It’s rare for this old industry goat to get excited about new products these days. The CPG innovations are as about as exciting as a self-flushing toilet while many natural/organic brands offer great products that are the grocery equivalent of a Maserati sedan. You know those oh-so-lovely ice creams that sell for $14 a pint […]
Starbuck’s Shuttering of La Boulange stores in SF Bay Area No Surprise
The $100 million acquisition now looks so clearly what many expected from the start. That the coffee giant cared less about anything La Boulange offered than a brand name and a bit of added cache to the chain’s superbly boring pastries and fresh food. Today they have a new brand, but the products are as […]
Part 2 of The Original Urban Cheapskate Shops at Whole Foods Brooklyn
If you missed the first part of this semi-ongoing series (or should we say, with apologies to Homer, saga, find it here. Warning: if you read this over breakfast you might laugh so hard you’ll choke on your locally roasted Ethiopian Amaro Gayo. I solved the problem of cycling to Whole Foods by going […]
As Amy’s Kitchen Plans for East Coast Plant Emerge, Farmers There Get Excited
While Amy’s is an exceptional company, when it comes to locating their new plant, the organic frozen foods powerhouse is about as conventional as the bottom line. Not that’s there’s anything wrong with that but we’re certain more than a few public officials in Santa Rosa, California and Ashland, Oregon were disappointed as it looks […]
Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal by Monsanto Litigants
The Supreme Court will not review a lower court decision protecting Monsanto’s right to sue farmers inadvertently found to have crops containing the company’s GMO patents. As noted in the FoodDemocracyNow website, “farmers had sought Court protection under the Declaratory Judgment Act that should they become the innocent victims of contamination by Monsanto’s patented gene-splice technology they could not […]
The Original Urban Cheapskate Meets His Brooklyn Neighbor, Whole Foods Gowanus. Part 1 of A Continuing Tale
It finally happened. I patronized the long-in-arriving Whole Foods in Gowanus Brooklyn. WhF-G has been scheduled to open in a lovely location at 3rd Ave and 3rd St right on the edge of the Gowanus Canal Superfund site since before I moved here almost nine years ago, so it was a bit of a surprise […]