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 […]
Seattle’s Mayor and Whole Foods Debate Fair Wages and Benefits; PCC Shines Bright in Debate
We’ve written about fair wages here often and NBN was glad to read about Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn’s battle with Whole Foods. A controversy has emerged over the Mayor’s lack of support for efforts to open a new store in West Seattle because he believes that the non-union (our adjective, not his) retailer is likely to drive down […]
Consumers Union Continues to Highlight Trader Joe’s Sale of Meat on Antibiotics While FDA Seeks Speedy Approval for New Antiobiotics to Combat Super Bugs
Consumers Union continued to draw attention to Trader Joe’s sale of meat raised using antibiotics as part of its Meat Without Drugs Campaign. The campaign which is seeking to convince grocers to sell only meat raised without antibiotics has also included outreach at Trade Joe’s stores in Los Angeles, Berkeley, San Francisco, Oakland and Washington, […]
Chipotle Now Labels GMO Ingredients
Chipotle is the company that changed the fast food game when it introduced Niman Ranch pork into its pork carnitas and showed narrow-minded number crunchers that despite a higher price with Niman pork, sales grew with the use of a top quality ingredients; its fleet response to growing concerns over GMO food is equally impressive. It […]
Grist’ Story Offers Insight for Organic Industry Spats between the OCA and OTA
Context is everything. Half-full or half-empty? All or nothing? White or black? New York Mets or New York Yankees? (Okay, forgive that last comparison but if you lived in my brain, you’d understand). Seriously, despite my degree in political science, my passion for policy debate (okay, arguing) and my progressive political DNA I can’t […]
Monsanto’s Man in the Senate, Missouri’s Roy Blunt
Mother Jones details the previously mysterious Senator who added a rider to unrelated legislation protecting Monsanto and the few other GMO seed companies. The rider, which was a surprise last minute addition to a bill unrelated to agriculture or GMO oversight mandates that the USDA “ignore federal court decisions that block the agency’s approvals of […]
John Mackey Debates Ayn Rand, Self-Interest and Narcissism
As those regular readers know we have a love hate affair with Whole Foods CEO John Mackey. While we wish more corporations were like Whole Foods, espousing values for more than just stockholders and a triple bottom line approach (people, planet and profit) to success, there aren’t. If there were, Mackey’s consistent willingness to step on […]
Big Retailers Exploit More Workers With On-Call Schedules, Adding Margins That The Manufacturer Bill Backs Alone Can’t Achieve
For years its been well known to anyone in the grocery business that one way a lot of supermarkets deal with the ongoing challenge of “making their weekly numbers” has been to cut hours, especially for the highest wage earners and give those low-paid clerks more hours. What we didn’t know is that supermarkets are […]
Whole Foods Scores Another Green Coup, Announces Rooftop Greenhouse in Gowanus Brooklyn Store
Fresh after what many called the company’s groundbreaking rules regarding vendors and GMO transparency, Whole Foods scored another big green thumbs up with its Monday announcement that Gotham Greens would operate what the company stated is “the nation’s first commercial scale greenhouse farm integrated within a retail grocery space.” Gotham Greens current hydroponic operations in […]