Food Industry Archive

In a profile in yesterday’s Modesto Bee, Joe Gallo, CEO of E&J Gallo Winery, revealed that the company is expanding their reach in the spirits business with a new tequila. Gallo told the Bee that the tequila is “going to be made down in Mexico, and it’s going to be 100 percent agave, which has to be produced and bottled down there. We’re in the early stages of...

More...

American brewers already have enough troubles stemming from their marketing of beer to young people. Even before the introduction of Spuds MacKenzie, it’s been fairly obvious that, for many of their best-known brands, their most coveted customers are young men in ballcaps. And the difference between them and teenagers is negligible, and a purely legal one. So it’s probably a good...

More...

Although Anheuser-Busch’s stock has trading below InBev’s $70 asking price this week (closing yesterday at $65.71), the Belgian brewery declared today that it is going through with the $52 billion deal. Analysts have been abuzz the past few days speculating that the financial crisis could put InBev’s financing in jeopardy. Edward Jones’ Jack Russo said earlier this week,...

More...

Food companies are increasingly investing in packaging innovations to give them a competitive edge on store shelves. As manufacturing processes become cheaper and easier to develop, more attention is being given to both the forms and the functions of food packages. Food Processing offers a survey of some of the more innovative designs: frozen baby meals that come in an ice-cube-tray-like...

More...

At the annual National Beer Wholesalers Convention held in San Francisco this week, Crown Imports president Bill Hacker and Heineken USA president Don Blaustein urged distributors to fight back against Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors. Many wholesalers are feeling caught in the middle as mega-breweries consolidate their distribution network to cut costs and larger wholesalers are buying...

More...

Back in April, I looked at the many problems confronting Reddy Ice and noted that it was “less than clear when or whether it will be able to free itself from its problems, many of them self-imposed.” It’s becoming clearer. The country’s largest distributor of packaged ice has suspended its quarterly dividend and installed a new chief operating officer. It also put Ben...

More...

It’s official: Triarc Companies will now officially take control of Wendy’s now that shareholders have approved the proposed merger. Triarc owner Nelson Peltz got quite a deal, as he originally proposed buying Wendy’s for $37-$41 per share, and three attempts later ended up controlling the franchise for just over $26 a share. Now what? First off, Wendy’s and...

More...

Food Processing magazine’s examination of the “green” initiatives of food companies starts out way meta: it opens with a mention of Al Gore and his film “An Inconvenient Truth,” then tells us that the “convenient truth is that concern for the environment has been a trend for some time – at least going back to Earth Shoe-wearing hippies of the 1960s.”...

More...

Via Steve Bjerklie of MeatPoultry.com, I see that 20 major food companies, including giants Kraft Foods, General Mills and Nestle, have apparently pledged not to sell food containing cloned meat. The companies appear to have struck this pact with a Washington, D.C., nonprofit called the Center for Food Safety, which announced the news in its own press release. While the FDA has concluded that...

More...

Yesterday, I wondered who was paying the lawyers representing the 10 “beer drinkers” who are suing to block the InBev-Anheuser Busch merger. Since the lawyers declined to say who was funding the lawsuit, I figured there might be some special interest working behind the scenes. Competitors, maybe, or unions. Or distributors, or shareholders. That could still be true. But it might...

More...