Food Industry Archive

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack took the public stage Monday, giving his first official press conference and laying out the Department of Agriculture’s top priorities under the new administration. He acknowledged the obesity epidemic and said he was reversing a previous USDA decision which would have taken $3.2 million out of a specialty crop block program and used those funds to...

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Sysco Replaces CEO Bill DeLaney, the CFO of Sysco, North America’s largest food distributor, will replace outgoing CEO Richard Schnieders on March 31, when Schnieders retires. Sysco serves a troubled restaurant industry that is working feverishly to cut its costs. Sysco has done the same, cutting executive pay by 5 percent and reducing employee benefits. The company’s profits rose...

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Whole Foods motion denied — A Washington D.C. appeals court denied a motion by Whole Foods against the Federal Trade Commission over challenges to the chain’s acquisition of Wild Oats. The FTC is investigating a year after Whole Foods’ purchase, when many stores have already switched over. An attorney for Whole Foods says the company’s due process rights have been...

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Is investor Nelson Peltz getting ready to buy a big chunk of Dr Pepper/Snapple Group? Joshua Morgan Brown, a writer at SeekingAlpha (and a stock trader who owns Dr Pepper shares) speculates that he is. There’s no telling if he’s right, but there is probably something to his underlying point that Peltz – the food industry’s most active activist investor — is getting...

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Pizza Hut has gone all-natural. No artificial flavors, no artificial preservatives, no artificial colors. And no high-fructose corn syrup in its sauces. Apparently the all-natural pizza the company unveiled in certain markets last year was so successful that they decided to push the trend even further and see how many customers they could draw in if they gave themselves a healthier image. (And...

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Iranian government boycotts “Zionist” products like Coke — The Iranian company Khoshgovar, which is licensed to make and sell Coke, Sprite and Fanta in Iran, has been asked to clarify its ties with the Coca-Cola company. Since Israel’s recent attack on Gaza, the Iranian government has been boycotting not only Israeli products, but also those of many U.S. companies...

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I wrote a post recently about Gaza-related political boycotts against U.S. food corporations including Starbucks, Coca-Cola and McDonald’s. The day after I wrote this post, protesters in Lebanon forced a Beirut Starbucks to shut down for the day. A few days later, protesters smashed windows at at least two Starbucks locations in London. (Another London Starbucks was trashed and looted on...

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Does it matter that “Two-Buck Chuck,” the world’s most famous cheap wine, might soon cost more than two bucks in California thanks to a proposed tax-hike meant to help solve the state’s fiscal crisis? Probably not. In other states, Two-Buck Chuck is already called Three-Buck Chuck or even Four-Buck Chuck thanks to rising transportation and other costs in recent years....

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The Bush Administration was busy these past few months, passing new regulations to ensure that pieces of its agenda carry over even after today’s inauguration. This is nothing new, nor is it uniquely Republican: Carter passed 10,000 pages of regulations in his last month in office, and Clinton holds the record for the largest number of midnight regulations (though Bush Sr. beats Clinton...

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A bumper crop of hops is easing a global shortage of the odd little flower that’s a key ingredient in beer. Twelve to 18 months ago, craft brewers were struggling with skyrocketing prices for hops, which sent microbrew prices soaring by a dollar or more per six-pack. The shortage was due to some macro factors — the introduction of a new, more-potent variety of hops meant brewers...

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