Food Industry Archive

Apparently Starbucks has decided to venture into a new business: that of the “little, neighborhood coffee shop.” The company took a Seattle store slated for closure and instead decided to reopen the place as 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea, a coffee shop without any Starbucks logos or branding. In the spirit of a traditional coffeehouse, it will serve wine and beer, host live music and...

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Whole Foods has partnered with the Non-GMO Project in an attempt to promote testing and labeling of foods that are free of genetically modified ingredients. The grocer’s private label products will use the project’s Product Verification Program (PVP), which uses on-site facility audits and DNA testing to ensure compliance. As I have stated before, I am not opposed to genetically...

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Wal-Mart to measure sustainability of all products — Wal-Mart has been developing a “sustainability index” to measure the environmental impact of every product it sells. The company isn’t set to announce the project until Thursday, according to Marc Gunther of The Big Money, but he spoke with faculty at the University of Arkansas along with other partners working on the...

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I recently praised Dunkin’ Donuts new “Dunkin’ Run” program, a web site and iPhone application that helps coordinate coffee-and-donut runs among friends or colleagues, but perhaps I was too hasty. Apparently the iPhone application has an average rating of only two stars — and you can’t register from the iPhone itself. Furthermore, The Big Money reports,...

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Bottled water, long the enemy of environmentalists, is now getting picked on over a new issue: regulation. As in, there really isn’t any. Tap water, it turns out, is regulated more strictly than water sold in a bottle. As a food product, bottled water is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration and required to show nutrition information and ingredients on its labels. Municipal water...

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Dole has filed a defamation suit against the maker of the documentary “Bananas!” which covers a banana pesticide case brought by a group of Nicaraguans against Dole. Before the film came out, Dole sent cease and desist letters to the filmmakers and tried to persuade the Los Angeles Film Festival not to screen the movie. When that didn’t work, Dole resorted to legal action, in...

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Burger King has apologized for a print ad depicting the Hindu goddess Lakshmi sitting on top of a meat sandwich under words that translated, “Snack is sacred.” The ad only ran locally to promote a few stores in Spain, but the company has withdrawn the poster in response to letters from Hindu groups, who were angry that Burger King would use a sacred religious figure as a promotional...

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Yesterday I wrote about Cadbury’s success with social media in the UK, where Facebook fans demanded Cadbury relaunch Wispa Gold, a favorite old chocolate bar. Here are some cool social media news items from closer to home. Dunkin’ Donuts launched a program that helps coordinate donut runs. The user creates a list of friends or colleagues, and then when that person heads to...

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As popular as McDonald’s is, food-lovers don’t generally argue that the chain’s burgers are the best. They may be among the cheapest and the most convenient, but the highest quality? Not so much. That’s more the territory of places like Five Guys Burgers and Fries, which make burgers in the $6 to $10 range but win awards for their quality. And there’s a growing...

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Internet fans have spoken. They want Cadbury to bring back its Wispa Gold chocolate bar in the UK. And Cadbury has answered: shucks, all right. After more than 22,000 fans joined the Facebook group “Bring Back Cadbury’s Wispa Gold” — supposedly on their own, with no prodding from the company — Cadbury decided to offer the caramel-filled chocolate bar again for a...

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