P i s t a c h i o

Eric Reguly’s latest column,  The Future of the Supermarket,  is about his recent find in Turin, a retail application of “eco-gastronomy” called Eataly.

“It is an unlikely blend of food bazaar, farm stand, educational centre, museum, eclectic dining experience and political and environmental movement – though one anchored firmly in the world of commerce,” writes Reguly, which is exactly how we’d like to see eco-gastronomy: the Whole Foods model with value added.

The chain is expanding briskly in Italy and then heading into Japan and Manhattan.

It may take a while, but having had Whole Foods trod a sturdy, dependable path for its growing market, we’re going to Eataly here, too.

Image via ffffound through mint.

via Swiss-Miss.com

Prepare [or join in] for a decade of transparent packaging that shows as much of its stuff as it can.

The market wants to see, look and believe.

It’s never been more important to be true as well as beautiful.

Woolworth's Brand from South Africa

[via Lovely Package]

Great find this morning.

Sorry for the opening advert to the Tostito video [like it's even my fault], except for the partial tag line that I’m going to rip off.

That’s it — the post title.

Thanks for sending me there, Matt Jennings, terroirist and Prince of Porc. That’s what they call him for being the Boston winner of Cochon555. [Could Toronto please sign up for this? We can certainly kick some charcuterie butt.]

Can business to be smart all the time?

Calling all food-makers. Give it a shot. The markets are saying simplicity is flying off the shelves.

Additives industry, don’t know what to tell you.

Take your R&D in another direction?

 ”Forget the cheddar. Velveeta’s better,” says Kraft.

No. It’s not.

… unless you’re a family of four that needs to put supper on the table for under $10, “with second helpings for the following day,” and in that case, this vintage cheese food could be a big help. So might VelveetaCasseroleChallenge.com.

Five bloggers take a run at this task, a demographic cross-section of middle-America, from a young pro-Obama mother of two, who favours whole-grain taco chips for her casserole’s crust, to the Christian military wife in a frisky, kitschy apron, and her “Ay Carumba! Chicken Spaghetti,” named for a liberal use of taco spice mix.

Let’s hear it for the casserole, the mealmaker-helper that nourished a couple of generations of  penny-pinching families living within their modest means.

There’s honour in economy, and cheese food follows this function, but does it have soul?

It certainly begs the question: What kind of cheddar are we talking here?

Despite our best efforts, we failed.

– Michael McCain, Maple Leaf Foods President

In shirtsleeves, as if to say, “I’m a husband and father, and this could have happened to my family,” Michael McCain faced the camera to proffer his apology. He fearlessly took responsibility for the dead with a corporate “we,” but his countenance was distinctly “me.”

In a best-practices kind of way, he owned up promptly and almost immediately widened the recall territory, as if to tell us this was doubly horrific for him as it was for us.

Corporate humanity has to have a heart, because a microbe costs 12 lives and $20 million.

Kudos to John Papaloukas.

He’s a pizza seller in Victoria, BC, and he’d had it with the province’s ministry of education, which classifies pizza as junk food, and therefore deems it unwelcome in the schools for lunch.

“This whole notion of pizza not being healthy is a crock, at least not at our business,” he told the National Post last week, and to prove it, he had his pizzas analyzed by a lab.

Result: his pizzas passed with flying colours, and Papaloukas is selling his pizza to local high school cafeterias.

There’s our proof that not all pizzas are created alike.

Still, if you’re putting good tomato sauce on whole-wheat dough, and then topping it with fresh vegetables, good quality meat and cheese, what’s there to offend?  Hello happy food groups.

How did we go wrong with pizza?

It’s not the food; it’s the eating.

Répétez avec moi — BEN-YAY.

– your highschool French teacher

Starbucks has an economic self-rescue agenda in play.

Earlier this year, they tried a gourmet breakfast sandwich, which turned out to be a stinker, literally. It seems customers didn’t like the smell of cooked eggs while they waited to pick up their morning lattes. The sandwich is unceremoniously being pulled from stores as we speak.

Then came a return to grinding their beans in the store, an olfactory apology. Nice move.

Then, this week, a product strategist was quoted saying, “What goes better with coffee than a gourmet doughnut?”

They’re called beignets, people, if you want $2 a piece for them [and you do] and if you want to sell a lot of them [which I’m assuming is the whole point].

And here’s the touted descriptor for those gourmet doughnuts: “hand-forged.”

People! Get thee to a dictionary. Your crowd is educated. They’re going to get a heavy-metal connotation, an unfortunate leaden image that you really don’t want associated with your doughnut/beignet/thingy.

I’m going to say it: wake up and smell it.

The more technique you have, the less you have to worry about it.

– Picasso

When Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz faced thousands of his shareholders last week, the company’s financial troubles were certainly top of mind. The coffee giant’s stock has been in decline for over a year, and it’s currently trading at half its 2006 value.

Instead of hearing a new financial strategy, shareholders were introduced to the “Mastrena,” a new automated espresso-maker that will create a consistent hit of caffeine and free up the barista to interact more with the clientele. That’s Schultz’s story, and I bet he’s sticking to it.

So, all that specialized barista training flies out the window?

Take heart. ‘Bucks is going back to grinding its own beans, which it hasn’t done for years, because it will release an aroma and create an ambience that the CEO says will impact sales.

His rationale? When he took back the helm as CEO in January from his short-lived appointee Jim Donald, Schultz complained that Donald had focused too much on growth and not enough on coffee and customers.

Will ‘Bucks’ espresso-philes bear this out or will they feel betrayed?

There’s only way I drink espresso: at my folks’ home, after Sunday lunch, prepared by my father, with coffee he brings back from his annual trip to Cuba. Not a sacrilege for an Italian household, since Italian espresso beans have always come from far and wide.

Is it like the espresso we drank standing up in Rome? Definitely not. That stuff is all technique, skill and artistry.

I have a sense that ‘Bucks is going to take a hit to the authenticity factor that devotees want to count on. How’s that going to increase sales?