Archives

Only when the subject is McDonald's would a price hike on a cheeseburger attract major national news coverage.

Next week, the chain will move its double cheeseburger off its Dollar Menu, raising the price suggested to franchisees to $1.19.

There will still be a double cheeseburger on the Dollar Menu: the McDouble, which will sport just one slice of cheese rather than two, saving the chain about six cents per sandwich.

At Hormel, staff members "are working at a furious pace and piling up all the overtime they want" to crank out tins of Spam, "perhaps the emblematic hard-times food in the American pantry," according to a recent New York Times article.

Campbell Soup and many other food companies must feel like they're living in the Bizarro World.

Just a quarter or two ago, costs were rising and the dollar was falling. Now it's the other way around in both cases. So while Campbell's sales are still headed up, its profits are falling.

Parents of kids who have allergies are careful to peruse product labels to determine whether foods contain peanuts, eggs, milk, or wheat. But as careful as they may be, there is no real assurance that the labels are telling the truth, according to a Chicago Tribune investigation. And lots of kids are getting sick or even dying as a result.

Quick, what's the top-selling beer in the world? Budweiser? Bud Light? Miller Lite?

All wrong. Snow, a brand made by SABMiller in a joint venture with China's CR Snow, has surpassed Bud Light to become the largest-selling beer worldwide by volume.

Times are tough for chain restaurants. But restaurants with a lot of locations in shopping malls are even more exposed to the sinking consumer economy.

The larger a chain's shopping-mall presence, the more exposed it is, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Give Ronald Bailey, Reason magazine's science writer, some credit for being open to persuasion. He may once have characterized the notion of global warming as a "scam," but he later relented in the face of overwhelming evidence that the earth is heating up.

With sales down and costs up, restaurants are forced to find ways to cut expenses because raising prices would cause even worse sales declines.

The cuts could in some cases save big money, in other cases come mostly at the margin, and in some instances seem almost pathetic, judging by the Wall Street Journal's account. One tactic, according to the Journal's Raymund Flandez, is "prolonging the life of fryer oil."

Ew.

As gasoline prices have fallen, so will food prices. Oil is trading at less than half its value a few months ago, and many agricultural commodities have fallen by roughly the same amount. In the case of food, though, it takes a little longer for declines in commodities to filter down to consumers. The food companies have to get their cut first.

But there are already indications that consumers and grocery chains are resisting high prices, and over the next quarter or two, retail prices are likely to come down, possibly quite sharply.

Should environmental advocacy groups take corporate money?

It's not an easy question, and there are always trade-offs. By taking the cash, the groups might have more influence over corporate practices. But of course, the reverse is also true.

Fortune magazine's look at several such tie-ups doesn't provide any answers, but writer Marc Gunther makes it clear that every case is different.

There are two segments of the beverage industry that are particularly vulnerable right now: the North American market and the market for soda pop.

Dr Pepper Snapple Group is highly exposed to both low-demand segments, and its problems don't end there.

On Thursday, the company reported that profits had fallen 31 percent in its third quarter—its first full quarter as a standalone business after it was spun off in May from Cadbury PLC.

It's widely known, at least among people who think about such things, that corn has a huge presence in just about every fast-food item we eat, including burgers and fries.

But a new study breaks down - to the isotope level - how much of the omnipresent grain is in each item of fast food we eat.

What will likely stand as the day's biggest understatement came early Tuesday after Starbucks released dismal fourth-quarter results, issued a scary forecast, and announced it would curtail its plans to open 40,000 stores. "Now is not the time for lofty goals," CEO Howard Schultz told Bloomberg News.

Three underage college students are getting lots of attention for their genetically engineered beer, Biobeer, which includes genes from a compound in red wine that some researchers believe has beneficial health effects.

Most people think of Tyson Foods as a chicken processor. And so it is, but it is also one of the biggest producers of beef and pork.

Good thing, too, because Tyson's chicken business is in the dumper, but thanks to its beef and pork operations, the company on Monday reported fourth-quarter profits of $48 million, up from $32 million a year ago.

The factors driving the grocery business at the moment are ones that could easily change in fairly short order. Commodity prices are falling, but underlying economic forces dictate that they will rise again. People are trading down from Whole Foods to Safeway and from Safeway to Kroger, but they'll go back to their favorite stores, and their favorite organic cheeses, once the recession is over.

The people making fun of Pepsi White, Pepsico's new cola-yogurt drink, are forgetting something: You never know what might catch on in Japan. And indeed, the weirder a product is, the better chance it has in the Japanese marketplace.

One name often mentioned as a possible Secretary of Agriculture in an Obama Administration is that of Tom Vilsack, the former governor of Iowa who abandoned his own presidential campaign early in the primary season. He went on to endorse Hillary Clinton, but after she lost, he campaigned hard for Obama.

There are a lot of dairy producers, especially in the West, that slap "organic" labels on their products despite the fact that they don't actually adhere to organic standards.

There's nothing better than being on both sides of a market. Archer Daniels Midland reported Tuesday that its profit more than doubled in its first quarter, besting analysts' expectations of $1.62 per share by nearly $1.

While profits nearly doubled for the company's agricultural-services business thanks to its ability to charge more because of higher grain prices, its corn-processing unit's earnings were cut in half for the same reason.

Sara Lee tried to unload its household and personal-care unit but has dropped the idea for now after talking with bankers, according to a report by mergermarket, reprinted in the Financial Times.

There were two possible reasons for halting the effort, the report said: "Decrepit financial markets" or "because Sara Lee got cold feet about turning itself into a food-only company."