The Food Scout

Admittedly, the above claim is completely subjective and not scientifically based. But I have been traveling extensively across the U.S. for the past 6 months, checking into dozens of hotels, checking out at hundreds of grocery stores and restaurants, and from what I can see, the recession has improved customer service across the board (well, except maybe in Charleston, S.C.). Not surprisingly, I have a lot of theories about this, and they aren't necessarily politically correct. Basically, I think that when the economy was humming and everyone was dreaming of being in a better job (and believed they could find one at the drop of a hat), there wasn't a lot ...

Okay, I can handle the stock market shrinking for awhile, because it's going to come back, right? (Right?) But there are some things in life that, once you've crossed the threshold you can never come back (in this case I'll focus just on the food world), and that  I can't document the day when the coffee industry moved off its standard 16 oz. size, but I read online that that transgression began in the 1960s, where we now find a "pound" of coffee weighing in at just over 11 oz. Perhaps jars of spaghetti sauce (which now weigh more like 28 oz. than 32 oz. in previous years) and jars of peanut butter (only 16 oz. instead of 18), aren't as ...

I was food scouting in Chicago recently and ran into a facing of nutrition bars in the refrigerated section of the grocery store. Now for me, one of the appeals of nutrition bars is that they can sit in your desk, car, gym bag, pocket or wherever you happen to be that a meal or snack is not readily available. So the idea of a bar you have to keep in the refrigerator seems to kill the convenience of bars a little. At first, I thought this was a Marie's salad dressing or Kraft Velveeta merchandising gimmick, wherein shelf-stable products are sold in the produce section or dairy case to enhance their fresh perception. But after a look at the website I ...

Orlando and Tampa are shaping up to be the new playground for innovative food retailing. If you live in the Southeast, you know Publix supermarkets. And if you live in north Florida, you know that Publix is leveraging several sub-brands into new retail units and merchandising opportunities. Its Aprons brand, originally a cooking school, is now a meal-assembly concept, cooking demo kiosk, and a catering business. Greenwise is a brand Publix is using on its new tony Whole Foods-style units, BUT it's also a brand merchandised in most of its stores around natural foods including meats, cereals, and juices. And Sabor ...

Over the past several years, the grocery industry had been opening stores whose square footage rivaled that of Wal-Mart’s warehouse-style Supercenter format. But now the interest seems to have shifted to smaller “urban” formats, particularly since leading UK retailer Tesco introduced its Fresh & Easy corner store concept a year ago and started proliferating dozens of them (now totaling more than 70) in a few concentrated markets on the West Coast. In direct contrast to 80,000 to 120,000 sq. ft. stores that were the trend, now Safeway, Wal-Mart, Giant Eagle, Schnuck’s and even Whole Foods have since opened smaller grocery footprints in the 14,000 to 17,000 sq. ft. range, usually with a ...