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🌶️ A $45B pantry heist: McCormick is buying Unilever's food business, and UK regulators just opened a review.
🐟 Goldfish hit the gym: Pepperidge Farm's new protein Goldfish pack 6 grams a serving.
🍁 A strike brews for Thanksgiving: Alberta Safeway workers served Sobeys strike notice, with a walkout possible Oct 7.
🍗 Hormel's quiet engine: foodservice now drives about half its profit, and it keeps growing.
🍕 Pizza gets a TV cameo: MOD Pizza teamed up with "Abbott Elementary" on a limited-time pie.
GLOBAL GRUB
The current global forces shaping our food industry ecosystem.
The spice people are buying your mayo
McCormick, the company behind half your spice rack, is buying Unilever's food business for about $45 billion, which could put pantry staples like Colman's mustard, Hellmann's, and Knorr under the same roof as your peppercorns. The UK's competition watchdog just opened an antitrust review, with a first ruling due by Nov 11, and Unilever is already dangling Colman's to ease concerns. If it clears, one company quietly controls a startling slice of your pantry.
Even Goldfish are bulking up
The protein craze has officially reached the kids' snack aisle. Campbell's Pepperidge Farm is rolling out a protein Goldfish with 6 grams per serving in cheddar and pizza, landing at Walmart and other grocers in October at $3.99 USD a bag. When the little smiling cracker needs a protein claim, "functional" has gone fully mainstream.
A grocery strike is brewing for Thanksgiving
Alberta Safeway workers have served Sobeys formal strike notice, setting up a possible walkout from Oct 7, right before the Thanksgiving long weekend. Members want fairer wages, better benefits, and safer stores, though the union still hopes to settle at the table. For a national grocer heading into one of the busiest food weekends of the year, the timing could not be tenser.
ON THE MENU: HORMEL
An insider look at the industry disruptors, biggest players, and culinary visionaries.
🍗 The quiet engine behind everyone's kitchen
While packaged brands fight for shelf space, Hormel has been quietly winning somewhere shoppers rarely look: the back of house. Its foodservice arm now drives about a third of sales and roughly half of profits, and it keeps growing even when grocery slumps.
The trick is doing the annoying work for operators, value-added products, a sales team that actually knows kitchens, and gear like its Flash 180 chicken that cuts prep from 10 to 12 minutes down to 180 seconds. In an industry obsessed with the grocery aisle, Hormel is a reminder that a lot of the money, and the growth, is in feeding the places you eat out.
Why the industry is watching:
Foodservice is now about half of Hormel's profit, and still climbing.
Speed sells: Flash 180 turns a 12-minute job into a 3-minute one.
The lesson for CPG: the operator, not just the shopper, is a customer worth courting.
VIRAL BITE
The story everyone is posting about, so we had to bite!
MOD Pizza made an "Abbott Elementary" pie🍁
Pop culture keeps landing on the menu. MOD Pizza teamed up with the hit ABC/Hulu comedy "Abbott Elementary" on a limited-time pizza called "The Honor Roll," a nod to the show's Philadelphia roots (garlic-oil base, mozzarella, shaved beef, onions, peppers, cheddar). It runs Sept 28 to Nov 29 as the chain leans into TV tie-ins to earn a little buzz and a lot of social posts.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
A bite-sized serving of the strange, surprising or just plain random facts.
🍫 Can you smell your way to a better workout?
A small study found that people who smelled chocolate before and during leg exercises cranked out significantly more reps without feeling like they were working any harder. Dark chocolate had the strongest effect, about 18 extra reps versus plain water, maybe because the brain is expecting a reward. The sample was small (young, moderately trained men), so file it under fun, not gospel.
Turns out the treat might be the pre-workout secret.
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See you next week!
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