Digging our graves with our teeth- What manner of dystopian hellscape is this?
Let them eat Corn Flakes...food is just another way for Corporate America to make a buck, y'all
But your laziness leads you astray;
your greed makes you dumb;
your gluttony makes enemies for you.
Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, Volume I: The Old and Middle
Once upon a time, in a blog far, far away, I used to do a semi-regular thing called “Digging Our Graves With Our Teeth,” in which I’d feature stupid food. I’d come across edible things that seemed more like cries for help or passive suicide attempts than actual food items, yet they were actual, consumable, available-to-consumer foods almost impossible to fathom, at least to my proletarian tastes.
That was back when I couldn’t understand how someone could subject themselves to such…excess. I mean, isn’t way too much of a good thing ultimately a bad thing? In some cases, yes, that’s certainly true. But, as it turns out, that’s not uniformly correct.
My “Digging Our Graves With Our Teeth” feature ended around the time I discovered the Piecaken ©…and yes, I just included the link to order one (you can thank me later) because it is, in layman’s terms, pretty fucking awesome.
Suffice it to say that it’s several layers of FUCKING AWESOMENESS. I ordered one for Christmas several years ago, and I was the only one who ate any of it, which was OK by me. Erin was appalled by the concept of Piecaken. I was in awe, as if the Shining City on the Hill had revealed itself to me in all its edible glory.
Sure, for some folks, gluttony is a mortal sin. For some of us, it’s aspirational (and, no, I’m not proud of that) . Fortunately, I don’t have religious rules tying me in knots, so I chowed down.
Chef Zac Young, one of my personal heroes, has branched out into other styles of gluttony-inspired pie/cakes, though I’ve successfully resisted the urge to re-order a Piecaken. The fact that I need to lose 40-50 lbs. might have a wee bit to do with my avoiding his website for lo, these many years.
How much temptation can a man be expected to resist??
But my fascination with stupid food hasn’t waned (not that Piecaken is stupid; FAR from it). It has morphed more into the decisions that people make surrounding food because stupid food is all around us these days. All one need do is log onto Reddit or TikTok to be embedded with all manner of profoundly stupid food.
No, these days, I’m fascinated by things like Wendy’s announcing that beginning in 2025, the hamburger chain will begin testing Uber-like surge pricing.
If you see a line forming at Wendy's, you might want to try again in a couple of hours.
That's because Wendy's is going to start surge pricing its menu items by 2025 as it rolls out digital menus, according to its fourth-quarter earnings call.
That means your go-to order may get more expensive — or cheaper — depending on the time of day you go.
The new pricing model is a first for the fast-food industry. But it's a familiar concept to those who use ride-share apps. Similar to pricing models at Uber and Lyft, Wendy's menu items will fluctuate in price depending on demand during the time that you order.
For example, Wendy's Baconator burger currently goes for $9.79. But with surge pricing in place, that might increase if you order it at 6 p.m. during an evening rush.
The company isn’t yet responding to questions regarding how the pricing surges will work.
What is known is that Wendy’s will spend approximately $20 million to install digital menu boards at all of its restaurants by the end of 2025. The boards will make it easier to change prices and also offer discounts and value-driven offers to customers as they make their meal choices.
The practice, known as “dynamic pricing,” is similar to what anyone who’s ever tried to summon an Uber or Lyft ride during rush hour or event traffic has experienced. The question, of course, is whether it will work in a fast food environment where competitors with static pricing may be next door or a very short distance away.
In most cities, where there are perhaps two ride-share companies competing, consumers don't have an option if both employ “dynamic pricing,” which Uber and Lyft do. Fast food generally is an option-rich environment for consumers, who tend to be very price-conscious.
Few details were released about the change, but Wendy’s CEO Kirk Tanner said the new menus will let the fast food chain test “more enhanced features like dynamic pricing and day-part offerings along with AI-enabled menu changes and suggestive selling.”
The menus were first shown in a mockup of a redesigned Wendy’s unveiled in 2022 that featured new pick-up windows, a more technologically advanced kitchen and a spruced-up interior. The new menus have already rolled out at some drive-thrus, with some TikTok users showing them powered by an automated voice, instead of a human worker, with suggestions for add-ons featured onscreen.
Surge pricing is common with sports and concert tickets and for ride-hailing apps, with services like Ticketmaster and Uber using sophisticated dynamic pricing algorithms that change minute by minute, based on demand. However, there hasn’t been widespread adoption from restaurants because of the labor it takes employees to change menus.
But apps and digital menus can easily update prices on the fly, giving fast food chains an easier to way to implement dynamic pricing. Wendy’s expects digital order sales to reach $2 billion this year and is spending $15 million to upgrade its app.
So, will Wendy’s “surge pricing” work? And if so, will it become the model of the future for other businesses and a general pain in the ass for consumers as companies try to maximize profits? Stay tuned.
Or not….
(UPDATE: The word on the street now is that Wendy’s “surge pricing” won’t be happening after all…perhaps because someone in a “C” suite realized it was a stupid fucking idea with no redeemable upside. Stay tuned, as Wendy’s will no doubt be announcing soon the name of a poor mid-level marketing drone whose career will be sacrificed as the tool who bears the shame and blame for this entire fiasco.
Film @11.)
The other food story that grabbed my attention was WK Kellogg CEO Gary Pilnick stepping in a big pile of steaming…well, let’s call it a shitstorm of his own creation.
It’s the sort of thing that happens when someone who defines “hard times” as someone clogging a toilet at his weekend villa in the Hamptons attempts to counsel “the poors.”
New York (CNN) — “Let them eat Corn Flakes” appears to be Kellogg’s CEO Gary Pilnick’s advice to cash-strapped shoppers who are spending the highest portion of their income on food than at any point in the last 30 years.
In an interview with CNBC last week, WK Kellogg CEO Pilnick said the company was advertising cereal for dinner to consumers looking for more affordable options. “Give chicken the night off,” the ad’s cheery tagline reads. WK Kellogg owns cereals such as Frosted Flakes, Froot Loops, Corn Flakes, Raisin Bran and others.
“The cereal category has always been quite affordable, and it tends to be a great destination when consumers are under pressure,” Pilnick said. “If you think about the cost of cereal for a family versus what they might otherwise do, that’s going to be much more affordable.”
Of course, it’s entirely possible Pilnick was being entirely honest and thought he was trying to be helpful. There may not have been any elitism at work on his part. That said, his advice landed like a 50-lb dumbbell on an unfinished concrete floor.
And everyone from the mainstream media to anti-poverty activists have been attempting to wipe the floor with Pilnick and his words.
His advice hasn’t landed well with people frustrated by spending 26% more on groceries since 2020; on social media the campaign is being seen as insensitive.
CNBC host Carl Quintanilla asked Pilnick if encouraging weary customers to eat cereal for dinner could “land the wrong way.”
Pilnick thought the opposite.
“In fact, it’s landing really well right now,” Pilnick said. “Cereal for dinner is something that is probably more on trend now, and we would expect to continue as that consumer is under pressure.”
I’m not sure who he’s getting his PR information from, but what they’re feeding him is half-baked at best and utterly clueless and insensitive at worst.
The most significant part of the problem is that food costs for families have increased tremendously since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, families spent 11.3% of their disposable income on food, the highest percentage since 1991, according to the US Agriculture Department.
Of course, labor, ingredient, and transportation costs have increased for food producers, but companies have also raised prices largely because they could get away with it. People have to eat, the market allowed for it, and no one stepped in to stop them.
Cereal prices alone increased 28% since January of 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In its latest fiscal year, Kellogg raised prices by 12%.
Not that corporations like WK Kellogg has anything to do with it, of course. Blame it on market forces.
Well, that and the fact that companies could raise prices without getting slapped down. That was also a huge factor.
Despite CEO Pilnick’s confident reassurances, his words were not universally well-accepted. In fact, they landed with a resolute and well-deserved thud.
Yo, Gary…there’s a Marie Antoinette holding for you on line one…something about copyright infringement. She was screaming something about cake….
Some consumers called Pilnick’s comments tone-deaf and referred to his more than $4 million salary in 2023. And he would’ve done well to consider that, given his lofty socioeconomic perch, his words might not have been taken in the way he intended.
In fact, that was almost an iron-clad guaran-DAMN-tee.
The backlash highlights consumer anger at companies for raising prices on everyday foods and, in some cases, boasting about it.
“This is what [companies] think of you,” one user on TikTok wrote of Pilnick’s suggestion. “#CorporateGreed” wrote another.
It gets worse from there, but you get the idea. With the cost of some cereals running upwards of $7/box, Pilnick’s idea of affordability might not be the same as that of a single mother of four. Or a senior living on a fixed income. When your annual compensation has six zeros in the number, you damned sure aren’t worrying about the cost of a box of Corn Flakes, are you? No, because you probably haven’t seen the inside of a grocery store since the first Reagan Administration.
Are you kidding? You have people to take care of that for you. And people to tend to your landscaping, walk your dogs, clean your pools, maintain your helicopter, yadayadayada….
Corporate greed? That’s what pays for your house in the Hamptons and the other ones in the south of France, Phuket, and that country that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the US…what was its name again? Russia? Kentucky? Floriduh? Yeah, it can be so hard to keep track of sometimes.
Yeah, what corporate greed??
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Pretty tired of the media spewing about "inflation," when *REAL* inflation (out-of-control consumer spending amid wildly increasing wages, and more or less flat corporate profits) is absolutely the last thing that we're experiencing.