"Food start-ups follow the tech firm recipe; Innovative cuisine makers borrow methods from Silicon Valley to build businesses" by Nick Bilton | New York Times, October 21, 2013
SAN FRANCISCO — Megan Miller knows that cockroaches are packed with protein, and she says they can be made into a surprisingly tasty treat.
No thanks, not to be rude, but take it away. I'll pass.
But if that is a bit too avant-garde to believe, do you think you might like crickets if they were “ground up into a powder so you can’t see wings or legs?”
Miller believes you would.
Has someone suggested she, I don't know, go see someone and seek prescriptive pharmaceutical help? Does she have Obamacare?
She is the cofounder of Chirp Farms, a start-up firm here that is dedicated to making food like the company’s flagship Chirp bars, which are $2.50 morsels made of crickets. They are expected to arrive in stores next year.
I'll be sure to steer clear of that aisle.
Of course, the way the global elite have run this world into the ground means we all may well be eating bugs soon.
While making food from insects might sound fascinating — or icky — the approach she is taking, treating Chirp Farms like a technology start-up rather than a food outfit, is what really makes the company interesting....
It is an article from the Jew York Time$, that's for sure.
While a growing number of start-ups like Chirp Farms have received money from big venture-capital firms, exactly how these companies plan to compete with the entrenched giants of the food industry has not been crystal clear.
Now you know why your pensions stink and why college tuitions are rising. That's where "ven cap" gets its loot. As for competing against Monsanto et al, good luck.
Nonetheless, they are undeterred. They see a big, slow-moving market just begging to be invaded by someone with new ideas and a new way of building a business....
After a while you really GET SICK of the ENDLESS WAR TERMINOLOGY in the paper. $hitter reporters have completely internalized the values of their ma$ters.
If this sounds familiar, it is. Just as tech took on music, first with Napster and later with services like iTunes and Spotify; just as Amazon took on books and eventually the entire world of retailing; and just as Craigslist took on traditional classified advertising, these food start-ups think it is not so far-fetched to go after the food industry....
Creating a successful food company requires a lot more than just a good idea.
If you think eating gruel made of insects is a good idea.
There are government rules and regulations and competition from entrenched conglomerates with vast distribution systems.
What, the AmeriKan dream of owning your own business just that?
These obstacles will not be easily overcome. But these start-ups are trying to do that by behaving like the most successful tech outfits that have gone from ideas to multibillion dollar businesses.
All of a $udden the empha$i$ is off starving people and their need for protein!
Some have programmers writing code to test out snacks and determine the types of ingredients that can go together.
I sure as hell hope they do a better job than the guys who wrote the unemployment insurance systems or Obama's health care debacle.
See:
Mass. IT project is latest black eye for Deloitte
Fla. unemployment website designed by Deloitte also draws complaints
Experts split on timetable to fix US health site
Obama admits frustration with snarled insurance site
I don't like to listen or watch him because he makes me sick.
Red flags were seen on federal health website
Yeah, everyone knew it was a piece of $hit but they in$i$t you eat it anyway. Somehow the ATMs never have a problem even though the voting machines are plagued with them.
Some approach management in the same way start-ups run their operations, using a process called Agile methodology, in which project managers work in very small teams with programmers and have software development practices like Scrum that are intended to move and build products quickly....
Yeah, but WHAT are they MAKING? It doesn't look like anything to eat to me.
Employees at Hampton Creek Foods do not talk about food as food, but rather as if they were programming an app to be sold in the iTunes store.
That is your FIRST SIGN that the "food" is ROTTEN!
“While a chicken egg will never change, our idea is that we can have a product where we push updates into the system, just like Apple updates its iOS operating system.” said Josh Tetrick, founder and chief executive of Hampton Creek Foods, which makes imitation egg products using plants. “So our mayo is version 1.0, and the next version will be 2.0, which will be less expensive and last twice as long.”
And made of what?
Grocery stores are starting to pay attention. Hampton Creek announced last week that it had set up a partnership with Whole Foods that would bring Just Mayo, the company’s plant-based mayonnaise, to retail shelves across the country.
Whole Foods is the corporate version of healthy and organic.
Thomas Manuel, chief executive of Nu-Tek Food Science, which makes a lower-sodium salt product, has worked in the food and agriculture industry for 43 years. He knows the difficulties of entering the business and questions whether some of these food start-ups will eventually be snapped up by the giants they are trying to change, or simply copied out of existence....
Yet there might be room for both entrenched corporations and start-ups in the future of the food industry.
A report issued by the United Nations this year warned that, by 2050, the world’s population was expected to reach 9 billion people and that there were not enough resources on the planet to feed them.
There are plenty of resources; it is the way they are being distributed that is the problem.
The report suggested insects as a solution.
See: Crunching Down a Globe Lunch
Related:
"Every table was set with a single fresh rose (from the rose gardens outside, I was told) and a full complement of three forks, two knives, and two spoons in silver plate..... The buffet tables could have graced a high-end ocean liner. I watched a gentleman in colorful African garb pile his plate with slices of roast sirloin and potatoes mashed with feta cheese. A post-retirement-age couple from the East Side scarfed up most of the egg rolls, though more came out quickly....
I made for the roast leg of lamb with rosemary sauce after I filled my salad plate with chilled asparagus and slices of a duck and pork terrine.... fresh tomato soup and bowls of pasta primavera.... The dessert buffet table practically groaned under a spread of apple and pumpkin pies, cheesecakes, tarts, half a dozen cheeses, sliced fruits, bowls of berries, and, off to one side, three urns of ice cream."
I didn't see ant insects on the menu of the great globalist famine relief organization, did you?
Can Silicon Valley ingenuity make eating insects appetizing to Western palates?
No amount of propaganda is going to do that.
“As the population grows, there is not going to be enough protein for people. There is no way we can produce meat at the scale,” Miller said. “What we’re trying to do is popularize a protein that hasn’t made it into Western culture yet, and that’s going to be very disruptive.”
You go first!
--more--"
I'm done chirping about that insulting piece of elitist $hit. I suppose it is better than a shit sandwich.
Related:
"The promise of a fast return — made possible by low-cost, accessible software and the pervasiveness of mobile devices — has lured many bright young minds such as Nithin Tumma to the tech world, where products seem to go to market practically overnight. It also has produced a kind of envy among life scientists, who labor through years of costly research and testing to solve the world’s greatest health problems."
Look$ like we have a theme going:
"Nanny’s idea inspires a wild rice giant; Investor takes high-yield advice" by Taryn Luna | Globe Correspondent, October 21, 2013
BURNEY, Calif. — When George Denny hired a 24-year-old nanny to care for his three children in 1996, the successful private equity investor counted on her to juggle after-school schedules, help do homework, and manage shopping expeditions.
He wasn’t expecting to gain a future business partner.
But Barbara Mattaliano was certain that a wild rice farm Denny owned in California had big commercial potential.
Denny didn’t buy it. After all, he was the one who had spent years delivering investment advice and running the San Francisco and Tokyo offices of Boston-based Bain & Co., and she had spent years chasing his kids around their Brookline house.
This is a Globe front-page $uce$$ $tory feature.
But she kept at it. For six years. We can create a niche brand of wild rice, she told him, and it will sell. Slowly, he came around....
Goose Valley — headquartered in Boston — claims to be the world’s largest producer of organic and natural wild rice, harvesting between 5 million and 6 million pounds annually, and generating sales of more than $10 million. It is available in about 2,600 grocery stores across the United States, including Stop & Shop and Shaw’s.
Related: Slow Saturday Special: Rancid Rice For Breakfast
I think I'll skip the side dish.
****************************
“It’s just so cool.”
And, as it turned out, lucrative. As founding partner, Mattaliano earns a six-figure salary and owns a piece of the company. Just over a decade ago, she was cobbling together an income of about $17,000 working as a nanny and rotating through several part-time jobs.
Today, she’s moved up to “Manhattan’s most expensive ZIP code” a few blocks from Central Park. She spends a lot of her time in Boston and regularly visits the California farm....
Readers, I have been pointing it out a lot lately, day after day after day, but it is obvious: this paper is not being written for you or me, it is being written of, by, and for the wealthy elite and other certain ethnic-religious reasons.
--more--"
She's was a nanny, huh?
Related: Another Nutty Nanny
Well, maybe not.
I hope the student loans were worth it.
Also see: Zahau Murder Mystery
Enough belaboring that point.
"In Maine, lobster glut stirs union talk" by Jess Bidgood | New York Times, October 21, 2013
VINALHAVEN, Maine — Late last year, Magnus Lane, a lobsterman with the propensity for wearing pirate-themed pajama pants around this rocky island town, found himself at the end of his rope. A glut of lobsters during the previous summer had pushed lobster prices to a 40-year low, while the cost of bait, fuel, and complying with state and federal regulations seemed to creep ever upward.
Lane, whose 30 years living in Maine have done nothing to dampen the deeply progressive political spirit he grew up with in his home country of Iceland, called some union organizers in the state, and made a wild suggestion: His ailing industry, despite its entrenched ethos of self-reliance, just might be ripe for their services.
I love corporate liberalism in the form of a new$paper, don't you?
That was the beginning of the Maine Lobstermen’s Union, a local organized by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. The union has signed up 600 members — 240 of whom have paid dues, so far — drawn by the promise of dedicated lobbying at the state’s Capitol on their behalf and the hope of market clout that could get them higher prices for lobster.
Who wants to eat anything coming from the fouled and polluted oceans these days?
Rocky Alley, the union president, stood up in a diner late last month in Portland and addressed a small group of local lobstermen who had come to hear his pitch. He recalled the first recruitment call he got from Joel Pitcher, the machinists union’s organizer who has been traveling Maine’s coast, piecing the lobstermen’s union together.
“I said, you’ve got to be joking,” said Alley.
It is a wariness shared, at least initially, by many of the union’s current members. Maine has about 5,000 licensed lobstermen, all of whom work on an independent basis. They compete for the sea’s spoils, and in some parts of the state it can turn nasty. Lobstermen who break unwritten rules can find themselves with cut gear or sunken boats; in 2009, a dispute escalated into a shooting.
Union thugs!
But Pitcher has made gains by emphasizing that lobstermen face bigger threats — from the market, or from costly regulations — than from one another.
“You guys need to concentrate on what you have in common,” he said, at the meeting in Portland. “That saves the way of life you know today.”
The pitch was enough to persuade Greg Turner, 53, a lobsterman in Portland who wrote his first check for union dues — $52.22 a month — after the meeting.
“I hate unions, always have,” Turner said with a shrug. But he thought the union might actually help preserve his agency as an independent businessman. “We worry about getting enough support so we can do what we want.”
He was in short order handed a bright red union flag for his boat, and a matching T-shirt. Those flags dot masts here in Vinalhaven, an outpost with a year-round population of 1,100. It is here, as well as in similar lobster-reliant communities like Jonesport and Stonington, where the union has found the most traction.
The question of how effectively a machinists union with no previous experience in their trade can help lobstermen is paramount among the majority of Maine lobstermen who have not joined the union.
“The commercial fishing industry is not easy to navigate. It takes years of hard work and experience to develop an understanding about the issues we’re facing,” said Genevieve McDonald, a lobsterman in Stonington who heard the union’s recruitment drive earlier this year. “I believe I.A.M. is taking advantage of the issues facing the Maine lobster industry for its own financial gain through increased membership,” she added.
Those damn unions!
--more--"
I'm sure if I looked long enough I could find the last lobster post from my Boston Globe, but why bother?
For some reason I have lost my appetite again readers. Always seems to happen when I read a Globe.
