The Globe gives you a front page serving:
"The weird pressure of meal kits: ‘Leftovers you haven’t cooked yet’" by Beth Teitell Globe Staff September 25, 2018
Lisa Rothman thought she’d be transformed. From a woman suffering from acute dinner stress into a different person. She’d toss off a chiles rellenos with poblano peppers and chipotle sauce on a Tuesday night. Her teens and husband would actually look forward to dinner. “We’d all eat the same thing,” she said dreamily.
Well, that was her Blue Apron fantasy, anyway.
Several months into her meal-kit delivery subscription — months of vegetable-chopping and pressure to cook the ingredients before they spoiled — Rothman’s goal has changed.
“I just want to go out to dinner every night,” said Rothman, of Needham, only sort of joking. “That’s the only solution.”
The Judas at the table?
Oh, meal-kit delivery services, why haven’t you saved us? A time-starved nation was looking to you to teach us how to cook something other than chicken, to deliver us from our nightly panic.
You, with your varied offerings and coloring-book approach to food prep, in which boxes with pre-measured, individually wrapped and temperature-controlled ingredients are shipped to our homes.
Yes, there is a ridiculous amount of packaging, and the expense of buying rice a few grains at a time, but look at us! We’re making seared salmon with faro, and za’atar tofu bowls, and tortelloni with walnut gremolata.
All we had to do was: Open the box, add heat, and eat. Dinner solved.
Or so we thought.
Despite the fact that giants Amazon and Walmart have gotten into the meal kit business — and global revenue is projected to hit $10 billion in 2020, up from $1 billion in 2015, according to Statista — the country is littered with meal-kit drop-outs.
Nearly half of consumers (49 percent) were less than satisfied with their kit experiences, and 83 percent who tried a meal-delivery service have stopped using it (up from 76 percent in 2017), primarily because of poor value, but also due to portion size and cost, according to a recent survey by Market Force Information, a customer-experience management company.
A meal-kit dinner costs about $9 to $12 per serving, according to one estimate, putting the expense somewhere between eating out and buying the ingredients yourself at a grocery store.
Then there’s the pressure of it all. The box that arrives with an expiration date. Cook me within three-to-five days. Or else.
Look at the Globe putting the pressure on you to eat faster.
“It was like having leftovers you haven’t cooked yet,” is the way Shannon Connery, a teacher at St. Theresa of Avila in West Roxbury, described the burden. “It’s something you know you should eat before it goes bad. You have no excuse not to, but you’re just really not in the mood.”
You can say that again.
She and her husband cycled through Blue Apron, Hello-Fresh, Plated and Sun Basket, like many consumers taking advantage of generous introductory offers or coupons, but they’re currently taking “a break.”
Delivery meal kits hit US shores about six years ago, and what started as a few meal kit companies has grown to an estimated 150.
There are vegan meal kits and vegetarian kits and kosher kits and meal plans for clean eaters and the gluten-free and diabetics. Tom Brady (TB12 Performance Meals) and Martha Stewart (Martha & Marley Spoon) are in the game, and in Atlanta, so is Chick-fil-A.
To be sure, lots of people love their meal kits. They’re fun! They teach you how to cook! They introduce you to flavors and spices you’d never before attempted at home, but here’s the problem: If you’re not the kind a person who can handle regular old-fashioned cooking, in which you measure your own ingredients, even a meal box may not be able to save you.
The uncut vegetables killed it for Sarah Francomano, a publicist from Foxborough. “They stressed me out,” she said. “I’d come home from work and the kids would need to get to sports and it was great to have all the ingredients there, but I’d still have to chop. They’d say ‘mince an onion, chop three cloves of garlic, dice the carrots.’ It would take me an hour to prepare.”
(sniff-sniff)
As meal kits proliferate, there seems also to be a danger some of us could become too dependent on them, no longer able to fend for ourselves in the wilds of the supermarket.
I thought I detected insulting elitism. Common spice used by the Globe.
In Bourne, when Lisa Brennan discovered her meal kit was missing an ingredient, she wanted the company to rush her a replacement rather than give her the meal credit they were offering.
“I work in a business where if we screw something up, if we’re missing a part, we ship it out overnight,” she said. “They weren’t willing to do that.”
Even many who like the almost-ready kits can’t handle the packaging waste. “There is no way I can justify it,” said Luciana Schachnik of Brookline: “The boxes. The box inside the box. The gel from the ice packets, the plastic bags. My recycling bin was always full and I started to feel ashamed in front of my neighbors.”
Now we get the residual guilt trip and shaming. Makes me want to upchuck.
Meanwhile, even as meal-kit delivery services aim to take the drudgery out of cooking, a South Boston meal-kit firm — called Just Add Cooking — wants to take the concept of ease one giant step farther.
“Customers are also telling us they don’t always have time to cook,” chief executive Katerina Cronstedt said, “so we are planning to add ready-made meals to our selection.”
Fully cooked meals — that sounds like just the recipe.....
--more--"
Then they try to $weeten your tongue with this:
"Necco candy equipment is to be sold off, sounding another death knell of a Boston institution" by Jon Chesto Globe Staff September 25, 2018
Necco was an institution, with more than 150 years of history in the business, dating back to Chase and Company’s lozenges in the late 1840s. That Boston-area company combined with two others to form Necco in 1901. The candy maker’s sudden and swift closure, following a bankruptcy auction after a decade under private equity ownership, came as a shock to many in the business.
“It has definitely shaken up the industry,” said Joe Melville, co-owner of Melville Candy in Randolph. “It’s tough to compete on a world stage.”
The beginning of the end for Necco, according to a lawsuit that the bankruptcy trustee filed against its former owners, came in 2007, when a private equity firm, ACAS, acquired the candy maker.
A Food and Drug Administration warning in May complicated matters, citing rampant unsanitary conditions and evidence of rodents throughout the 830,000-square-foot plant.
The excrement pellets were “too numerous to count.”
Spangler, an Ohio company that makes Dum Dums lollipops and Circus Peanuts, emerged as the winning bidder in the bankruptcy auction one week after the FDA letter became public, offering hope that some of the manufacturing would remain in Revere, but after then trying to reduce its bid, Spangler quickly backed out, and the runner-up, Round Hill Investments, moved to the front of the line.
That company, too, got cold feet, soon after closing on the deal for $17.3 million in May. The firm’s principals had helped revive the Hostess lineup of snacks, but not so the Necco sweets: They sold the business to a candy manufacturer who has yet to be named, and announced in July that the Revere plant would close immediately.
Industry experts have offered a range of potential causes for Necco’s demise. Selling off the valuable property, which turned out to be too large for Necco’s needs in the first place. Not enough digital-age marketing to woo a new generation to its old school candies. High labor and real estate costs in the Boston area. High sugar costs in the United States that put domestic candy companies at a disadvantage to overseas competitors.
Given the increasing rates of obesity and diabetes, not to mention the dental health aspects, perhaps it is a good thing that the candy factory shut down.
Spangler said it still needs to solve some manufacturing challenges related to the Sweethearts and Necco wafers; that production will move to Spangler’s home state of Ohio. The company is planning to relaunch the wafers next year, and the candy hearts in time for Valentine’s Day in 2020. Executives at Spangler didn’t return several calls from the Globe seeking comment.
Doesn't that just melt yours?
Anthony Forgione Jr., president of Pennsylvania-based Boyer, said he wanted to own the Clark Bar even before the Necco bankruptcy; Boyer is best known for its Mallo Cups, and Forgione said he wanted a traditional candy bar in its lineup.
Clark’s origins can be traced to Pittsburgh, about two hours away from Boyer’s factory in Altoona, Pa. That was another motivating factor, he said.
“In the ’50s and ’60s, these two brands were like fighting siblings, neck and neck in sales” in western Pennsylvania, Forgione said. “We’re thrilled to be keeping it here. Candy used to be regional. You used to be able to tell where somebody grew up by what their favorite candy was.”
Many of the other Necco brands were already sold off after the Revere company exited bankruptcy in May.
“We’re calling this the biggest candy auction of the 21st century,” said Jim Greenberg, co-president of Union Confectionery Machinery, whose company supplied Necco with equipment for years.
“Nothing is even close. This is the big one. It’s terribly bittersweet,” said Greenberg.....
I hate going to bed with a bad taste in my mouth.
--more--"
I know they will be missed in Eastie, but it is time to start producing a different crop.
UPDATE:
"An Iowa man threatened by city officials with legal action for saying on a website that his hometown smelled like ‘‘rancid dog food’’ won a free-speech lawsuit Thursday when a federal judge prohibited the city from further threats and awarded him damages. City officials said they’d sue if Josh Harms, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, didn’t stop criticizing the town’s odor problem from Iowa Drying and Processing, which makes an animal food supplement from pig blood. The city said Harms was hurting the community....."
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
Aly Raisman teams up with Needham meal-kit company Purple Carrot
