5 August 2021
Juice isn’t worth the squeeze: Despite a brief uptick in fruit juice sales last year (Vitamin C for immunity, more time for breakfast), the category has the same long-term decline as sugary cereals. Big Beverage has responded to customers’ aversion to “-ose” ingredients by shifting away from sweet drinks and toward seltzers, bottled water, and diet sodas. So, Pepsi is selling Tropicana and Naked (and their other fruit juice brands). To the French.
Less exciting infrastructure needs help: Ag R&D infrastructure in the US, specially buildings and facilities. 69 percent of the buildings at these schools – 97 land-grant universities in total – are more than 25 years old and require urgent upgrades to remain safe and useful. Needing a collective total of nearly $11.5 billion. “…the United States risks losing the ability to compete internationally if we ask our researchers and educators to conduct and deliver 21st century results in facilities from the 1950s and 1960s.”
Interesting because somehow ag infrastructure is even less sexy than ‘normal’ infrastructure, even though they need each other. We all know the coolest of all is transmission lines. I could go on.
Last-mile delivery startup in London now has grocery delivery using the dark convenience model. Builds out hyper-local fulfilment centres in urban high-population areas for super-quick delivery. Made by the Deliveroo dude. See also the Dutch ‘Crisp’ that ‘unbundles’ the supermarket. Aggregates from 650 small suppliers and is only based on digital infrastructure. They have only electric delivery vehicles. The beginning of the end of current retail dominance by supermarkets?
3or5 is a monthly mailing on things in the food systems space that I find interesting
saherhasnain 