This week: mayo did not have an ad, Snoop sues, listeria is back, and AI is wanting

2-min read

What does it take to uphold food safety?

Another food borne illness outbreak. This time, rumor is  Rizo Lopez will close down after a “multi-state, multi-year” listeria outbreak at the Modesto, CA cheese plant. Apparently, this has been going on since 2014.

We know the FDA has been trying to get in shape with a new head of Food appointment following the baby formula crisis. But will a better functioning FDA solve our foodborne illness problems?

Would love to know from you food manufactures out there, what does it take to uphold food safety? How do you foster a culture of quality? Why does food safety get sloppy? Write in with your wisdom.

Snoop Dogg sues Big Food

Lots of chatter from startup founders happy that Snoop Dogg is standing up for the “little guy”— that being his fledgling cereal brand. The allegation is POST/ Walmart purposely sabotaged Snoop Cereal by entering into agreements, then not placing the products in retail.

Here’s what I’ll tell you: Big CPGs aren’t great at building indie brands. Even celeb brands. It takes too much investment, time, and risk. When they buy you (or in this case, enter into extensive agreements to produce, market and manage your products), you have to already be developed. And even so, if the margins or sales aren’t accretive, they’ll go with tried and true. Seth Goldman accepted this reality when Coke disco’d Honest Tea.

Super Bowl Survey Fail

Surveys are only as good as the questions they ask. 1Q, an online provider, showed off their speedy capabilities with a Super Bowl ad survey hours after the game — except clearly they forgot to include the Hellmann’s commercial in the questionnaire (which imho would’ve ranked #1).

Bard renamed Gemini

Google’s AI Bard is now Gemini. New capabilities are text, images, audio, and video. I gave it a spin. This was the prompt:

Please generate an info graph titled "Water Footprint of Common Foods" with drawings of these four food images and their associated gallons of water footprint: 1) cup of coffee, 37 gallons 2) Spaghetti sauce, 365 gallons 3) bowl of rice and beans, 65 gallons, 4) bowl of fruit medley, 71 gallons. Please provide source reference at the bottom: U.S. Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service.

I did not sign up for Gemini Ultra at $20/month, and now I see the problem.

I got this:

Next week I’ll resume packaging design common stumbling blocks and how to overcome them.

All my best,

Jennifer