HEADLINES:
• Mega Foodservice Distributors’ Merger Deal Falls Through Due to Macadamia Nut Allergy of Board Chairs.
• Nominee for Cabinet Secretary Forced Out Amidst Claims That She Fed an All-Gluten Diet to Her Non-Documented Housekeeper.
• Coffee Chain Executive Vows to Eliminate Tipping (of Cows). Film at 11.
Is any of it real? Where do you get your news from: social media, broadcast, trade magazines, RSS feeds, blogs, newsletters, email, newspapers; whom do you believe?
Serving food in public now screams newsworthiness. Fake foodservice news was bound to happen – one measurement claims that the hospitality business represents the second largest employer in the nation!
Foodservice has come into its own. With foodie celebrities, chefs, critics and bloggers, and a near miss at a cabinet level office, the industry holds a newly minted importance within the public sphere. Hell, we even have our own TV network.
Wall Street watches the quarterly Quick Service Restaurant visit stats, as though they were a modern-day ticker tape. The trade has always been a bellwether indicator of the overall economy’s strength, but this takes it to a new extreme.
Foodservice industry executives such as Andy Puzder, Herman Caine and Howard Shultz work the news cycle (perhaps secretly hoping that their industry stocks will bask in its glow).
A day without immigrants disrupts the nation’s flow; minimum wage increases represent a theme central to the recent election.
The people need to know, will Danny Meyer be successful in eliminating tipping?
Headlines scream out about our failed mergers and acquisitions. Newscasters wax poetic about the latest bans on salt, hydrogenated oils, drink sizes and the like. The latest super food crazes, farm to table initiatives, sensitivities to gluten, nut allergies, GMO concerns, additives, nutraceuticals, and acrylamides all lead the evening’s broadcasts.
A quick glance at the restaurant and hospitality trades belie the hard news that is percolating throughout the mainstream. Everything is taken in stride in the work day world of the foodservice professional.
Perhaps many in the supply chain operate exclusively in their own silos – whether that be food distribution, equipment manufacturing, disposable supplies, sanitation, or any of the myriad others. We likely rely upon our own networks for the REAL story on the current events. Insider status is worn as a prized badge of honor when the call goes out for revelation of the gory details.
This is how we separate the wheat from the chafe. It takes a village to tease out fact from fiction.
The time-honored vetting of stories, rumors, half-truths, innuendo, and fake news doubles as most industry veterans’ only fun pass-time in our hurried and harried worlds.
• Raid on Warehouse Yields Clues to the True Birthplace of Pomegranate.
• Food Pyramid Inverted as Protein Now Blamed for Series of Unexplained Celestial Events.
• Fryer Malfunction Leads to Discovery of Secret Passageway to Intercontinental Currency Devaluation.
Is it real? Let me check my sauces. Er, sources.
