Tidbits

US has large agricultural lands that makes it possible to produce abundant food. During 19th century, the Europeans were struggling to get enough food while US was enjoying abundant grains and meat due to surplus.

Post use of refrigeration technology, US meat was transported across the Atlantic - leading to a glut in mechanised, high quality and low cost meat in Europe which led to massive price reductions.

Bankrupted European farmers forced the govt. to put tax on imported meat. US govt. negotiated, & retaliated by putting tax on European imports - taxing famous French brandies and German cars.

Owing to rugged rural land, imported low cost German pickup trucks were quite popular in US. Post 25% tariffs (dubbed the “chicken tax”), the prices of US pickup trucks were quite favourable - leading Ford & others to wholly dominate the market. The rest is history!

So in the late 1900s, McDonald’s used to have a specific variety of potatoes called the “Russet Burbank Potatoes” which were mainly grown in Idaho.

So the potatoes turned into crisp prices when fried in oil. Also, McDonald’s used to keep a check on the variety of shapes & color of these potatoes which were discarded if they had any brown strips or patches which normally occur due to pests.

To avoid this, it was sprayed with a highly hazardous insecticide - Monitor. So much so that farmers didn’t go to fields for days after it was sprayed. Later during harvesting of potatoes, they were stored in a football field sized shade places for 6-7 weeks just to let off the insecticide gas from the potatoes.

As of now, Monitor has been banned globally.

IKEA, the Swedish giant known for its DIY furniture and home appliances was started by Ingvar Kamprad in 1943. It rose to prominence over the years.

Little did you know but being a furniture company, it’s best selling product is a food item - Meatballs. Having sold more than a billion meatballs since 1985, it was introduced to help IKEA’s struggling restaurants. It was believed that hungry customers buy less and vice versa.

So, Ingvar brought in Severin Sjöstedt, a Masterchef, who was an expert in traditional dishes and perfected the meatballs recipe. It became so famous that people started lining up its restaurants for eating meatballs. And the rest is history…!

It was conceived in 1993 by a group of college friends & the story was written down in a little over 35 pages. Its actors signed an agreement whereby the directors could mess with their head to make the scenes look realistic. It took 8 months to edit out the complete camera based movie footage. Over the course of scenes, actors had to live in the characters for days without much food, the place where it was shot was full of people planted specially (unknown to actors) to act as if the town was haunted. Actors didn’t have a scene description - leading to realistic shots and screams.

For marketing, they created a fictitious website and a mockumentary with fake news and clips from 1970s - creating a hype of the “Blair Witch Legend” - which people started believing. Below is the IMDB movie poster the production house released during the trailer launch.

Honda’s share of European Car market was in decline from 1998. To counter this, it hired Wieden+Kennedy, a creative agency for a campaign to boost its image. The agency collaborated for an advert for Honda’s 7th generation Accord car.

With a budget of £1 million, it took more than 5 days & 60 takes to make a 2 min commercial called “Cog” that was so successful that it won multiple awards including Emmy, became one the most famous adverts in history and also netted £400 million in revenues for Honda in a year.

Interestingly, the founder of Wieden+Kennedy, Dan Wieden had previously worked for Nike in 1988 to design the now famous tagline “Just do it”. The idea stemmed from the last words spoken by a convict, Gary Gilmore before being sentenced to death.

Everyone of us knows about Kitkats. Take a break and have a Kitkat! Yet, there is a difference between the Kitkats sold in US and other parts of the world.

Nestle, the company bought the British company Rowntree’s Chocolate Crips in 1988 which produced a variety of products including KitKat. Prior to this, Rowntree had a contract with Hershey’s to produce and sell Kitkats exclusively in US.

The contract clause stated that this arrangement would be void only when Hershey was bought by another company. So Kitkats in US remained with Hershey’s while Nestle remained the sole producer and distributor for the rest of the world!

On another note, Nestle’s former CEO Peter Brabeck-Letmathe once stated in a video that Water is not a Basic Human Right and that private bodies have the responsibility to charge to consumers for every drop.

Donda West was a visiting English professor in Nanjing University, China as part of a scholar program from US. There, she was instrumental in mentoring a young lady named Kathy Xu. She remembered Donda because of her son, Kanye West, who became a famous rapper in future.

Kathy would later on become a famous Venture Capitalist (dubbed the Queen of VC) in China with her private equity firm, Capital Today that would invest $10 million in early stage funding with Richard Liu for his upcoming company - JD.com - that would eventually become the second largest E-Commerce company in the world by 2017.

Kathy would also be instrumental in backing Dianping, that would later merge with Merituan to form the largest food delivery company in China.

You see, it was discovered by a Japanese Professor, Ikeda who found his soup tastier due to the presence of MSG. He patented it and started a business. And it became highly popular as a taste enhancer.

In 1960s, a researcher, Dr. Robert published a report of MSG causing bodily issues after consuming Chinese noodles. The report gathered popularity, leading to people reporting innumerable incidents, incorrectly describing the Chinese food as dangerous due to use of MSG. Yet, still today, there are no significant correlations to support the arguments.

This lead to the famous “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome”. These ultimately led to MSG being correlated to health problems and deeming Chinese food to the the culprit. Yet, unbeknownst, MSG was a popular additive in almost all global food systems!

Some interesting facts..

Ray Kroc, the founder of MCD built a special relationship with Coca Cola leading to becoming the largest restaurant client of the soda company till date.

Coke tastes better in MCD because it is delivered in special steel canisters as opposed to plastic bags for others. The water and coke are pre-chilled and filtered before being served to make the right taste.

MCD has a separate Coca Cola division headed by a separate group head that manages business and operations for the same.

Coca Cola helped MCD developed new line of Smoothies and promotions many times, & allowing itself as a base to expand to numerous countries.

Here an interesting story..

In 1990, PepsiCo agreed to a barter system of transaction in which it agreed to inject more than $3 billion in Soviet Union to double the number of bottling plants and sell cola concentrates to make it easier for consumers to get soft drinks cheaply.

In return, since the Russian rubbles were worthless, the Russian Govt made a contract to pay PesiCo in the form of Vodka bottles and 10-12 Warships that were leased to finance the project. Also, PepsiCo quickly opened two Pizza Hut outlets in Russia!

Meanwhile Coca Cola was sidelined over a monopoly race masterminded by PepsiCo and entered the market only after 1985. A huge loss on market capture.

Oobah Butler, a VICE news reporter was previously into many jobs including writing fake reviews for TripAdvisor for a fee. Seeing the popularity of reviews, he decided to do something similar.

He bought a burner phone, created a fake website & photos (with dish names based on moods) to create a fictitious restaurant - “Shed at Dulwich”. He listed on TripAdvisor and posted fake reviews to game the system.

Within weeks, the rank goes from #18,149 to #156. By Nov 2017, with more than 90000 searches/day, the restaurant becomes the top rated outlet in London. In response, Oobah gets months in advance of bookings, PR requests, etc.

To complete the program, Oobah hired a chef, a waitress and a DJ to serve real food for £1 at his secret location to 10 selected diners.

In the 1990s, amid a global slowdown in growth, McDonald’s invested in businesses to increase traffic. This led them to invest in a Mexican chain - Chipotle, local pizza chain, Donatos and even in non-food vending machines!

Gregg Kaplan had joined MCD as a Strategy manager and started “Redbox” that handled vending ops like condoms, toilet papers, and DVDs. He opened several red kiosks in MCD outlets and supermarkets which failed except for the DVD rental kiosks.

By 2005, over 800 DVD kiosks were present in US where users could rent one DVD for $1 a night. It grew so popular that by end of 2010, Redbox had rented out its billionth DVD. It really went head to head with Netflix and even surpassed Blockbuster.

MCD sold off Redbox in 2009 to Coinstar to focus on fast food business.

Zappos, the online clothing and shoe retailer was founded in 1999 by Tony Heish. It’s know for its best customer service among all e-commerce companies.

Once, Tony and his group of friends were partying late night at a hotel. They were quite hungry and so ordered some pizzas from the receptionist. But due to late hour, the receptionist denied it.

Tony was angry and challenged the receptionist to call Zappos Customer Service and ask about nearby places that could serve pizzas. She happily accepted it thinking how an online shoe store could possibly know about food!

She called & asked the Customer Support. The POC called back a few seconds later giving directions to pizza outlets. The receptionist was impressed & became a life long customer of Zappos!

Volkswagen, the German Car giant is known for housing and making some of the most iconic cars in history. From 1946, the brand has been known for style and quality.

Yet, the best selling product of the company is not a car but a food - Volkswagen’s Currywurst Sausage that is prepared by 30 chefs at its Wolfsburg Plant since 50 years. Its part number is- 199 398 500 A.

Established in 1973, the sausages were exclusively sold at the plant’s cafeteria with a closely guarded recipe. They became famous and were sold in stadiums and stores leading to its popularity. Later, it won several awards in the national exhibitions for its unique taste.

The chefs make an average 20,000 sausages per day along with a special sauce. Today, it is sold in more than 11 countries, via a large network of global supermarkets.

Kraft Heinz, the largest beverage group in US, famous for its Heinz Sauce wanted to make its product 100% fully recyclable. The problem was the red sauce’s bottle cap.

Unlike the body that is made of PET, the cap was made of silicone - a chemical that was quite hard to recycle with high operational costs since only limited silicone recycling plants operate in the country.

Kraft hired a team of internal R&D scientists who used 3D printing to inspect different samples. It took more than 185,000 hours with an estimated cost of 1.2 million dollars along with 45 iterations to finally arrive at the finished product.

The final product was launched in 2021 & is made of Polypropylene that can be recycled & reused. It will annually save 1 billion caps or 35 Olympic Swimming Pools worth of plastics from landfill choking!

Allen & Wright (A&W, started in 1919) is an American fast food chain famous for draft beer and burgers.

In 1980s, A&W’s owner, Alfred Taubman, started a campaign - “Third is the Word” - for its new Third pound burger to compete with McDonald’s Big Mac Quarter Pound Burger at the same price.

The aggressive campaigns with expensive TV and Radio spots proved fruitless and couldn’t catch much traction with the audience.

Alfred hired a research firm to explore the reason behind his failure. They conducted focus group studies & found that many users incorrectly identified a third pound (1/3) to be smaller than a quarter pound (1/4) burger!

So, users weren’t buying it and the campaign flopped.

John Harvey Kellogg, was a Medical Director at Battle Creek Sanatorium, Michigan (US), who promoted pure sin-free healthy living experience through an unpopular bland vegetarian diet.

He decided to make it tasteful and nutritious. After some experiments, he patented a technique to make grain flakes & launched his first product, Granola - a wheat cereal.

John teamed up with his brother, William, and founded Sanitas Nut Foods Company. William did aggressive marketing & proposed new line of cereal flavours - which led to a conflict between them.

So, John left & William rebranded the name to Kellogg’s - transforming the American Breakfast System forever!

Mark Welch Munroe was a banker in Quincy, Florida (US) & headed the Quincy State Bank which was quite popular amongst the locals.

In 1919, Coca Cola went public with a share price of $40. By 1930s (Great Depression), it was $19. Knowing that the company had future potential, Mark gave out extra loans, urging people to buy & hold lots of company’s shares.

In the end, the share’s dividends actually helped the people survive the market crash. As the company prospered, share prices rose & Mark’s gamble paid off - turning some of those shareholders into millionaires!

And so, Quincy, once became the riches state in US! It’s estimated that a single share bought then is worth $10 million today!

In 1889, France, Édouard and Andre Michelin started a tyre manufacturing business. Over the years, it made key innovations in tire design & became the largest tire company in the world.

During 1900s, they launched “Michelin Guide” book for hotels and places - encouraging people to travel & buy more cars, leading to better tire sales & business.

With growing popularity, the guide introduced restaurant rankings. It recruited a highly secret team of inspectors to anonymously visit & review - leading to the birth of the luxurious “Michelin Stars” in 1922.

The concept revised & expanded to 3 star system (1936) - ranking more than 30000 dining places in 35 countries to become the most popular food guide in the world.

Rex Dave Thomas, a former U.S. Sergeant, became a chef at a restaurant chain in Fort Wayne.

Col. Sanders, the founder of KFC, teamed up with the restaurant owners to open one of the first franchise outlets in the country.

Dave began helping Sanders in perfecting the recipe, marketing, streamlining signature items and creating the iconic red and white strip design of the KFC Bucket featuring Sanders face.

He later sold his shares in KFC for $1.5 million in 1968, before leaving in 1969 to start his own burger chain - Wendy’s and appeared in over 800 commercials - Guinness record to this day for a CEO!

Today Wendy’s is one of the top three fast food chains in the US - ahead of KFC.