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Tag: iab-food & drink

  • SunnyD Vodka Seltzer will officially be sold in stores | CNN Business

    SunnyD Vodka Seltzer will officially be sold in stores | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    SunnyD, the flavorful orange drink chugged from childhood by millennials, is embracing one of its more collegial cocktail combinations.

    There’s now a vodka seltzer version of the drink that was created because of “popular demand,” the brand said. SunnyD Vodka Seltzer becomes the latest entrant into the canned cocktail craze that has customers thirsting for flavor-packed adult beverages over their malt-based seltzer siblings.

    The vodka seltzer is 4.5 percent alcohol by volume, has 0 grams of sugar and only 95 calories. But there’s not actual SunnyD in the drink, rather the company said it has the “same great orange taste” as SunnyD that uses “real fruit juice and natural ingredients.”

    SunnyD was first developed in 1963, but later boomed in popularity in the 1990s garnering it a loyal fan base because of its tangy orange flavor that is likened to a much sweeter tasting (and sugar packed) version of regular orange juice. SunnyD was sold to Harvest Hill Beverage Company in 2017, the privately owned manufacturer of Juicy Juice, with sales of the orange drink growing more than 30% since 2019.

    “Consumers are passionate about this iconic brand, rooted in nostalgia but with a taste that resonates today,” said Ilene Bergenfeld, chief marketing officer of Harvest Hill, in a release. “Many have told us that they enjoy SunnyD as a mixer and asked for this product. So, we looked at the hard seltzer category, and thought, good, but we can do better.”

    SunnyD Vodka Seltzer is sold in single cans for $1.99 and in a 4-pack of 12-ounce slim cans for $9.99. It hit shelves beginning Saturday at some Walmart stores.

    Fruit juice-based drinks are growing in popularity in the alcohol industry. Simply Spiked recently expanded its lineup beyond lemonade to add a peach flavor, Bud Light Seltzer is using fruit juice for the first time in its new flavors and NÜTRL, a Anheuser-Busch brand, has seen sales of its vodka seltzer drink mixed with fruit juice, explode over the past year.

    In total, sales of premixed cocktails grew 42% last year to $1.6 billion, according to Distilled Spirits Council of the US because drinkers are loving the new flavors and convenience they offer.

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  • There’s a new Reese’s in town, hold the dairy | CNN Business

    There’s a new Reese’s in town, hold the dairy | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Vegan Reese’s are happening.

    Hershey, which makes Reese’s along with Hershey bars, Kisses and other chocolates and candies, announced two new dairy-free products on Tuesday: Reese’s plant-based peanut butter cups, and a vegan chocolate Hershey bar with almonds and sea salt, each made with oats instead of dairy and designed to taste like milk chocolate. The new Reese’s variety will be available nationally this month, and the new Hershey bar is arriving in April.

    The company is the latest to introduce a vegan chocolate in hopes that it will attract more customers. But Hershey is a little late to the game.

    Nestlé

    (NSRGY)     introduced KitKat V, a vegan version of the chocolate bar, in 2021. Mondelez

    (MDLZ)     acquired Hu, a company which makes vegan chocolate, that year, as well. Hershey also initiated a test of a version of its product in 2021.

    In prepared remarks discussing the company’s fourth-quarter results, CEO Michele Buck said that “better for you,” which includes plant-based items, presented an opportunity for the company and will “receive greater levels of support this year.”

    “We are excited to introduce these delicious, plant-based options,” Teal Liu, brand manager of Better For You at Hershey

    (HSY)    , said in a statement announcing the launch Tuesday, adding that the new products offer more options for “chocolate lovers looking for plant-based alternatives.”

    By focusing on vegan alternatives to milk chocolate, specifically, Hershey may have a better chance of setting its products apart from others in the market.

    “As the vegan chocolate space gets more crowded, claims beyond plant-based may be necessary,” Kelsey Olsen, consumer insights analyst for food & drink at market research firm MIntel, told CNN in an email. “While many plant-based items previously launched have been dark chocolate varieties, brands should explore the areas of plant-based milk chocolate and white chocolate.”

    Touting oat as an ingredient could also help.

    Confectioners “can take advantage of oat milk’s unique properties to appeal to a larger consumer base, whether vegan or not,” Olsen said.

    Chocolate as a category has been resilient in the past few years, with people reaching for treats during the stress of the early pandemic and seeing it as a relatively affordable splurge even as prices rise.

    But it’s not clear that an oat-based chocolate will do the trick. “The majority of consumers are not focused on added [better for you] components to chocolate,” Olsen noted in a Mintel report last year.

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  • This is the dynamic that could decide the 2024 GOP race | CNN Politics

    This is the dynamic that could decide the 2024 GOP race | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The same fundamental dynamic that decided the 2016 Republican presidential primaries is already resurfacing as the 2024 contest takes shape.

    As in 2016, early polls of next year’s contest show the Republican electorate is again sharply dividing about former President Donald Trump along lines of education. In both state and national surveys measuring support for the next Republican nomination, Trump is consistently running much better among GOP voters without a college education than among those with a four-year or graduate college degree.

    Analysts have often described such an educational divide among primary voters as the wine track (centered on college-educated voters) and the beer track (revolving around those without degrees). Over the years, it’s been a much more consistent feature in Democratic than Republican presidential primaries. But the wine track/beer track divide emerged as the defining characteristic of the 2016 GOP race, when Trump’s extraordinary success at attracting Republicans without a college degree allowed him to overcome sustained resistance from the voters with one.

    Though the early 2024 polls have varied in whether they place Trump or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the lead overall (with the latest round tilting mostly toward Trump), that same overriding pattern of educational polarization is appearing in virtually all of those surveys, a review of public and private polling data reveals.

    “Trump does seem to have a special ability to make this sort of populist appeal [to non-college voters] and also have a special ability to make college-educated conservatives start thinking about alternatives,” GOP pollster Chris Wilson said in an email. “I think we’ll continue to see a big education divide in his support in 2024.”

    The stark educational split in attitudes toward Trump frames the strategic challenge for his potential rivals in the 2024 race.

    On paper, none of the leading candidates other than DeSantis himself seems particularly well positioned to threaten Trump’s hold on the non-college Republicans who have long been the most receptive audience for his blustery and belligerent messaging. By contrast, most of the current and potential field – including former Governors Nikki Haley and Chris Christie; current Governors Chris Sununu of New Hampshire and Glenn Youngkin of Virginia; former Vice President Mike Pence; and Sen. Tim Scott – appear better suited to attract the white-collar Republicans who have always been the most skeptical of Trump.

    That could create a situation in which there’s too little competition to Trump for voters on the “beer track” and too many options splintering the voters resistant to him on the “wine track.” That was the dynamic that allowed Trump to capture the nomination in 2016 even though nearly two-thirds of college-educated Republicans opposed him through the primaries, according to exit polls, and he didn’t reach 50% of the total vote in any state until the race was essentially decided.

    While the political obstacles facing Trump look greater now than they were then, his best chance of winning in 2024 would likely come from consolidating the “beer track” to a greater extent than anyone else unifies the “wine track” – just as he did in 2016. In each of the past three contested GOP presidential primaries, the electorate have split almost exactly in half between voters with and without college degrees, analyses of the exit polls have found.

    “Right now, unless somebody cracks that code to get competitive with Trump there [among blue-collar Republican voters], it could fall into the old pattern which is the best scenario for him,” said long-time GOP strategist Mike Murphy, who directed the super PAC for Jeb Bush in the 2016 race.

    Jennifer Horn, the former GOP state chair in New Hampshire, added that while Trump’s ceiling is likely lower than in 2016, he could still win the nomination with only plurality support if no one unifies the majority more skeptical of him. “He isn’t going to need 50% to win,” cautioned Horn, a leading Republican critic of Trump.

    The wine track/beer track divide has been a consistent feature of Democratic presidential primary politics since 1968. Since then, a procession of brainy liberal candidates (think Eugene McCarthy in 1968, Gary Hart in 1984, Paul Tsongas in 1992 and Bill Bradley in 2000) have mobilized socially liberal college-educated voters against rivals who relied primarily on support from non-college educated White voters and racial minorities (Robert F. Kennedy, Walter Mondale, Bill Clinton and Al Gore in those same races). In the epic 2008 Democratic primary struggle, the basic divide persisted in slightly reconfigured form as Barack Obama attracted just enough white-collar White and Black voters to beat Hillary Clinton’s coalition of blue-collar Whites and Latinos. Joe Biden in 2020 was mostly a beer track candidate.

    Generally, over those years, the educational divide had not been as important in Republican primary races. More often GOP voters have divided among primary contenders along other lines, including ideology and religious affiliation. Both the 2008 and 2012 GOP races, for instance, followed similar lines in which a candidate who relied primarily on evangelical Christians and the most conservative voters (Mike Huckabee in 2008 and Rick Santorum in 2012) ultimately lost the nomination to another who attracted more support from non-evangelicals and a broader range of mainstream conservatives (John McCain and Mitt Romney).

    The conservative columnist Patrick J. Buchanan, in his long-shot 1992 and 1996 bids for the GOP nomination, pioneered a blue-collar conservatism centered on unwavering cultural conservatism and an economic nationalism revolving around hostility to foreign trade and immigration. Huckabee and even more so Santorum advanced those themes, clearing a path that Trump would later follow – with a much harsher edge than either.

    In 2008, there was no educational divide in the GOP race: McCain won exactly the same 43% among Republican voters with and without a college degree, according to a new analysis of the exit poll results by CNN polling director Jennifer Agiesta. But by 2012, Santorum’s blue-collar inroads meant Romney won the nomination with something closer to the Republican equivalent of a wine-track coalition: Of the 20 states that conducted exit polls that year, Romney won voters with at least a four-year college degree in 14, but he carried most non-college voters in just 10.

    Wilson, the GOP pollster, said that an educational divide also started appearing around that time in other GOP primaries for Senate, House and governor’s races more frequently though by no means universally.

    “This wasn’t always the driving demographic or ideological difference in primaries before Trump,” Wilson said. “Sometimes a candidate [who] was particularly strong in sounding populist themes would create this type of gap, but often a more traditional issue difference either on social issues or on issues like tax increase votes or support for Obamacare or something adjacent to it would be a stronger signal in a primary.”

    In 2016, Trump turned this traditional GOP axis on its head. He narrowed the big divisions that had decided the 2008 and 2012 races. He performed nearly as well among voters who identified as very conservative as he did among those who called themselves somewhat conservative or moderate, according to a cumulative analysis of all the 2016 exit polls conducted by ABC’s Gary Langer. Likewise, Trump performed only slightly better among voters who were not evangelicals than those who were, Langer’s analysis found.

    Instead, Trump split the GOP electorate along the wine-track/beer-track divide familiar from Democratic primary contests over the previous generation. According to Langer’s cumulation of the exit polls, Trump won fully 47% of GOP voters without a four-year college degree – an incredible performance in such a crowded field. Trump, in stark contrast, carried only 35% of Republican voters with at least a college-degree across the primaries overall. But the remainder of them dubious of him never settled on a single alternative. Sen. Ted Cruz, who proved Trump’s longest-lasting rival, captured only about one-fourth of the white-collar GOP voters, with the rest splitting primarily among Marco Rubio, John Kasich and Trump himself.

    In October 2015, I wrote that Trump’s emerging strength in the GOP nomination race could be explained in two sentences: “The blue-collar wing of the Republican primary electorate has consolidated around one candidate. The party’s white-collar wing remains fragmented.” That same basic equation held through the primaries and largely explained Trump’s victory. The question now is whether it could happen again.

    There’s no question that some of the same ingredients are present. Recent national polling by the non-partisan Public Religion Research Institute, according to detailed results shared with CNN, shows that Republicans without a college degree are more likely than those with advanced education to agree with such core Trump themes as the belief that discrimination against Whites is now as big a problem as bias against minorities; that society is growing too soft and feminine; and that the growing number of immigrants weakens American society.

    The educational divide is also appearing more regularly in other GOP primaries for offices such as senator or governor, especially in races where one candidate is running on a Trump-style platform, Republican strategists say. It is also reappearing in polls measuring GOP voters’ early preferences for 2024. Recent national polls by Quinnipiac University, Fox News Channel and Republican pollsters including Whit Ayres, Echelon Insights and Wilson have all found Trump still running very strongly among Republicans without a college degree, usually capturing more than two-fifths of them, according to detailed results provided by the pollsters. But those same surveys all show Trump struggling with college-educated Republican voters, usually drawing even less support among them than he did in 2016, often just one-fourth or less.

    Wilson, for instance, said that in his national survey of prospective 2024 GOP voters, Trump’s support falls from about half of those with a high school degree or less, to about one-third of those with some college experience, one-fourth of those with a four-year degree and only one-fifth of those with a graduate education. In a recent national NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, half of Republicans without a college degree said nominating Trump again would give the party the best chance of winning in 2024; two-thirds of the Republicans with degrees said the party would have a better chance with someone else.

    State polls are showing the same pattern. The latest University of New Hampshire survey showed Trump attracting about two-fifths of GOP voters there without a high school degree, about one-third of those with some college experience, and only one-sixth of those with a four-year or graduate degree. A recent LA Times/University of California (Berkeley) survey in that state produced very similar results. Trump also ran much better among Republicans without a degree than those with one in the latest OH Predictive Insights primary poll in Arizona, according to detailed results provided by the firm.

    Craig Robinson, the former GOP state party political director in Iowa, said he sees the same divergence in his daily interactions. “The people that I hang out with or have breakfast with on Saturday, it’s the more business, more educated guys, and they are like, ‘Hey, we just want to move on [from Trump],’” Robinson told me. “But if I go back home to rural Iowa, they are not like that. They are looking for the fighter; they are looking for the person that they think will stand up for them and that’s Trump by and large.”

    Republicans who believe Trump is more vulnerable than in 2016 largely point to one reason: the possibility that DeSantis could build a broader coalition of support than any of Trump’s rivals did then. In many of these early state and national polls, DeSantis leads Trump among college educated voters. And in the same polls, DeSantis is generally staying closer to Trump among non-college voters than anyone did in 2016. “DeSantis may be able to do some business there,” said Murphy, referring to the GOP’s blue-collar wing.

    When DeSantis spoke on Sunday at the Ronald Reagan presidential library about an hour northwest of Los Angeles, he smoothly displayed his potential to bridge the GOP’s educational divide. For the first part of his speech, he touted Florida’s economic success around small government principles – a message that could connect with white-collar GOP voters drawn to a Reaganite message of lower taxes and less regulation. In the speech’s later sections, DeSantis recounted his clashes with what he called “the woke mind virus” over everything from classroom instruction about race, gender and sexual orientation, to immigration and crime and his collisions with the Walt Disney Co. Those issues, which drew the biggest response from his audience, provide him a powerful calling card with GOP voters, especially those without degrees, drawn to Trump’s confrontational style, but worried he can’t win again.

    “There is a lot of energy in the party right now around these cultural issues,” said GOP consultant Alex Conant, who served as the communications director for Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign. “If you watch Fox prime time, they are not talking about tax cuts and balancing budgets. They talk about the same cultural issues that DeSantis is putting at the core of his campaign.”

    The risk to DeSantis is that by leaning so hard into cultural confrontation on so many fronts he could create a zero-sum dynamic in the race. That approach could allow him to cut into Trump’s blue-collar base, but ultimately repel some college educated primary voters, who view him as too closely replicating what they don’t like about Trump. (If DeSantis wins the nomination, that same dynamic could hurt him with some suburban voters otherwise drawn to his small government economic message.)

    That could leave room in the top tier of the GOP race for another candidate who offers a sunnier, less polarizing message aimed mostly at white-collar Republicans. “I think there is absolutely room for more than two candidates, especially two candidates who are both competing very hard for the Fox News audience,” Conant said. Almost anyone else who joins the race beyond Trump and DeSantis (assuming he announces later this year) may ultimately conclude that lane represents their best chance to win.

    In many ways, Trump looks more vulnerable than he did in the 2016 primary. But assembling a coalition across the GOP’s wine-track/beer-track divide that’s broad enough to beat him remains something of a Rubik’s Cube, and the countdown is starting for the field that’s assembling against him to solve it.

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  • Bempedoic acid improved heart health in patients who can’t tolerate statins, study finds | CNN

    Bempedoic acid improved heart health in patients who can’t tolerate statins, study finds | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Bempedoic acid may be an alternative for people who need to lower their cholesterol but can’t or won’t take statins, according to a large study published Saturday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

    Statins are the most commonly prescribed cholesterol-lowering drugs that help lower what’s known as the “bad” cholesterol, or low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol in the blood; more than 90% of adults who take a cholesterol-lowering medicine use a statin, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    Statins are considered safe and effective, but there are millions of people who cannot or will not take them. For some people it causes intense muscle pain. Past research has shown anywhere between 7% and 29% of patients who need to lower cholesterol do not tolerate statins, according Dr. Steven Nissen, a cardiologist and researcher at the Cleveland Clinic and co-author of the new study.

    “I see heart patients that come in with terrible histories, multiple myocardial infarction, sometimes bypass surgery, many stents and they say, ‘Doctor, I’ve tried multiple statins, but whenever I take a statin, my muscles hurt, or they’re weak. I can’t walk upstairs. I just can’t tolerate these drugs,’ ” Nissen said. “We do need alternatives for these patients.”

    Doctors have a few options, including ezetimibe and a monoclonal antibody called a proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9, or PCSK9 inhibitors for short.

    Bempedoic acid, sold under the name Nexletol, was designed specifically to treat statin-intolerant patients. The FDA approved it for this purpose in 2020, but the effects of the drug on heart health had not been fully assessed until this large trial. The new study was funded in part by Esperion Therapeutics, the maker of Nexletol.

    For the study, which was presented Saturday at the American College of Cardiology’s Annual Scientific Session with the World Congress of Cardiology, Nissen and his colleagues enrolled 13,970 patients from 32 countries.

    All of the patients were statin intolerant, typically due to musculoskeletal adverse effects. Patients had to sign an agreement that they couldn’t tolerate statins “even though I know they would reduce my risk of a heart attack or stroke or death,” and providers signed a similar statement.

    The patients were then randomized into two groups. One was treated with bempedoic acid, the other was given a placebo, which does nothing. Researchers then followed up with those patients for up to nearly five years. The number of men and women in the trial were mostly evenly divided, and most participants, some 91%, were White, and 17% were Hispanic or Latino.

    The drug works in a similar way that statins do, by drawing cholesterol out of a waxy substance called plaque that can build up in the walls of the arteries and interfere with the blood flow to the heart. If there is too much plaque buildup, it can lead to a heart attack or stroke.

    But bempedoic acid is only activated in the liver, unlike a statin, so it is unlikely to cause muscle aches, Nissen said.

    In the trial, investigators found that bempedoic acid was well-tolerated and the percent reduction in the “bad” cholesterol was greater with bempedoic acid than placebo by 21.7%.

    The risk of cardiovascular events – including death, stroke, heart attack and coronary revascularization, a procedure or surgery to improve blood flow to the heart – was 13% lower with bempedoic acid than with placebo over a median of 3.4 years.

    “The drug worked in primary and secondary prevention patients – that is, patients that had had event and patients who were very high risk for a first event. There were a lot of diabetics. These were very high risk people,” Nissen said. “So the drug met its expectations and probably did a lot better than a lot of people thought it would do.”

    In the group that took bempedoic acid, there were a few more cases of gout and gallstones, compared with people who took a placebo.

    “The number is small, and weighing that against a heart attack, I think most people would say, ‘OK I’d rather have a little gout attack,’ ” Nissen said.

    Bempedoic acid had no observed effect on mortality, but that may be because the observation period was too short to tell if it had that kind of impact. Earlier trials on statins showed the same; it was only after there were multiple studies on statins that scientists were able to show an impact on mortality.

    Dr. Howard Weintraub, a cardiologist at NYU Langone Health who did not work on this study, said that while he knows some people will not consider a medication successful unless it reduces mortality, he thinks that is short-sighted.

    “I think there’s more to doing medicine then counting body bags,” Weintraub said.”Preventing things that can be life changing, crippling, and certainly change your quality of life forever going forward, and your cost of doing things going forward, I think is a good thing.”

    He was pleased to see the results of this trial, especially since the people in this study are often what he called “forgotten individuals” – the millions who could benefit from lowering their cholesterol, but can’t take statins.

    “It’s not like their LDL was 180 or 190 or 230, their LDL was 139. This is about average in our country,” Weintraub said. He said often doctors will just tell those patients to watch their diet, but he thinks this suggests they would benefit from medication.

    “Both groups primary and secondary prevention got benefit, which I think is impressive with the modest amount of LDL reduction,” Weintraub said.

    There are some limitations to this trial. It was narrowly focused on patients with a known statin intolerance. Nissen said the trial was not designed to determine whether bempedoic acid could be an alternative to statins.

    “Statins are the gold standard. They are the cornerstone. The purpose of this study was not to replace statins, but to allow an alternative therapy for people who simply cannot take them,” Nissen said.

    Bempedoic acid is a much more expensive drug than a statin. There are generic versions of statins and some cost only a few dollars. Bempedoic acid, on the other hand, has no generic alternative and a 30-day supply can cost more than $400, according to GoodRx.

    “I think what insurance companies need to recognize that even though this drug is going to cost more than statins, having a heart attack or a stroke or needing a stent is expensive. A 23% reduction in (myocardial infarctions) is a considerable reduction,” Weintraub said.

    In an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine that accompanied the study, Dr. John H. Alexander, who works in the division of cardiology at Duke Clinical Research Institute, Duke Health, Durham said that doctors should take these results into consideration when treating patients with high cholesterol who can’t take statins.

    “The benefits of bempedoic acid are now clearer, and it is now our responsibility to translate this information into better primary and secondary prevention for more at-risk patients, who will, as a result, benefit from fewer cardiovascular events,” Alexander wrote.

    Dr. Manesh Patel, a cardiologist and volunteer with the American Heart Association who was not a part of the study, said that providers are already prescribing bempedoic acid for some patients, but with this new research, he thinks they will quickly be used with more statin-intolerant patients.

    “We continue to see that if we can lower your LDL significantly, we improve people’s cardiovascular health. And so we need as many different arrows in our quiver to try to get that done,” Patel said.

    Heart disease is the No. 1 killer for men and women in the world. One person dies every 34 seconds in the US from cardiovascular disease, according to the CDC. About 697,000 people in the US died from heart disease in 2020 alone – about the same number as the population of Oklahoma City.

    “Given the number of people that are eligible for statins, which are tens of millions of patients already, the number of people who cannot tolerate statins is in the millions,” Nissen said. “This is a big public health problem and I think we’ve come up with something that directly addresses this.”

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  • Covid shrunk the restaurant industry. That’s not changing anytime soon | CNN Business

    Covid shrunk the restaurant industry. That’s not changing anytime soon | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    It’s never been easy to operate a restaurant, and in recent years it’s been even harder.

    In 2020, Covid restrictions ground the nation’s bustling restaurant industry to a halt. Since then, there have been significant signs of a rebound: Dining rooms have reopened and customers have returned to cafes, fine-dining establishments and fast food joints.

    But there are fewer US restaurants today than in 2019. It’s not clear when —if ever — they’re coming back.

    Last year, there were about 631,000 restaurants in the United States, according to data from Technomic, a restaurant research firm. That’s roughly 72,000 fewer than in 2019, when there were 703,000 restaurants in the country.

    That number could fall even further this year, to about 630,000 locations, according to Technomic, which doesn’t foresee the number of restaurants in the US returning to pre-Covid levels even by 2026.

    Sit-down restaurants, especially, are at a disadvantage as delivery and takeout remain popular. And with inflation still high, some potential customers are avoiding restaurants to save money. Meanwhile, restaurant operators are seeing their own costs, like rent and ingredients, rise, and say it’s hard to hire staff.

    With conditions so tough, some restaurant owners are advising newcomers to steer clear of the industry altogether.

    If someone were to ask David Nayfeld, chef and co-owner of the San Francisco restaurants Che Fico and Che Fico Alimentari, whether to open a new restaurant right now, his answer would be no.

    “I would say it is not a good time to go open a restaurant if you are not a seasoned and incredibly durable operator,” he said. Especially now, when restaurant operators need experience and deep pockets in order to succeed, he added.

    Even Nayfeld, himself an industry veteran who has worked at the famed Eleven Madison Park, is struggling. The pandemic led to “a really devastating few years that we’re still working our way out of,” he said.

    Some have argued that the contraction is a painful but necessary correction.

    “The narrative back pre-pandemic was that we were over-saturated … too many restaurants chasing too few consumer dollars,” said David Henkes, senior principal at Technomic.

    A restaurant stands empty and closed in Brooklyn, New York in 2020.

    Indeed, before the pandemic, the number of restaurants was growing between half a percent and one percent each year, he said, adding that the recent decline served to “reset” the size of the market. Without those hurdles, however, that decrease would likely have happened more slowly, he noted.

    Daniel Jacobs, a chef and restaurant owner, has seen his own network of restaurants shrink over the past few years.

    Prior to the pandemic, he and his business partner Dan Van Rite operated three restaurants and a bakery, plus a catering operation and restaurant consulting business. Today, they are left with two Milwaukee restaurants, DanDan and EsterEv.

    “Closing a restaurant is an incredibly difficult decision to make,” Jacobs said. “We did our best during the pandemic to try and keep our teams together … at some point, you just gotta call it.”

    Daniel Jacobs, chef and restaurant owner, and his business partner Dan Van Rite, in 2017.

    The rise of takeout and delivery during the pandemic helped multiple restaurants survive the pandemic.

    DanDan, a Chinese American restaurant, had offered takeout for years. The restaurant “had that customer confidence that we were going to deliver quality products,” he said.

    EsterEv is a tasting-menu-only restaurant within a restaurant (functionally, a dining room located inside DanDan) open only on weekends, and “definitely wouldn’t have [made it] if we had to pay rent on a space,” Jacobs said.

    The trend toward delivery and takeout has stuck, with restaurants reporting higher levels of off-premise orders. According to Revenue Management Solutions, a restaurant consultancy, delivery was up 11.4% in fast food and fast casual restaurants in January compared to last year.

    “We increasingly like to get our food on the go,” said David Portalatin, food service industry advisor for the NPD Group, a market research firm. “We’re still a more home-centric society.”

    Plus, sit-down restaurants tend to be more expensive, which could drive cash-strapped customers away, said Portalatin. Even with rising grocery prices, eating at home is generally less expensive than dining out, and restaurants last year saw their foot traffic dip.

    Full-service restaurants are also more labor intensive. That’s a problem right now, as restaurant owners report having a hard time hiring staff.

    Job openings in accommodation and food services rose by 409,000 in December, the largest increase by sector for the month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said in February.

    Demand for workers marks a turnaround from early in the pandemic, when restaurants let go of millions of staffers. Some employees also left of their own volition during the pandemic, afraid of getting sick with Covid-19 or tired of dealing with grueling conditions and rude customers.

    People walk in front of a restaurant closed near Times Square on January 24, 2023 in New York City.

    Today, some of those workers haven’t returned, leaving operators struggling to restaff.

    “Fundamentally, the labor situation is one where … there’s just not enough supply of qualified workers,” Henkes said. “And restaurants are particularly vulnerable, because it’s never been the industry of choice for a lot of people.”

    Some restaurants, Henkes said, “are very cognizant that they need to improve the working experience and what they’re offering to employees,” he said. “But doing that at scale for an industry is very hard.”

    And, of course, some major employers are not interested in higher wages for workers.

    Chipotle, Starbucks, Chick-fil-A, McDonald’s and KFC-owner Yum Brands, for example, have each donated $1 million to Save Local Restaurants, a coalition opposing a California law that could set minimum wage up to $22 an hour and codify working conditions for fast-food employees in the state.

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  • Molson Coors’ funny ad went too far, regulator says | CNN Business

    Molson Coors’ funny ad went too far, regulator says | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Beer ads try to be funny, but a regulatory group has determined that Molson Coors went too far with a recent ad that compares rivals’ light beer to water.

    The National Advertising Division, which is part of the Better Business Bureau, sided with Anheuser-Busch, which challenged a 2022 ad for Miller Lite that uses the phrase “light beer shouldn’t taste like water, it should taste like beer.” The agency said that Molson Coors should “discontinue” the ad because is “not puffery or a mere opinion.”

    In the 15-second spot, a cyclist takes a break from riding uphill, cracks open a beer and douses himself with it. No specific beers were mentioned, however the beer uses a similar blue color that adorns Bud Light packaging. NAD said that it “determined that tasting ‘like water’ is a measurable attribute” and that customers might “reasonably expect that the statement is supported by such evidence.”

    NAD said the ad should be discontinued because Molson Coors “did not submit evidence supporting the claim that any other light beers ‘taste like water.’”

    In response, Anheuser-Busch said it “appreciates” NAD’s decision.

    “True stewards of the beer industry should be working together to strengthen the beer category instead of resorting to misleading attacks that denigrate products enjoyed by millions of beer drinkers,” an Anheuser- Busch spokesperson said in a statement.

    Molson Coors is appealing the decision, saying it “vehemently disagrees with this decision because we believe light beer should taste like beer, not water, and we are well within our right to share that belief.” A spokesperson also questioned to Anheuser-Busch’s “sudden concern” with the ad since it hasn’t aired since last August.

    NAD’s decisions aren’t legally binding, however most advertisers comply with their decision. If an advertiser doesn’t comply, the ads are referred to the Federal Trade Commission for further scrutiny.

    This isn’t the first time Molson Coors and Anheuser-Busch, which are the top-selling beer makers in the US, have challenged each other. Molson Coors sued Anheuser-Busch in 2019 over Super Bowl ads that accused the Miller Lite and Coors Light maker for saying its beer was sweetened with rice rather than corn syrup. The case was dismissed.

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  • It’s never been this warm in February. Here’s why that’s not a good thing | CNN

    It’s never been this warm in February. Here’s why that’s not a good thing | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    As parts of the West and Northern US face a winter storm with blizzard conditions and significant snowfall, much of the rest of the country is experiencing a summer-like heat that has never been felt before during the month of February.

    More than 130 cities from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes could set new records for daily and monthly high temperatures this week. Highs will climb up to 80 degrees as far north as Ohio and West Virginia — certainly unusual, but becoming less so in the warming climate.

    Here’s a stark example: Before this decade, Charleston, West Virginia, had only hit 80 degrees before March three times in more than 100 years of record-keeping. But this week’s incredible warmth will mean that four of the last six years will have logged temperatures of 80 degrees, which is its normal high on June 1, in February.

    Record warmth in February — a time that’s supposed to still feel like winter — might not sound like such a bad thing, but its negative consequences spread across the plant world, sports, tourism and agriculture. And it is another clear sign that our planet is warming rapidly, experts say.

    “Whenever we get these events, we should always be thinking there’s the possibility or likelihood that human-induced climate change is increasing the likelihood of strange weather,” Richard Seager, climate researcher at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, told CNN. “The more it goes on, the more they can bring such tremendous damage.”

    A satellite image taken on February 13 shows just around 7% of the Great Lakes are covered in ice -- significantly lower than average for this time of year.

    On the Great Lakes, ice coverage reached a record low for this time of the year — the same time that the annual maximum extent of ice usually occurs. As of last week, only 7% of the five freshwater lakes were covered in ice, a sharp difference from the 35 to 40% ice cover typically expected in mid-to-late February, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

    Great Lakes ice is on a downward trend, NOAA scientists report. A recent study found a 70% decline in the lakes’ ice cover between 1973 and 2017.

    The decline in Great Lakes ice each winter may not seem like it has any harmful impact, but that ice acts as a buffer for large, wind-driven waves in the winter, scientists have reported. Without the ice, the coastlines are more susceptible to erosion and flooding.

    Ayumi Fujisaki-Manome, a research scientist at NOAA’s Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research at the University of Michigan, said low ice coverage could also set the stage for another severe lake-effect snow storm like the one Buffalo, New York, experienced in December.

    “The moisture and heat from the lake surface water are absorbed into the atmosphere by storm systems, and then fall back to the ground as snow in the winter,” Fujisaki-Manome said in a statement.

    The Lake Champlain shoreline on February 16. The lake near the access area is covered with ice, but officials are warning anglers to stay off the lake because unseasonably warm temperatures have made it unsafe.

    The thin ice has already had deadly consequences in New England.

    At Vermont’s Lake Champlain, the annual ice fishing tournament was cancelled last weekend when three fishermen died after falling through the ice. One man’s body was found hours after he was expected to return home from the lake, while the other two died after their utility vehicle broke through the ice.

    Montpelier, Vermont, had its warmest January on record this year since 1948, with Burlington recording its fifth warmest January since 1884, according to the Burlington National Weather Service.

    Robert Wilson, a professor of geography and environment at Syracuse University, said the Northeast as a whole is now a “fast-warming region,” with winter seasons warming faster than summers due to the climate crisis.

    And he underscored how this trend is threatening some of New England’s most cherished winter activities.

    “In coming decades, winter — as most people understand it — will get shorter and warmer, with less snow and more rain,” Wilson said. “This poses a serious threat to winter recreation: snowmobiling, cross-country skiing, and downhill skiing.”

    Daffodils bloom in Norfolk, Virginia, on Tuesday.

    Plants are blooming way earlier than usual across much of the country, a clear sign that spring is either right around the corner — or it has already arrived, in some places.

    “Spring is coming early in much of the Southern and Eastern US,” Brad Rippey, meteorologist with the US Department of Agriculture, told CNN. “Here in the mid-Atlantic, that means everything from budding trees to crocuses in bloom to spring peepers making lots of noise — and in February, no less.”

    Many plants species — including daffodils, witch-hazel, forsythia and even cherry blossoms — are beginning to leaf out in the East. Theresa Crimmins, director of the USA National Phenology Network, said it’s the plants responding to very early warm temperatures.

    “Plants, especially those of temperate systems, respond to a number of cues in order to wake up in the spring, including exposure to chill in the winter, exposure to warmth in the spring, and day length,” she told CNN.

    Dead or dying peach trees at Carlson Orchards in Massachusetts. Temperatures dropped below freezing in recent weeks, after abnormal warmth in January, threatening the crop.

    If another cold snap occurs after an early warm spell, Crimmins said it could be disruptive and damaging for the plants’ cycle. As flower buds develop, many species lose their ability to tolerate cold temperatures, which means a freeze could kill blooms and leave fruit crops and other commodities vulnerable to spring freezes.

    Rippey said warm winters followed by a spring freeze has become more common in recent years. In 2017, for instance, a severe spring freeze in March damaged several fruit crops — peaches, blueberries, apples and strawberries — in states including Georgia and South Carolina, which carried an economic toll of roughly $1.2 billion.

    “As nice as it feels to have temperatures in the 70s and 80s this time of year, the fact that it’s not ‘normal’ can have a profound impact on the ecosystem,” Rippey said. “Even a typical spring freeze can damage commercial and back-yard fruit crops that have been pushed into blooming by late-winter warmth.”

    India issued its first heatwave alert, with temperatures in some states reaching 39 degrees Celsius (102 Fahrenheit) – up to 9 degrees Celsius (16.2 Fahrenheit) above normal, according to data released by the India Meteorological Department on Monday.

    “The heatwave warnings as early as February is a scary situation,” Krishna AchutaRao, a professor at the Centre for Atmospheric Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, told CNN.

    It has raised fears of a repeat of last year’s deadly heatwave, which scorched swaths of India and Pakistan.

    Blistering heat has devastating consequences for people’s health, for water supplies and for crops; last year, crop yields were reduced by as much as a third in some parts of the country. As temperatures soared last spring, India banned exports of wheat, dashing hopes that the world’s second-largest wheat producer would fill the supply gap caused by the war in Ukraine.

    Commuters cover their faces with clothes to protect themselves from sun as temperatures soar in Hyderabad, India, on Wednesday.

    This February, with high temperatures hitting wheat-producing states, including Rajasthan and Gujarat, India has set up a committee to monitor the impact of rising temperatures on the crop, according to Reuters.

    Europe, too, has seen unusually high temperatures, kicking off 2023 with an extreme winter heatwave that broke January temperature records in several countries. Low levels of snow and rainfall have fueled concerns about the region’s rivers and lakes.

    The River Po, which winds through northern Italy’s agricultural heartland, fed by snow from the Alps and rainfall in the spring, is at very low levels, while water in Lake Garda in northern Italy has reached record lows. There are fears Italy, which declared a state of emergency last year after its worst drought in 70 years, may face another drought.

    The unusually warm weather has also left ski resorts across the Alps with little or no snow. In February, top skiers wrote an open letter to the International Ski and Snowboard Federation demanding action on the climate crisis.

    “The seasons have shifted,” they wrote. “Our sport is threatened existentially.”

    While ski resorts have adapted to warming by relying on artificial snow – a process that uses a lot of water and energy – Wilson noted that resorts would still need cold nighttime temperatures to make it.

    “The long-term survival of skiing and other winter recreation will depend on nations lowering their carbon emissions to avoid the more dire consequences and severe warming in the future,” he said.

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  • Why UK supermarkets are rationing fruit and vegetables | CNN Business

    Why UK supermarkets are rationing fruit and vegetables | CNN Business

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    London
    CNN
     — 

    Major UK supermarkets have started rationing the sale of some staple fruits and salad vegetables, blaming poor weather that has depressed production in Spain and north Africa.

    Tesco

    (TSCDF)    , the UK’s biggest supermarket, confirmed to CNN Wednesday that it had temporarily capped the number of packs of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers to three per customer.

    Asda told CNN that it was temporarily limiting purchases of some items to three packs per customer. These include tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and lettuce.

    “Like other supermarkets, we are experiencing sourcing challenges on some products that are grown in southern Spain and north Africa,” an Asda spokesperson said.

    Morrisons told CNN that it had imposed a cap of two packs per customer on tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and lettuce. Aldi, a German discount grocery chain, announced Wednesday that it would also introduce a limit of three packs per person on peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes in its UK stores.

    Asda, Morrisons and Aldi are Britain’s third-, fourth- and fifth-biggest supermarket chains respectively, according to market share data from Kantar.

    Sainsbury’s

    (JSAIY)    , the United Kingdom’s second-largest food retailer, told CNN it had no plans to ration the sale of fruit and vegetables.

    The rationing is another knock for British shoppers already grappling with record grocery price rises, which have inflamed the worst cost-of-living crisis in decades.

    In the four weeks to January 22, food price inflation hit 16.7%, according to Kantar. That’s its highest level since the data company started tracking the indicator in 2008.

    “The more we face shortages, the more it will drive food inflation,” Minette Batters, president of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU), which represents more than 46,000 farming and growing businesses, told the BBC Wednesday.

    A spokesperson for the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said in a statement: “We understand public concerns around the supply of fresh vegetables. However, the UK has a highly resilient food supply chain and is well-equipped to deal with disruption.”

    So what explains the empty shelves?

    Asda and Morrisons pointed the finger at poor weather in key growing regions as the main driver of the shortages.

    Andrew Woods, a sub-editor at Mintec, a commodities data company, told CNN that hotter-than-average weather in Spain and Morocco last fall, combined with a cold snap over the past two weeks, had hit production.

    The tomato crop in southern Spain is 20% smaller than a year ago, he said.

    The poorer harvests are problematic for UK retailers, reliant as they are on imports to fill their stocks at this time of year.

    According to the British Retail Consortium (BRC), a trade group, UK supermarkets import 95% of their tomatoes and 90% of their lettuce in December, and typically import the same proportions in March.

    James Bailey, executive director of supermarket Waitrose, told LBC radio Monday that snow and hail in Spain, as well as hail in parts of north Africa, had “wip[ed] out a large proportion” of key crops.

    The high-end supermarket chain told CNN that it was “monitoring the situation” but had no plans to introduce rationing.

    “Give it about [two weeks] and the other growing seasons in other parts of the world will have caught up and we should be able to get that supply back in,” Bailey added.

    The BRC also says it expects the current disruption to last a few weeks before home-grown produce arrives to fill the gaps on UK store shelves.

    “Supermarkets are adept at managing supply chain issues and are working with farmers to ensure that customers are able to access a wide range of fresh produce,” Andrew Opie, the BRC’s director of food and sustainability, told CNN.

    High input costs have contributed to the shortages of fruit and vegetables, the NFU says, as well as reduced production across the farming sector more broadly.

    “Labor shortages and soaring energy prices are hitting the poultry industry, already reeling from avian influenza, as well as horticultural businesses and pig farms,” Batters said in a speech Tuesday.

    The price of natural gas — a key input for nitrogen-based fertilizers — shot up following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year. Though gas prices have fallen back in recent weeks, they are still triple their historical average, while fertilizer costs are up 169% since 2019, Batters noted.

    Empty fruit and vegetable shelves at an Asda store in London on February 21, 2023.

    According to the NFU, the production of tomatoes and cucumbers is expected to fall to the lowest levels since the union started keeping records in 1985, on the back of crippling input costs.

    Woods at Mintec said processing and storing vegetables, such as tomatoes, was “energy intensive.”

    Europe, too, has wrestled with many of the same problems in recent months.

    “Across Europe, supplies [of tomatoes] are reportedly tight, and growers continue to grapple with higher fertilizer, energy and labor costs,” Mintec said in a note.

    Yet, currently, there are few indications — in media reports or on social media — that retailers in other countries are rationing sales.

    But Defra said in its statement Wednesday that “similar disruption is also being seen in other countries,” and that it was helping UK growers by expanding a visa scheme for seasonal workers to fill labor gaps.

    UK supermarkets have not cited Brexit as a reason for the supply crunch. But the NFU and some campaign groups argue that it has worsened labor shortages.

    Direct subsidy payments to UK farmers from the European Union are being phased out, which has increased uncertainty for farmers, Batters said in her speech. The United Kingdom plans to fully implement its own subsidy scheme by 2024.

    — Julia Horowitz contributed reporting.

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  • 145,000 cans of Enfamil ProSobee infant formula recalled over bacterial risk | CNN

    145,000 cans of Enfamil ProSobee infant formula recalled over bacterial risk | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Reckitt, one of the main formula manufacturers in the US, said Monday that it is recalling two batches of Enfamil ProSobee Simply Plant-Based Infant Formula because of possible cross-contamination with Cronobacter sakazakii bacteria.

    The recall is being conducted out of an abundance of caution, the company says, as tests of the product have been negative for the bacteria and no illnesses have been reported.

    Reckitt is recalling about 145,000 12.9-ounce cans of formula manufactured between August and September and distributed to stores across the US, Guam and Puerto Rico. They have a use-by date of March 1, 2024, on the bottom, along with the codes ZL2HZF or ZL2HZZ.

    Consumers should throw out these products or return them to the place of purchase for a refund. No other ProSobee or Reckitt products are affected.

    The company says that the cause of the issue “was linked to a material from a third party” and that it has taken “all appropriate corrective actions, including no longer sourcing this material from the supplier.”

    Cronobacter was behind a recall of Abbott Nutrition formula last year that exacerbated a nationwide shortage. Cronobacter infections are rare, but they can be serious and even fatal, especially in newborns. The bacteria lives in the environment, but infections in infants are often linked to powdered formula.

    The US Food and Drug Administration received reports of four Cronobacter illnesses and two deaths in three states last year. The infants had all consumed powdered formula made at Abbott’s Sturgis, Michigan, plant. The FDA identified Cronobacter in the plant, but genetic testing did not match it to the sick babies.

    In the wake of the recall and shortage, the FDA said it is working on a plan to enhance its surveillance of baby formula for Cronobacter.

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  • China’s capital offers $6 monthly handout to offset inflation. The public says it’s not nearly enough | CNN Business

    China’s capital offers $6 monthly handout to offset inflation. The public says it’s not nearly enough | CNN Business

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    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    Beijing will give out a $6 monthly cash subsidy to low-income residents to cushion the impact of rising food prices, a move that has unexpectedly angered many online who say the amount is far too low.

    The announcement from the city government comes as food inflation accelerated in China after policymakers scrapped their zero-Covid strategy in December and eased monetary policy further to fuel economic recovery.

    Last week, protests by retirees broke out in the cities of Wuhan and Dalian over cuts to their medical care benefits, highlighting the growing risk of unrest over livelihood issues as China’s economy struggles to regain its footing after being drained by pandemic policies.

    The demonstrations were the latest outburst of public discontent since mass protests against Covid curbs gripped the country late last year. The recent protests underscored the financial pressure on local governments, after three years of the zero-Covid policy strained their coffers and a property market slump severely eroded their income.

    According to the Beijing Municipal Commission of Development and Reform, the city’s economic regulator, more than 300,000 people on low incomes will each receive a cash payment of 40 yuan (about $6) per month. The first payment will be given out later this month and it’s unclear for how long they will continue.

    “In January, food prices in Beijing rose by 6.6%, meeting the conditions for starting the price-linked subsidy program,” the state-run Beijing Daily newspaper quoted an official from the commission as saying in a Friday report.

    “[We will] try to do a good job in ensuring the basic livelihood of the needy people … and continuously enhance the people’s sense of gain, happiness and security.”

    China launched a low-income subsidy program in 2011 to offer cash handouts to the needy when the consumer price index or food prices hit certain thresholds. Each city or region sets its own standard as living costs vary across the country.

    The news of Beijing’s latest handout was not well received by the public, who took to social media to complain about the high cost of living in the city.

    “40 yuan? Are you serious? [When] the low-income people take the subway to collect the money and then they return, they lose 8 yuan,” said one comment on Weibo.

    “Is it like an insult? [The amount] just subsidizes a bowl of noodles,” another Weibo user said.

    Some people criticized the country’s weak social welfare system, while others blasted the government’s move to write off billions of debt to other countries.

    “Can’t we question the move? Do you think the current welfare system in our country is good? Can it meet the needs of people?” one said.

    China’s consumer inflation accelerated in January, as the CPI rose 2.1% from a year earlier. Although the headline figure remains relatively low compared to other countries, food prices jumped 6.2%, with pork and fruit prices rising the most.

    In Beijing, food prices outpaced the national level. Vegetable prices soared 24% last month.

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  • Why Pizza Hut’s red roofs and McDonald’s play places have disappeared | CNN Business

    Why Pizza Hut’s red roofs and McDonald’s play places have disappeared | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    For decades, bright, playful and oddly-shaped fast-food restaurants dotted the roadside along America’s highways.

    You’d drive by Howard Johnson’s with its orange roofs and then pass Pizza Hut’s red-topped huts. A few more miles and there was the roadside White Castle with its turrets. Arby’s roof was shaped like a wagon and Denny’s resembled a boomerang. And then McDonald’s, with its neon golden arches towering above its restaurants.

    These quirky designs were an early form of brand advertising, gimmicks meant to grab drivers’ attention and get them to stop in.

    As fast-food chains spread across the US after World War II, new roadside restaurant brands needed to stand out. Television was new media not yet beamed into every single home, newspapers were still ascendant and social media unimaginable.

    So restaurant chains turned to architecture as a key tool to promote their brand and help create their corporate identity.

    But the fast-food architecture of today has lost its quirky charm and distinctive features. Shifts in the restaurant industry, advertising and technology have made fast-food exteriors bland and spiritless, critics say.

    Goodbye bright colors and unusual shapes. Today, the design is minimal and sleek. Most fast-food restaurants are built to maximize efficiency, not catch motorists’ attention. Many are shaped like boxes, decorated with fake wooden paneling, imitation stone or brick exteriors, and flat roofs. One critic has called this trend “faux five-star restaurants” intended to make customers forget they are eating greasy fries and burgers.

    The chains now sport nearly identical looks. Call it the gentrification of fast-food design.

    “They’re soulless little boxes,” said Glen Coben, an architect who has designed boutique hotels, restaurants and stores. “They’re like Monopoly homes.”

    Fast-food restaurants developed and expanded in the mid-twentieth century with the explosion of car culture and the development of interstate highways.

    Large companies came to dominate highway restaurants through a strategy known as “place-product-packaging” – the coordination of building design, decor, menu, service and pricing, according to John Jakle, the author of “Fast Food: Roadside Restaurants in the Automobile Age.”

    Fast-food chains’ buildings were designed to catch the eye of potential customers driving by at high speeds and get them to slow down.

    “The buildings had to be visually strong and bold,” said Alan Hess, an architecture critic and historian. “That included neon signs and the shape of the building.”

    A leading example: McDonald’s design, with its two golden arches sloping over the roof of its restaurant, a style known as Googie.

    A historic 1950's McDonald's restaurant in Downey, California, shown in 2015. It's the oldest McDonald's still in existence.

    Introduced in California in 1953, McDonald’s design was influenced by ultra-modern coffee shops and roadside stands of Southern California, then the heart of budding fast-food chains.

    The two 25-foot bright yellow sheet-metal arches that rose through the McDonald’s buildings were tall enough to attract drivers amid the clutter of other roadside buildings, their neon trim gleaming day and night. McDonald’s design set off a wave of similar Googie-style architecture at fast-food chains nationwide.

    Well into the 1970s, the designs were a prominent fixture of the American roadside, “imprinting the image of fast-food drive-in architecture in the popular consciousness,” Hess wrote in a journal article.

    But there was a backlash to this aesthetic. As the environmental movement developed in the 1960s, opposition to the conspicuous Googie style grew. Critics called it “visual pollution.”

    “Critics hated this populist, roadside commercial California architecture,” Hess said. Googie style fell out of fashion in the 1970s as fast-food style favored dark colors, brick and mansard roofs.

    McDonald’s new prototype became a low-profile mansard roof and brick design with shingle texture. Its arches moved from atop the building to signposts and became McDonald’s corporate logo.

    Opposition grew to garish structures like this Jack in the Box in 1970.

    “McDonald’s and Jack in the Box unfurled their neon and Day Glo banners and architectural containers against the endless sky,” the New York Times said in 1978. They have been “toned down with the changing taste of the 60’s and 70’s.” And with the growth of mass communications advertising campaigns, brands no longer relied on architectural features to stand out –they could simply flood the television airwaves.

    In the 1980s and 1990s, companies began introducing children’s play areas and party rooms to draw families – additions to existing “brown” structures, Hess said.

    The rise of mobile ordering and cost concerns since then altered modern fast-food design.

    With fewer people sitting down for full meals at fast-food restaurants, companies didn’t need elaborate dining areas. So today they’re expanding drive-thru lanes, increasing the number of pickup windows and adding digital kiosks in stores.

    A Wendy's in 2020, an example of the modernization of fast-food design.

    “We have a lot of red-roof restaurants” that “clearly need to go away,” a Pizza Hut executive said in 2018 of its classic design. The company’s new prototype, “Hut Lanes,” helps to speed up wait times at drive-thru locations.

    The new fast-food box designs with their flat roofs are more efficient to heat and cool than older structures, said John Gordon, a restaurant consultant. Kitchens have been reconfigured to speed up food preparation. They’re also cheaper to build, maintain and staff a smaller store.

    But in the effort to modernize, some say fast-food design has became homogenized and lost its creative purpose.

    “I don’t know if you’d be able to identify what they were if they had a different name on the front,” said Addison Del Mastro, an urbanist writer who documents the history of commercial landscapes. “There’s nothing to engage the wandering imagination.”

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  • Mars Wrigley fined after two workers fell into a tank of chocolate | CNN Business

    Mars Wrigley fined after two workers fell into a tank of chocolate | CNN Business

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    London
    CNN
     — 

    US regulators have fined Mars Wrigley, the maker of Snickers and Skittles, after two workers fell into a tank of chocolate at its Pennsylvania factory last June.

    The Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined the confectionery and chewing gum maker $14,500 for the incident, which it described as “serious” in a report.

    “Employees of an outside employer, I.K. Stoltzfus Service Corp., cleaned tanks, including the Dove chocolate batching 20 micron tank, owned by the onsite/host employer, Mars Wrigley,” the report said.

    Mars Wrigley failed to provide the contractors with adequate safety training, the document added.

    According to Penn Live, a local news site, firefighters rescued the workers by drilling a hole in the bottom of the tank and pulling them out. The chocolate was about waist-high, it reported.

    Mars Wrigley did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.

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  • In a market that’s gone mad, investors can embrace these dependable stocks | CNN Business

    In a market that’s gone mad, investors can embrace these dependable stocks | CNN Business

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    A version of this story first appeared in CNN Business’ Before the Bell newsletter. Not a subscriber? You can sign up right here.


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Many people don’t have the time or inclination to do deep research on stocks.

    It’s often easier to buy an exchange-traded fund that owns a basket of the top blue chips, like Apple

    (AAPL)    , Microsoft

    (MSFT)     and Amazon

    (AMZN)    . Other investors like to bet on themes and memes instead of poring over a company’s financial statements and regulatory filings. Hence the recent craze for momentum stocks like GameStop

    (GME)     and AMC

    (AMC)    .

    But for old-fashioned investors with a little gray in their hair (and veteran business journalists like yours truly) there are other ways to find winning stocks for the long haul.

    I’ve been running stock screens using market data software, first from FactSet and now from Refinitiv, on and off during the more than 20 years I’ve worked at CNN Business. (It was CNNMoney when I first started.)

    I’ve typically done this stock picking feature in early to mid February as a Stocks We Love type of story, pegging it to Valentine’s Day. (Here’s the first one I did in 2002!) So they’ve often been littered with cheesy references to how romantic it is to find a reliable company you can count on for a long-term relationship.

    Well, investing trends have changed a bit in the past two decades. Some would argue that active investing (actually choosing individual companies) is no longer in vogue thanks to the rise of passively run index funds.

    And to be fair, the experts are right, mostly. Investors usually are better off owning an index ETF. If the goal is saving for retirement in particular, a diversified mix of companies is safer than trying the riskier strategy of identifying individual winners and losers.

    But you know what they say about not being able to teach an old dog new tricks? I still believe there’s value in looking for quality stocks at bargain prices. Legendary investors like Warren Buffett and Peter Lynch of Fidelity fame would likely agree.

    With that in mind, I ran one final stock screen for this Valentine’s Day. Like my past screens, I tried to find companies with strong fundamentals (solid sales and earnings growth), low levels of debt and high returns on equity. And perhaps most importantly, I screened for companies trading at a reasonable price based on their estimated earnings.

    This screen wound up identifying 33 companies that could make sense as a buy-and-hold investment. All of them generated double-digit sales growth annually over the past five years and they are all expected to report profit growth of at least 10% a year for the next few years.

    Some of the more prominent companies on the list? IT services/consulting giant Accenture

    (ACN)     made the cut. So did software leader Adobe

    (ADBE)    , semiconductor manufacturer Analog Devices

    (ADI)    , chip equipment juggernaut Applied Materials

    (AMAT)     and Venmo owner PayPal

    (PYPL)    .

    That’s a fair amount of exposure to the tech sector. But several other non-techs made my list too.

    Auto insurer Progressive

    (PGR)     (hi Flo!), health insurer Humana

    (HUM)    , cosmetics retailer Ulta Beauty

    (ULTA)    , UGG boots and Hoka sneakers maker Deckers Outdoor

    (DECK)     and trucker JB Hunt

    (JBHT)     met my criteria.

    As did financial services firm Raymond James

    (RJF)    , perhaps most famous for having its name on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers stadium Tom Brady briefly called home.

    None of these stocks are likely to be moonshots that will surge because of comments that someone makes on Reddit. But they might offer a little more in the way of security and dependability. And after all, isn’t that what we all want from a long-term partner on Valentine’s Day?

    The broader market has continued to rally, in large part due to hopes that inflation pressures (and more Federal Reserve rate hikes) will soon be things of the past. But consumers are still skittish when it comes to buying more costly items.

    Meat processing giant Tyson Foods

    (TSN)     reported disappointing results last week, largely due to a pullback in consumer demand for pricier beef. Luxury apparel retailer Capri Holdings

    (CPRI)    , which owns the Versace, Jimmy Choo and Michael Kors brands, also posted lousy numbers.

    But shoppers still seem to be spending on more affordable goods. Pepsi

    (PEP)     reported sales and earnings last week that topped Wall Street’s targets. Fast food giant Yum! Brands

    (YUM)    , the owner of Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut, issued solid results too.

    That could bode well for several leading consumer companies that are on tap to report earnings this week, including Pepsi competitor Coca-Cola

    (KO)     as well as Restaurant Brands

    (QSR)    , the parent company of Burger King, Popeyes, Tim Horton and Firehouse Subs.

    Kraft Heinz

    (KHC)    , restaurant owner Bloomin’ Brands

    (BLMN)    , Sam Adams brewer Boston Beer

    (SAM)     and food delivery service DoorDash are also scheduled to release their latest results this week.

    The restaurant stocks in particular could do well.

    “Consumers continue to trade goods for services,” said Jharonne Martis, director of consumer research for Refinitiv, in a report. Martis noted that the restaurant and broader leisure sector has continued to outperform other consumer-related industries this year.

    Inflation is obviously still a concern for big consumer brands. Companies have to deal with the challenge of trying to pass on higher costs to customers without driving them away.

    That could become less of a problem though.

    The US government will report both its Consumer Price Index and Producer Price Index for January this week and economists are hoping for a further slowdown in year-over-year prices. Consumer prices rose 6.5% over the past 12 months through December, down from a 7.1% pace in November.

    “There are positive signs. Inflation has passed the peak so there is a little bit of a respite,” said Kathryn Kaminski. chief research strategist with AlphaSimplex.

    Higher prices were a problem for retailers during the holidays. Retail sales fell 1.1% in December from November, according to figures from the US government, following a 0.6% drop in November.

    But retail sales are expected to bounce back as inflation becomes less of an issue. Economists are forecasting a 0.9% increase in retail sales for January when those numbers come out later this week.

    Monday: Earnings from TreeHouse Foods

    (THS)    , Avis Budget

    (CAR)    , FirstEnergy

    (FE)    , IAC

    (IAC)     and Palantir

    Tuesday: US CPI; Japan GDP; UK employment report; earnings from Coca-Cola, Asahi Group, Marriott

    (MAR)    . Cleveland-Cliffs

    (CLF)    , Restaurant Brands, Suncor Energy

    (SU)    , Airbnb, Herbalife

    (HLF)    , GoDaddy

    (GDDY)     and TripAdvisor

    (TRIP)

    Wednesday: US retail sales; UK inflation; weekly crude oil inventories; annual meeting of Charlie Munger’s Daily Journal Co

    (DJCO)    ; earnings from Kraft Heinz, Lithia Motors

    (LAD)    , Sunoco

    (SUN)    , Sonic Automotive

    (SAH)    , Ryder

    (R)    , Barrick Gold

    (GOLD)    , Biogen

    (BIIB)    , Owens Corning

    (OC)    , Krispy Kreme, Cisco

    (CSCO)    , AIG

    (AIG)    , Shopify

    (SHOP)     and Boston Beer

    Thursday: US PPI; US weekly jobless claims: US housing starts and building permits; China housing prices; earnings from US Foods

    (USFD)    , Lenovo

    (LNVGF)    , Nestle

    (NSRGF)    , Paramount Global, Southern

    (SO)    , Hasbro

    (HAS)    , Hyatt

    (H)    , Bloomin’ Brands, WeWork, Applied Materials

    (AMAT)    , DoorDash, DraftKings and Redfin

    (RDFN)

    Friday: Earnings from Deere

    (DE)    , AutoNation

    (AN)    , Sands China

    (SCHYF)     and AMC Networks

    (AMCX)

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  • I tried Microsoft’s new AI-powered Bing. Here’s what it’s like | CNN Business

    I tried Microsoft’s new AI-powered Bing. Here’s what it’s like | CNN Business

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    Seattle
    CNN Business
     — 

    Microsoft’s Bing search engine has never made much of a dent in Google’s dominance in the more than 13 years since it launched. Now the company is hoping some buzzy artificial intelligence can win converts.

    Microsoft on Tuesday announced an updated version of Bing designed to combine the fun and convenience of OpenAI’s viral ChatGPT tool with the information from a search engine.

    Beyond providing a list of relevant links like traditional search engines, the new Bing also creates written summaries of the search results, chats with users to answer additional questions about their query and can write emails or other compositions based on the results. With the new Bing, for example, users can create trip itineraries, compile weekly meal plans and ask the chatbot questions when shopping for a new TV.

    This is the new era of search that Microsoft

    (MSFT)     — which is investing billions of dollars in OpenAI — envisions, one where users are accompanied by a sort of “co-pilot” around the web to help them better synthesize information. The company is betting on the new technology to drive users to Bing, which had for years been an also-ran to Google Search. Microsoft

    (MSFT)     also announced an updated version of its Edge web browser with the new Bing capabilities built in.

    The event comes as the race to develop and deploy AI technology heats up in the tech sector. Google on Monday unveiled a new chatbot tool dubbed “Bard” in an apparent bid to keep pace with Microsoft and the success of ChatGPT. Baidu, the Chinese search engine, also said this week it plans to launch its own ChatGPT-style service.

    The updated Bing and Edge launched to the public on a limited basis on Tuesday, and are set to roll out to millions of people for unlimited search queries in the coming weeks. I took Bing for a spin at a press event at Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington, headquarters Tuesday.

    The tool provides the sort of immediate gratification we now expect from the internet — rather than clicking through a bunch of links to suss out the answer to a question, the new Bing will do that work for you. But it’s still early days for the technology, which Microsoft says is still evolving.

    The homepage of the new Bing feels familiar: you can type a query into the search bar and it returns a list of links, images and other results like a typical search engine. But on the left side of the page are written summaries of the results, complete with annotations and links to the original information sources. The search field allows up to 2,000 characters, so users can type the way they’d talk, rather than having to think of the few correct search terms to use.

    Users can also click over to a “chat” page on Bing, where a chatbot can answer additional questions about their queries.

    I asked Bing to write me a five-day vegetarian meal plan. It returned a list of vegetarian meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner for Monday through Friday, such as oatmeal with fresh berries and lentil curry. I then asked it to write me a grocery list based on that meal plan, and it returned a list of all the items I’d need to buy organized by grocery store section.

    Based on my request, the Bing chatbot also wrote me an email that I could send to my partner with that grocery list, complete with a “Hi Babe” greeting and “XOXO” closing. It’s not exactly how I’d normally write, but it could save me time by giving me a draft to edit and then copy and paste into an email, rather than having to start from scratch.

    The generated portions of Bing have personality. When you ask the chatbot a question, it responds conversationally and sometimes with emojis, letting you know it’s happy to help or that it hopes you have fun on the trip you’re planning.

    With the new Edge browser, I asked the tool to summarize one of my articles, and then turn that into a social media post the length of a short paragraph with a “casual” tone that I could share on Twitter or LinkedIn.

    The new Bing is built in partnership with OpenAI — the company behind ChatGPT in which Microsoft has invested billions — on a more advanced version of the technology underlying the viral chatbot tool. Still, the new Bing has some of the quirks that the public version of ChatGPT is known for. For example, the same query may return different responses each time it’s run; this is in part just how the tool works, and in part because it’s pulling the most updated search results each time it runs.

    It also didn’t cooperate with some of my requests. After the first time it created a meal plan, grocery list and email with the list, I ran the same requests two more times. But the second and third time, it wouldn’t write the email, instead saying something like, “sorry, I can’t do that, but you can do it yourself using the information I provided!” The tool is also sensitive to the wording used in queries — a request to “create a vegetarian meal plan” provided information about how to start eating healthier, whereas “create a 5-day vegetarian meal plan” provided a detailed list of meals to eat each day.

    Even next-gen search technology isn’t immune to basic flubs. I can imagine using the tool ahead of an upcoming local election, to learn about who is running for office in my area, what their positions are and how and when to vote. But when I asked the chatbot, “when is the next election in Kings County, NY?” it returned information about the November election last year.

    The new Bing may also present some of the same concerns as ChatGPT, including for educators. I asked Bing’s chatbot to write me a 300-word essay about the major themes of the book “Pride and Prejudice” and, within less than a minute, it had pumped out 364 words on three major themes in the novel (although some of the text sounded a bit repetitive or wonky). Per my request, it then revised the essay as if it was written by a fifth grader.

    The chatbot tool has feedback buttons so users can indicate whether its answers were helpful or not, and users can also chat directly with the tool to tell it when answers were incorrect or unhelpful, the company says.

    “We know we won’t be able to answer every question every single time, … We also know we’ll make our share of mistakes, so we’ve added a quick feedback button at the top of every search, so you can give us feedback and we can learn,” Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s vice president and consumer chief marketing officer, said in a presentation.

    With some controversial search topics, it appears the new Bing chatbot simply refuses to engage. For example, I asked it, “Can you tell me why vaccines cause autism?” to see how it would react to a common medical misinformation claim, and it responded: “My apologies, I don’t know how to discuss this topic. You can try learning more about it on bing.com.” The same query on the main search page returned more standard search results, such as links to the CDC and the Wikipedia page for autism.

    Likewise, it would not return a chatbot request for how to build a pipe bomb, instead saying in its answer, “Building a pipe bomb is a dangerous and illegal activity that can cause serious harm to yourself and others. Please do not attempt to do so.” However, one of the links provided in the annotation of its answer brought me to a YouTube video with apparent instructions for building a pipe bomb.

    Microsoft says it has developed the tool in keeping with its existing responsible AI principles, and made efforts to avoid its potential misuse. Executives said the new Bing is trained in part by sample conversations mimicking bad actors who might want to exploit the tool.

    “With a technology this powerful I also know that we have an even greater responsibility to make sure that it’s developed, deployed and used properly,” said responsible AI lead Sarah Bird.

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  • More than 400 products including breakfast sandwiches and fruit cups recalled due to possible Listeria contamination | CNN

    More than 400 products including breakfast sandwiches and fruit cups recalled due to possible Listeria contamination | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    More than 400 food products sold under dozens of brand names were recalled due to possible Listeria contamination, the US Food and Drug Administration announced Friday.

    The recall by Fresh Ideation Food Group LLC includes ready-to-eat sandwiches, salads, yogurts, wraps and other products sold in nine states and Washington, DC, from January 24 through January 30.

    The Baltimore company said Friday that no illnesses have been reported so far.

    “The recall was initiated after the company’s environmental samples tested positive for Listeria monocytogenes,” Fresh Ideation Food Group said in its recall announcement.

    Eating Listeria-contaminated food can cause a serious infection that can lead to symptoms including fever, headache, diarrhea and vomiting, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    It’s most likely to sicken pregnant women and their newborns, adults aged 65 or older, and people with weakened immune systems, according to the CDC. “An estimated 1,600 people get listeriosis each year, and about 260 die,” the agency says.

    The recalled foods were distributed in Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Virginia, according to the FDA.

    The products – which included items like bacon, egg and cheddar muffins, breakfast croissants, tuna and chicken sandwiches, and fruit cups – were sold in stores, vending machines and by transportation providers, according to the company.

    “All recalled products have a Fresh Creative Cuisine label and/or identifier on the bottom of the label with the Fresh Creative Cuisine name and a fresh through or sell through date ranging from January 31, 2023 through February 6, 2023,” the company said.

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  • Trader Joe’s asked customers to rank their nine top products. Here they are | CNN Business

    Trader Joe’s asked customers to rank their nine top products. Here they are | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Trader Joe’s asked its customers a simple question: If you were to spend the rest of your life on a deserted island, which nine Trader Joe’s products would you take with you?

    More than 18,000 customers responded to its 14th annual survey ranking the grocery store’s most popular items in nine different categories.

    There were some caveats this year: Gone from the running were five products that have won many times in the past (think Mandarin Orange Chicken and dark chocolate peanut butter cups), and instead are featured in its Product Hall of Fame.

    The first Trader Joe’s opened in Pasadena, California, in 1967. Its founder Joe Coulombe (yes, Joe was a real guy), was a convenience store owner who wanted to open a grocery chain to appeal to a niche market of well-educated, well-traveled consumers. The idea led him to create a cult-favorite grocery empire.

    Here are the products customers voted their favorites, in categories from cheese to entrees.

    Chili & Lime Flavored Rolled Tortilla Chips, spicy corn chips, swept the competition this year, taking home the top prize. Runners-up included the hash browns, chicken soup dumplings, Everything but the Bagel sesame seasoning blend, and chocolate croissants.

    See the all-time favorites included in Trader Joe’s Hall of Fame

    The chips also won in the poll’s favorite snack category. Customers were also fans of the Organic Elote Corn Chip Dippers, Organic Corn Chip Dippers, World’s Puffiest White Cheddar Corn Puffs and Crunchy Curls, which were all among the top vote-getters.

    The Sparkling Honeycrisp Apple Juice was the fans’ favorite beverage, though it is seasonal. The canned drink is a simple three-ingredient blend of apple juice, water and bubbles.

    Following is the Triple Ginger Brew, Sparkling Peach Black Tea with peach juice, Sparkling Cranberry & Ginger Beverage and the Non-Dairy Brown Sugar Oat Creamer.

    Trader Joe's Cheddar Cheese with Caramelized Onions

    Now that Hall of Famer Unexpected Cheddar is no longer an option in the poll, the store’s cheddar cheese with caramelized onions took home top accolades.

    See the full list of customer choice award winners

    Runners-up included Syrah Soaked Toscano, seasonal Baked Lemon Ricotta, Blueberry & Vanilla Chèvre and its various bries.

    Replacing the longtime Mandarin Orange Chicken is Trader Joe’s Butter Chicken – spiced chicken in a tomato and cream sauce with basmati rice.

    Indian is popular with Trader Joe’s customers. Second runner-up was Chicken Tikka Masala, followed by Kung Pao Chicken, Butternut Squash Mac & Cheese and BBQ Teriyaki Chicken.

    Seasonal candles won out in this category. Its seasonal scents include Peony Blossom, Cedar Balsam, Honeycrisp Apple and Vanilla Pumpkin.

    Runners-up: Daily Facial Sunscreen, Ultra-Moisturizing Hand Cream, Tea Tree Tingle Shampoo & Conditioner, and Shea Butter & Coconut Oil Hair Mask.

    Unsurprisingly, customers voted bananas as their top choice. The chain is known for its 25-cent organic bananas and 19-cent regular bananas. Following choices were Teeny Tiny Avocados, Honeycrisp Apples, Brussels Sprouts and Organic Carrots of Many Colors.

    The tiny and crunchy Hold the Cone! Mini Ice Cream Cones won top dessert, followed by Danish Kringle, Sublime Ice Cream Sandwiches, Chocolate Lava Cakes and Brookie.

    Trader Joe's Vegan Kale, Cashew & Basil Pesto spread onto a grilled Portabella mushroom burger, topped with roasted red peppers and fresh greens

    Among its many vegan and vegetarian options, the Vegan Kale, Cashew & Basil Pesto came out on top. Vegetable Fried Rice, Beefless Bulgogi, Palak Paneer, Cauliflower Gnocchi followed.

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  • Beloved ‘Weinerman’ statue returned to West Virginia restaurant | CNN

    Beloved ‘Weinerman’ statue returned to West Virginia restaurant | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A West Virginia restaurant is celebrating after its beloved “Weinerman” statue was returned.

    The statue was stolen from Dairy Winkle, a restaurant in Charleston, Kanawha County, West Virginia, according to a January 19 news release from the Kanawha County Sheriff’s Office.

    The business suffered a fire on January 11. The restaurant owner reported that in the days after the fire, someone broke into the building and stole the statue.

    The treasured statue depicts a smiling anthropomorphic hot dog licking its lips and squeezing bottles of ketchup and mustard. The sheriff’s office described the figurine as a “cherished novelty of the business” with a value of $1,000.

    Sheriffs received a tip about the statue’s whereabouts and found it. The statue was safely returned, undamaged, to the Dairy Winkle, according to the news release.

    On Facebook, the restaurant’s owner expressed gratitude for the officers who helped return the statue. “Weinerman had been found and had been safely returned to the DairyWinkle,” reads the post. “Thank you to the officers who returned him home.”

    A suspect has not been identified and an active investigation is underway, according to the sheriffs’ news release.

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  • Madison Square Garden CEO doubles down on use of facial recognition tech | CNN Business

    Madison Square Garden CEO doubles down on use of facial recognition tech | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    The chief executive of the Madison Square Garden Entertainment Corporation has doubled down on using facial recognition at its venues to bar lawyers suing the group from attending events.

    Speaking to Fox 5 on Thursday, MSG Executive Chairman and CEO James Dolan said Madison Square Garden is a private company and therefore entitled to determine who is allowed to enter its venues for events.

    “At Madison Square Garden, if you’re suing us, we’re just asking of you – please don’t come until you’re done with your argument with us,” he said. “And yes, we’re using facial recognition to enforce that.”

    His comments come after New York Attorney General Letitia James on Wednesday sent a letter to MSG Entertainment requesting information regarding its use of facial recognition technology to prohibit legitimate ticketholders from entering venues. The letter said the attorney general’s office has reviewed reports MSG Entertainment has used facial recognition to identify and deny entry to multiple lawyers affiliated with law firms involved in ongoing litigation with the company. The letter indicates thousands of attorneys from around 90 law firms may have been impacted by the policy, and said the ban includes those holding season tickets.

    The attorney general’s letter raised the concern that banning individuals from accessing venues over ongoing litigation may violate local, state, and federal human rights laws, including laws prohibiting retaliation. The letter also questions whether the facial recognition software used by MSG Entertainment is reliable and what safeguards are in place to avoid bias and discrimination.

    In a press release, James said, “MSG Entertainment cannot fight their legal battles in their own arenas. Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall are world-renowned venues and should treat all patrons who purchased tickets with fairness and respect. Anyone with a ticket to an event should not be concerned that they may be wrongfully denied entry based on their appearance, and we’re urging MSG Entertainment to reverse this policy.”

    MSG Entertainment owns and operates several venues in New York, including Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, the Hulu Theater, and the Beacon Theatre. Madison Square Garden is the home of the New York Knicks, Rangers, professional boxing, and college basketball teams.

    In a statement Thursday, an MSG spokesperson told CNN, “To be clear, our policy does not unlawfully prohibit anyone from entering our venues and it is not our intent to dissuade attorneys from representing plaintiffs in litigation against us. We are merely excluding a small percentage of lawyers only during active litigation.”

    “Most importantly,” the spokesperson added, “to even suggest anyone is being excluded based on the protected classes identified in state and federal civil rights laws is ludicrous. Our policy has never applied to attorneys representing plaintiffs who allege sexual harassment or employment discrimination.”

    In the Fox 5 interview Thursday, Dolan said when the attorneys suing MSG finish their litigation, they will be welcome back to the venues. “If your next door neighbor sues you, if somebody sues you, right, that’s confrontational. It’s adversarial and it’s fine, people are allowed to sue,” he said. “But at the same time, if you’re being sued, right, you don’t have to welcome the person into your home, right?”

    Dolan defended the use of facial recognition technology, saying it’s useful for security and noting that he believes Madison Square Garden to be one of the safest venues in the country. “Basically, anytime that you go out in public, you’re on camera,” he said. “Believe me, you walk down the street, you’re on camera, you’re on 10 cameras. What facial recognition does is looks at, you know, recognizes your face, and says you know, are you someone who’s on this list.”

    Dolan claimed the State Liquor Authority has threatened MSG’s license over its use of facial recognition technology. The New York State Liquor Authority told CNN it issued a “letter of advice” to MSG, after receiving a complaint in mid-November over attorneys engaged in litigation against the company not being allowed to enter its premises.

    “After receiving a complaint, the State Liquor Authority followed standard procedure and issued a Letter of Advice explaining this business’ obligation to keep their premises open to the public, as required by the Alcoholic Beverage Control Law,” Joshua Heller, a State Liquor Authority spokesperson, told CNN.

    The SLA told CNN an investigation into the matter is “ongoing”.

    During the Fox interview, Dolan apparently threatened to shut down sales of liquor during an unspecified upcoming New York Rangers game, and said he would direct any upset patrons to the liquor authority to complain.

    Dolan also pushed back at the suggestion that he’s being “too sensitive.”

    “The Garden has to defend itself,” Dolan said. “If you sue us, right, you know we’re going to tell you not to come.”

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  • There’s actually a presale for Oreo’s newest flavor | CNN Business

    There’s actually a presale for Oreo’s newest flavor | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    In the past, Oreo has partnered with Lady Gaga, Pokémon and Ritz on new limited-time flavors. Now, it’s working with … itself. And Martha Stewart.

    The cookie brand’s latest limited-edition cookie is an Oreo stuffed with Oreos.

    Dubbed “the Most OREO OREO,” the cookie is made with the usual chocolate wafers, filled (to the “Most Stuf” extreme) with a creme that has Oreo bits mixed in, for a meta cookies-n-creme experience. The flavor is available for pre-sale through the Oreo website starting Tuesday, and will hit shelves at major retailers nationwide starting on January 30 for a suggested retail price of $4.99.

    The packages come with a QR code that allows buyers to access online games and chances to win prizes in the so-called Oreoverse — Oreo’s entrée into the metaverse, a virtual space where people interact through avatars. Those with VR headsets can use them to access the Oreoverse. Others can just use their phones or computers.

    For brands, the metaverse promises a whole new way to reach young customers, and Oreo isn’t the only brand trying to market to people using new online spaces.

    Coca-Cola

    (KO)     has paired its high-concept limited-edition flavors like Starlight, Byte and Dreamworld with online experiences including virtual concerts, digital outfits and custom places within video games like Fortnite. Kraft Heinz

    (KHC)     has placed Lunchable logos in Roblox, and Heinz-sponsored rest areas in Call of Duty.

    Oreo sees it as a new way to reach consumers, and for them to interact.

    Martha Stewart with the Most Oreo Oreo.

    “We love to create new opportunities for our fans to connect with each other,” said Julia Rosenbloom, Oreo’s senior brand manager, in a statement announcing the new flavor, noting “we’re so excited to enter the metaverse!”

    To help launch the Oreoverse, Oreo tapped Martha Stewart and Ryan McCallister, her gardener and quarantine buddy. On Monday, Stewart and McCallister will share their Oreoverse experiences on Oreo’s social media channels.

    Stewart also recently partnered with Tito’s Handmade Vodka on a tongue-in-cheek campaign that offers those observing dry January other ways to make use of vodka, llke putting a splash (or two) in a marinara sauce or deodorizing stinky boots.

    — CNN’s Jordan Valinsky contributed to this report.

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  • As egg prices rise, so do attempts to smuggle them from Mexico, say US Customs officials | CNN

    As egg prices rise, so do attempts to smuggle them from Mexico, say US Customs officials | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    High prices are driving an increase in attempts to bring eggs into the US from Mexico, according to border officials.

    Officers at the San Diego Customs and Border Protection Office have seen an increase in the number of attempts to move eggs across the US-Mexico border, according to a tweet from director of field operations Jennifer De La O.

    “The San Diego Field Office has recently noticed an increase in the number of eggs intercepted at our ports of entry,” wrote De La O in the Tuesday tweet. “As a reminder, uncooked eggs are prohibited entry from Mexico into the U.S. Failure to declare agriculture items can result in penalties of up to $10,000.”

    Bringing uncooked eggs from Mexico into the US is illegal because of the risk of bird flu and Newcastle disease, a contagious virus that affects birds, according to Customs and Border Protection.

    In a statement emailed to CNN, Customs and Border Protection public affairs specialist Gerrelaine Alcordo attributed the rise in attempted egg smuggling to the spiking cost of eggs in the US. A massive outbreak of deadly avian flu among American chicken flocks has caused egg prices to skyrocket, climbing 11.1% from November to December and 59.9% annually, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

    The increase has been reported at the Tijuana-San Diego crossing as well as “other southwest border locations,” Alcordo said.

    For the most part, travelers bringing eggs have declared the eggs while crossing the border. “When that happens the person can abandon the product without consequence,” said Alcordo. “CBP agriculture specialists will collect and then then destroy the eggs (and other prohibited food/ag products) as is the routine course of action.”

    In a few incidents, travelers did not declare their eggs and the products were discovered during inspection. In those cases, the eggs were seized and the travelers received a $300 penalties, Alcordo explained.

    “Penalties can be higher for repeat offenders or commercial size imports,” he added.

    Alcordo emphasized the importance of declaring all food and agricultural products when traveling.

    “While many items may be permissible, it’s best to declare them to avoid possible fines and penalties if they are deemed prohibited,” he said. “If they are declared and deemed prohibited, they can be abandoned without consequence. If they are undeclared and then discovered during an exam the traveler will be subject to penalties.”

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