Last year China claimed that they had CREATED an artificial snowfall.  The boasted that they launched artillery shells into the atmosphere with enough silver in it to cause snow to fall on drought-stricken Tibet (Silver-what can't it do?).  Maybe war IS the answer, no?

Flash forward to right now, when central China, the nation's bread basket, is completely blanketed with an unheard-of 2 and a half feet of snow.  China's vegetable crop, which largely relies upon green-houses, is completely wiped out for the year (ALL the greenhouses supposedly collapsed), and its grain crop's future is uncertain.

And this is all going to make YOUR life a pain in the neck. 

Now I'm assuming here that I don't have too large a Chinese readership, but for any Chinese out there reading this, my thoughts and prayers are with you.  But no, most of you are probably in the United States, and are asking yourselves, "why do I care about the snow-falls in China?"  I mean, it's not like we import all of our vegetables from there, and it's not like we can't feed ourselves....

Ah, but we do buy a great deal of our food on foreign markets, much of it coming from South America, a lot of it coming from Europe (Italy is the world's largest exporter of Organic food).  Maybe we don't buy from China, but soon, VERY soon, China will be shopping in the same markets we are.

China, in order to feed its hungry, affluent urban population, will look to the same markets we look to for food, and they will start buying up vegetables and grains that we might otherwise buy.  Prices will go up for what food is availble, and given the state of our economy (and the value of the dollar), we're not likely to be able to get the food we're accustomed to eating at the prices we're accustomed to paying.

Globalization makes a lot of sense to American business owners, provided we have the greatest buying power.  But now that we're not at the top of the food chain, we may want to re-appraise our stance on free trade, since there has NEVER been a greater misnomer. 

I'm very curious about what our president will say in his up-coming State of the Union address about Inflation.  Anyone doubting that we're in an inflatory period hasn't been paying attention to the price of food, which makes sense since the government's measure of inflation ignores food (and oil) prices.  Inflation is very real, and tied to many strange things, like snow-fall in China.

There's the old saying that it's tough to measure the effect that a butterfly's beating wings on the other side of the Earth has on the weather, but there is SOME effect.  Consider yourself effected by something a bit larger than a butterfly flopping about over there.

-Ian, peeled skinny, soon to be skinnier 

Posted by iankusc at 05:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Greetings Snackers, 

Just, JUST got back from San Diego's Fancy Food Show where Peeled Snacks unveiled its new packaging, its new ORGANIC Picks, and its new super-cool Southern California celebrity sales-rep, Megan.  It's been a month without a blog, thanks to, you know, the holidays, and then a vicious travel schedule, and of course all the flack from Johnny Appleseed's guest spot.  We're STILL cleaning up the apple cores.

So Peeled Snacks was a HIT out yonder on that Western shore, which makes complete sense given a: we're totally yummy, and b: those Californians do love their healthy food.  We'd pitched to them last year but decided against focusing on the West Coast since, well, we're New Yorkers.  But 2008 is the year we push the competition into the Pacific!  Its Mani-Feast Destiny, I tell ya!

But then again, WHAT competition? 

The Fancy Food Show has for years introduced all the best gourmet products to the marketplace, and been a great place to learn about trends.  But at this year's Winter show the trends were all of the unhealthy variety, and clearly were going to be quickly thinned.  The show positively ABOUNDED with 3 things: spreads & sauces, tea, and chocolate.  When I write "abound", I hope that you're reading into it, "bound to not make it to 2009".

Quick digests:  Sauces and dips have great profit margins and great shelf-lives, and there are successes out there to imitate.  But there's only so much room on store shelves for "tamarind-wassabi dip", and only so much interest for yet ANOTHER jerk flavored BBQ sauce.  Few of those dip companies will make it through the year, but since most dips cost a pittance to make, it hardly matters- not too much money will be lost.

Tea, similarly, has too many competitors, and like sauces they last a long time and have tremendous profit margins.  After all, any business that's fueled economies and rebellions for 500 years can't be all THAT bad.  But most of these "tea" companies are really just branding companies- they're trying to make tea sexy, or wholesome, or politically concious, or global.  I just don't see the market out there- who's going to pack $1.25 for a tea bag just because it comes from tea leaves grown by French Huguenot albinos in Greenland.

Chocolate is the WORST.  I mean, I have oodles of chocolatier friends, and I like them ALL, and chocolate just ALWAYS tastes yummy to me.  But how many exotic chocolate bars does Whole Foods need?  Like, 2?  Bars with curry, bars with lavender, bars made by Mekong dolphins trained by French-Canadian midgets, the world only has so much appetite for such things, and the stores only have so much room.  It sucks to be friends with 10 different chocolatiers (all great people), when you know that within 2 years, 9 of them won't have a job.

We've seen it before in other categories- 2 years ago, the show was PACKED with new, exotic coffees.  Now, they're all gone.  1 year ago, sea salt was all the rage.  Sionara, salt makers.  At this Summer's show, probably one out of every 4 booths was trying to sell Goji-berries in some form or another, but none of them even made it 6 months!  Want to know why?  Goji Berries Taste BAD!

But nobody bothered with our category, which means one of two things- either Peeled Snacks is well ahead of the trends and going to make money hand-over-fist.... or people really don't actually want what we have to sell. 

I'm pretty darn sure that we're just in the forefront of the trends, if not the trend setter.  We'll soon see, though.  2008 is year 1 for Peeled Snacks!

Posted by iankusc at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)