The Trim, vol 322: Potatoes, confetti illusion & chicken wine

Hello!

Here are my favourite food and drink reads from the past week. I hope you enjoy them.

Julia

What Caught My Eye This Week

Potato armageddon: B-hive Innovations might just be one of the most futuristic companies in Britain. On a weekday afternoon, I find a mood of intense focus among the scientists, young men and women tapping at screens filled with inscrutable figures. The managing director, Vidyanath Gururajan, is taking me from desk to desk introducing his head of machine-learning, saying hello to his signal-processing guy, dropping terms like ‘military-grade ultrasonics’ and ‘tetraploid chromosomes’ and ‘clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats’. If it weren’t for the potato-shaped stress toys on each desk, I might assume that this is all to prepare us for some terrifying 21st-century form of mecha-biological warfare. In fact, these men and women are here to save us from a more unimaginable fate. They are here to save us from a future without potatoes. [The Telegraph]

Plymouth fish finger: Fish fingers are loved by children, nostalgic adults and?Nigella Lawson, but soon schools in Plymouth could see an upgrade. A scheme in the seaside city is hoping to supply its primary and secondary schools with fish fingers made from locally caught fish. And not the typical cod or haddock, but lesser-known species including pouting and dogfish. [...] Creating the fish finger itself proved tricky. Would it be the classic rectangle or more of a goujon? How would the breadcrumbs stick, and how golden should they be? Most importantly, would children enjoy dogfish, with its stronger flavour than generic white fillets? At workshops with students at Sir John Hunt Community Sports College, a secondary school in north Plymouth, the answer was a resounding yes. “Most things taste delicious if you deep-fry them,” Bennett joked. [The Observer ]

The waste food upcycled into new products: At AIO in Estonia, work is afoot to use a microbe found in leftover sawdust (one of the country's biggest waste products), spent grain and tea leaves "to transform side streams containing sugars or alcohols or organic acids into fats and oils", explains Nemailla Bonturi, its co-founder. The end result is an upcycled version of palm oil (without the real version's deforestation footprint) and coconut oil (considered to be yet more harmful in terms of deforestation), which they want to use in food, cosmetics and animal feed. "We know that our process takes at least ten times less time to produce, ten times less water and ten times less land" [than those products]; CO2 emissions are far reduced too, she adds. [BBC Future]

The 50-year-old technology that brands and retailers are trying to quit: GS1 is working with brands and retailers on a project known as Sunrise 2027, with the goal of a full transition from traditional UPC barcodes to point-of-sale enabled QR codes within the next three years. [...] Coca-Cola said it has run some real-world tests with retail partners on items with both a barcode and a QR code enabled for point-of-sale systems. Last year, it tested some limited-edition Fanta flavors around Halloween, said?Brad Spickert, Coca-Cola’s senior vice president of supply chain for North America.?The tests proved that the technology works, Spickert said. What still needs to be figured out, he added, is how to educate consumers who are used to scanning barcodes at?the self-checkout. The fact that consumers?don’t always love interacting with QR codes could also create some complexity. [WSJ]

The 'confetti illusion' makes fruit appear riper than it is: In the supermarket you inspect oranges in a net bag. They look ripe and appetizing. Then, when you get home, you are shocked: they’re still green! This is caused by a perceptual phenomenon known as color assimilation or?the confetti illusion: objects appear to take on the color of a pattern placed over them. The product sells better when it’s in a net that’s the color of specimens of perfect ripeness. What is already well known in the fruit-and-vegetable trade now has a scientific basis. [Scientific American]

How Walmart became a force in a $54bn retail advertising industry: Even as analysts expect retail media to grow, they see the potential for new flashpoints in the relationship between big retailers and big brands — including concerns that brands will feel pressure to buy ads to improve their access to retail shelves. In a Forrester survey, 19 per cent of consumer marketing executives said their motivation for spending on retail media was to have stronger partnerships with retailers. “I was talking to an executive at a big [consumer packaged goods] brand who said that for her, buying advertising from Walmart feels like tithing to the church,” Lai said. [FT]

How Costco hacked the American shopping psyche: By and large, Americans do not trust corporations. But when asked which companies they do trust, they consistently rank Costco near the top. “They’re selling the same food everyone else is selling,” Smith said. “It’s not like the products are magical. But they created a culture.” Sol Price wanted Costco members to feel respected and smart. The company remains known for its no-questions-asked return policy, high-quality products and cheerful customer service. Employees are paid significantly better (an average of $26 per hour) than their counterparts at major retailers (an average $17 per hour). That helps create “a stable, motivated, capable team,” said Zeynep Ton, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. [...] Another, less obvious way Costco keeps faith with its members is by not selling shelf space. “Many retailers ask suppliers to pay for a position in a store,” said Mark Stovin, a former Costco executive who now works for OSMG, a leading food broker. “Costco would never do that.” [New York Times]

No Name discounter launches in Canada: Loblaw Companies Ltd. is piloting a new ultra-discount store concept to help customers save. Based on one of the grocer’s discount private label brands,?Loblaw?will open three value-based No Name stores in three Ontario markets.?The company says the new format will help customers save up to 20% on everyday grocery and household essentials by lowering operating costs and carrying only a targeted assortment of products. [CSA]

Gut health meets hydration: Thanks to online trends like “Watertok” and an overall growing interest in wellness, more people are flocking to hydration products. There is also an increased awareness of the gut microbiome and digestion that’s fueling sales of probiotics supplements, which has led to more snacks and drinks using these ingredients. [US brand] Blume is known for its functional latte mixes, made with superfoods like turmeric and beetroot, which are geared at managing caffeine and sugar intake. Now, the company is leveraging a new water elixir line as a growth lever to cater to its customers’ hydration needs. [Modern Retail]

Chick-Fil-A to launch streaming service: Deadline understands that the fast-food firm has been working with a number of major production companies, including some of the studios, to create family-friendly shows, particularly in the unscripted space. It is also in talks to license and acquire content. [Deadline]

Brain Candy

Chicken wine: The fandom is real. Chicken wine is huge on TikTok, where users show off fridges packed with pink bottles; organise parties around it; and post themselves dancing to?Charli XCX?with the caption ‘Brat summer is cracking open a bottle of chicken wine to get drunk in your bedroom’ (@stephmariebooth). The glamorous staff of a PR agency in London tell me ‘our entire company is run on it’; when they get together for a bottle or five, the person doing the pouring dresses up as a chicken. [Grazia]

What is demure food? Lebron herself says it’s all about skipping the wings after work and going for a salad, but I don’t think salad and mindfulness here explicitly means diet; it means to be “just enough.” But is it more demure to show restraint and skip the avocado, or is the avocado’s cool simplicity actually the pinnacle of demure? Bacon feels distinctly not demure, as does cheese — but then, the French excel at demure and they consume cheese exclusively so that doesn’t quite add up either. [Eater]

Food truck offers seagull insurance: Customers of a food truck on the Isle of Man have been offered the chance to take out "seagull insurance" in case their snacks are "snatched" by the birds. Hawkins BBQ said it had launched the ￡1 daily policy guaranteeing replacement food after seeing an increase in the number of incidents at its coastal pop-ups. [BBC News]

Mayo-inspired fragrance: Hellmann’s has partnered with Tennessee Titans quarterback Will Levis to release Will Levis No. 8, a fragrance based on the smell of Hellmann’s signature product. The just-released scent combines hints of tart lemon, coffee, musk, vanilla, and something the company is calling “mayonnaise accord.” [Food and Wine]