Discontents: 1. Summer Time Faves. 2. Kroger Shareholders Reject Living Wages For Employees. 3. Robot Pricing Overlords Are Here. 4. Immigrants. 5. Tunes.
1. Summer Time Faves.
Well, the heat dome has settled in over much of North America, hurricane season is already in terrifyingly high gear and the wildfires that never really ended have started up all over again. Must be summer! But it also means nice air conditioning, some beach time, hiking and cycling, startlingly hot commutes and plenty of light meals and snacking.
Here are a few lighter, brighter faves I have been enjoying under the wilting gaze of the Neo-Cretaceous summer sun.
Cocojune.
Ok, so this one took me by surprise. I helped launch the first ever coconut milk yogurt with the old, pre-Danone, pre-White Wave, So Delicious team in 2009 or so. So I have long considered coconut yogurts kind of passe. No longer. This stuff is rich, creamy, only a little coco-nutty flavored and pretty versatile. Is it a desert? Is it breakfast? Snack? Does it spruce up my lame-ish take on a parfait with some grain-free granola and organic blueberries? All of the above? Just not too often, this shit is pricey. But worth it.
Little Sesame Hummus.
Hummus is sooo boring. Why are there so many hummus brands? All you need is some Cedar’s. They are the standard. The Lebanese dudes already perfected hummus. But if you are feeling a little adventurous and want to branch out, I highly recommend Little Sesame. The name says it all, sunny vibes. Creamy, heavy on the tahini with an assertive splash of lemon. So bright! Perfect for summer.
Nixie Sparkling Water.
In case you are in the mood for a flavored seltzer -ahem- “sparkling water” that doesn’t taste like Lysol, bug spray or floor cleaner, there is Nixie. The brainchild of Late July founder Nicole Dawes, these bright, almost juicy, zero calorie, zero sugar seltzers are great to pound after a long day or just sip while sitting in the breeze, with no unpleasant palate afterburn.
Okra.
I have lived in the American South for over 20 years, most of my adult life. While I will always self-identify as a New Yorker, I am a default southerner at this point. “Y’all”. There, I said it.
Okra is such a southern thing, climate appropriate with the swampy vibes. I grew it in my garden for years, the 6 or 7 foot high stalks thriving in the searing July heat, sprouting dozens of little okra pods daily. I could never keep up with the okra but really started to love cooking with it. I will even order okra in takeout Indian food (bindi masala is so good). I recently found some local, organic okra at Wheatsville Co-op in South Austin.
Tofu. Any (organic) tofu.
I love tofu. It is perfect for summer, light, dense and filling. Tofu is an ancient recipe that is still far superior to most of what passes for “plant-based” meat analogues. Tofu is what you make of it. Like it plain? Just slice and dice. Breaded, grilled, deep fried, yeah, cool. In a curry, no worry. In a stir-fry, just drop it on in. With eggs or instead of eggs? Sure, whatever works for you. Tofu is the bomb. Satiating, high in protein. My friend Ralphie from Morris Park was a high school wrestling champion that grew up on pizza and takeout Chinese yet encouraged me to eat more tofu. Tofu triggers Nazi snowflakes who throw “soy-boy” around like it’s an insult. Well, this “soy-boy” benches 250 and will give you an alt-right to your skull. Tofu. It’s what’s for dinner.
Gefilte Fish.
The ultimate Jewish soul food. Literally made of sole. Or pike or whitefish. Or whatever discounted filets your bubbie used to bring home from the local fishmonger. Now industrialized in BPA-free glass jars. In “liquid broth” or gelatinous ooze. Kosher chitlins. A taste acquired through the trauma of 2,000 years of diaspora and way too many boring, endless Passover seders. Gefilte fish has protein and is quite filling, even if it deletes the taste from your mouth. Yet it goes well on salads, over hash browns or sliced up with some horseradish mustard and sauerkraut, just like in the old country. Why wait for the holidays to suffer so wonderfully? Gefilte fish, all year round.
Grillo’s Half Sour Pickles.
This is tragic. I finished them in one sitting. So sad now.
2. Kroger Shareholders Reject Living Wage Policy.
Kroger shareholders overwhelmingly voted to reject a living wage policy. Over 80% of shareholders voted against the proposal. The company had urged shareholders to reject the proposal.
The proposal would have pressured Kroger to pay “a living wage to prevent contributing to inequality and racial/gender disparity,” according to the grocer’s announcement about its annual meeting.
According to the 2023 Kroger ESG Report, “In 2022, (Kroger) raised our average hourly rates by more than 6%, adding up to an incremental investment of over $1.9 billion in associate wages since 2018. Our average hourly wage is more than $18.” This is far below what would constitute a living wage anywhere Kroger stores operate.
According to MIT, a living wage is what a “full-time worker must earn on an hourly basis to help cover the cost of their family’s minimum basic needs where they live while still being self-sufficient”. A living wage is not an “enjoying life” wage or a “thriving wage” and doesn’t account for the cost of doing things that bring joy or enlightenment, like going to the movies, buying comic books, doing a yoga class or unloading a few rounds at the firing range.
The Shareholder Commons, LGIM America, and Zevin Asset Managemen proposal would have established wage policies “reasonably designed to provide workers with the minimum earnings necessary to meet a family’s basic needs.” In a recent survey, 75 percent of Kroger workers said they were food insecure, 14 percent said they were homeless, and 63 percent said they earned too little to cover basic expenses.
“At Kroger, the average hourly wage isn’t enough to sustain a single adult with no children, even in low-cost areas,” said Sara Murphy, Chief Strategy Officer, The Shareholder Commons. “This failure to provide a living wage to people who work for a living threatens the entire economy, and thus the investment portfolios of the average diversified investor. By underpaying so many of its employees, Kroger may believe it will increase margins and thus financial performance. But gain in company profit that comes at the expense of society and the economy is a bad trade for company shareholders who are diversified and rely on broad economic growth to achieve their financial objectives.”
“We co-filed this proposal at a time when surveys have shown that Native American, African American and Latinx workers at Kroger are more likely to experience challenges such as housing insecurity,” said Marcela Pinilla, Director of Sustainable Investing at Zevin Asset Management. “Our proposal asks the Board to set a Company compensation policy of paying a living wage to prevent contributing to inequality and racial or gender disparity. The deficit in cost of living is widespread across retail, but especially amid merger negotiations with Albertson’s, we are looking for quality jobs at the frontlines, and they start with wages.”
“We had to take a strike vote and threaten to walk off of the job the last time our contract was renegotiated, just to get the small gains we’ve been able to achieve,” said Miesha Smith, a cashier at Ralphs in Los Angeles and a member of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 770. “But inflation has eroded most of our gains over the last few years and our paychecks aren’t keeping up.”
“Over the last three decades we’ve watched Kroger grow bigger and bigger by acquiring competing grocery chains, and as Kroger did so it gained more power over its workforce, driving down real wages and standards for our members,” said Andrea Zinder, President of UFCW Local 324. “Now Kroger wants to buy its biggest direct competitor Albertsons, which would give it the ability to lower standards even more–that’s why we’re opposing this merger.”
Kathy Finn, President of UFCW Local 770 said, “We're disappointed that Kroger shareholders refused to pass the living wage policy proposal. Kroger employees need higher wages, and many of them need more hours, so they can earn enough to afford even basic living expenses—not empty praise and free financial counseling. We will continue to fight the proposed mega-merger between Kroger and Albertsons that threatens good-paying, union jobs, and endangers food access for all in California and across the country. ”
Last year Kroger shareholders overcame opposition from company management and voted to pass a resolution calling on Kroger to become more transparent on its race and gender pay equity. As a result, in February, Kroger released its first Statement on Pay Equity and found “no meaningful differences in pay on an adjusted basis.” But Kroger’s adjustment methodology appears to obscure the pay inequities that UFCW workers in Southern California have documented in a compensation comparison between Food 4 Less and Ralphs workers.
3. Robot Overlords Now Setting Food Prices
A press release from Luca, a Y Combinator-backed pricing engine founded by the ex-Uber Pricing team, has announced the company is working with Good Eggs, a California-based online grocer focused on high quality and locally sourced, sustainable groceries.
According to the release, Good Eggs will leverage Luca’s platform “to automate and optimize pricing and promotional decisions using Luca’s value-based pricing and competitor intelligence platforms, saving hours of manual work on pricing management and creating P&L value from science-based price optimization”.
An executive at Good Eggs stated, “With Luca, we are able to price holistically while removing the grunt-work of manual price changes. Within weeks, we observed a measurable profitability bump.” Lower labor costs and higher profits means we will be seeing much more of this technology.
Or as a friend of mine in category managment at a national grocery chain recently told me, “they will be replacing all of us with A.I. within a few years.”
4. Meanwhile, Immigrants Are Stealing Your Jobs.
Those immigrants over there, picking strawberries in Watsonville or maybe tomatoes in Immokalee, that could have been your job.
Tossing 20 pound watermelons onto flatbeds, chopping cabbage leaves and celery off stalks. Bathed in sweat, swathed in hoodies and neck gaiters, swinging machetes in the hundred degree heat. Those immigrants are stealing your jobs.
Those cows don’t milk themselves. That could have been you in that cold, dirty, dark milking parlor at 4 A.M. this morning and every morning. Those immigrants, not you, are running some old Hobart dishwashers, scrubbing the grease off the flattops and dumping the grease bucket into the grease bin in the alley at 1:00 A.M. tonight, tomorrow, every night. They are in the walk-in coolers, stacking wooden crates of whatever, box knives flaying shrink wrap off pallets of everything. These immigrants instead of you, from Mexico, Albania, Honduras or Haiti, cooking up Chinese, Italian, maybe even Mexican food in the back-of-house, off the books, out of sight, out of mind.
There is that immigrant, “illegal”, straight off the boat, or maybe they swam across the Rio Grande and jumped that little fence at Juarez. Running from La Migra, driving for Uber Eats or Door Dash, bringing you your Happy Meals and double-doubles, animal style. Those immigrants, not even 15 years young, gripping their jagged blades, slicing chicken flesh from chicken bone, hosing down industrial meat grinders, baking granola and rolling oats. Long after the safety inspectors have gone to bed, long after you stopped considering that work could have been yours. All yours.
5. Tunes:
Not sure why, but the Black Star album always gives me summer vibes. 1-2-3, Mos Def and Talib Kweli.
peace.