Discontents: 1. Pondering Existence At Buc-ee’s. 2. Plant-Based Diets FTW. 3. Organic Industry Analysis. 4. Product Review. 5. Campbell’s Pacific Foods Facility Closure. 6. Tunes.
The Rest Stop At The End Of The World.
For the unfamiliar, it’s challenging to describe Buc-ee’s. My first glance was a “WTF?” after seeing a colleague’s T-shirt and its brightly beavered logo’d. My first time in store was on a road trip bathroom break in 2017 or so, probably at the Bastrop location driving between Austin and Houston. I was floored.
Imagine a convenience store as a Guinness Book of World Records tourist trap flypaper. Big, real big. 100 or so gas pumps, plus plenty of diesel for the long haul truckers. 70,000+ square feet of retail space, about the size of a small Target. Employees greet you loudly and proudly when you walk in, and their call and response echoes across the store when they serve up customers. The store centerpiece is a decent Texas barbecue stand, along with requisite sandwiches carved out of said barbecue. An epic fudge stand is flanked by a sad, spiteful packaged salad and fruit cup selection. Nearby is a phalanx of coffee carafes, even some decaf. And then a wall of packaged beef jerky, right next to a 15 foot deli case of even fresher beef jerky. You have never seen so much beef jerky.
In the aisles are every kind of packaged, processed road trip/truck stop snack imaginable: nuts, cookies, candy, trail mix, chips, and corn puffs affectionately branded “Beaver Nuggets”. This ultraprocessed food selection is mostly Buc-ee’s private label, alongside some token mass market snack brands from the Pepsico/Snyder’s DSD delivery duopoly. Along the far wall is a carbonated, caffeinated and chilled cooler from the Coke/Pepsico/Dr. Pepper-Snapple beverage oligopoly. It’s all about efficiencies at this scale. Few mom and pop, diverse, emerging brands are welcome in this CPG jungle.
Then on the other end of the snack cavern is a little set of outdoorsy Cabela’s/Yeti sportsman gear, a pile of Cracker Barrel-ish southern tchotchkes, some beaver logo’d bathing suits and boogie boards, plus barbecue smokers, Dutch Ovens and cast iron pans that flank pastel-cliché Joanna Gaines/Magnolia-esque housewares that you will never use.
It's smart merchandising. Bright, piled high, priced moderately ridiculous but not insulting. Anything and everything to distract and feed the kids, keep spouses and in-laws happy and even make sure working truckers feel a little less road weary. You can’t road rage after being in a Buc-ee’s. All of it wrapped up in swathes of primary color Americana nostalgia, frontier mythology, cowboys, lassos, ten gallon hats, flags, longhorn steers, galloping stallions, railroad locomotives, fighter jets, birds of prey, and everywhere, Texas, Texas, Texas.
And then there is that beaver. The damn adorable, obnoxious, ubiquitous beaver. On package labels, on walls, as plush dolls, as a pudgy bronze statue greeting kids and grandmas for the photo ops, too cute for its own good.
Of course, the vast merchandising pays the bills, but it’s the bathrooms that are the draw. You see the beaver signs from hundreds of miles away on highways. Bad pun dad jokes, dicey uses of zoomer/millennial slang. Too many slightly inappropriate bodily function references to remind road trippers to take care of their business in the cleanest, most private, most well-maintained rest stop restrooms anywhere in the U.S. of A. Yes, they are the legit cleanest, no contest. There is always an attendant keeping up with the throngs. Because Buc-ee’s is almost always packed.
Buc-ee’s has taken advantage of cheap Texas and southern real estate amidst car/truck/highway-centric transportation that is paid and paved by your tax dollars. To their credit, they pay better than average rates for service workers happy to take a decent job that isn’t inside a robot-overlord fulfillment complex or barbaric meat processing plant.
Buc-ee’s leverages a mountain of cheap, subsidized feed corn for their factory farm sourced barbecues, an ocean of subsidized high fructose syrup for the chilled beverages, and a seemingly infinite supply of consumer-ready fossil fuels. The beaver knows no externalized costs. There is only high-frequency convenience, gratefully welcomed by road-glazed travelers.
Buc-ee’s is in a league of its own. Not “truckstop-basic” like competitors Pilot, Quiktrip or even Love’s. An order of magnitude larger in store size, scope and ambition than Wawa’s, Sheetz or convenience sector behemoth 7-Eleven. It’s hard to go back once the beaver has sunk its overbite into you. Buc-ee’s is what happens when you pile the grandiosity of Texas/Americana mythology and a climate change-averse, highway-centric travel culture on top of American consumer sovereignty and commodify them at a gargantuan scale. This is the extractive economy, on methamphetamines.
Is there a rest stop at the end of the world? If so, it’s probably a Buc-ee’s.
Plant-based FTW (Again): Yet another huge study has proven the benefits of plant-based diets. A new “umbrella” study has shown a range of health benefits, including lower inflammation, and lower cancer and heart disease risk. Umbrella studies are one step up from meta-analyses, so this is huge. This review looked at over 49 reviews spanning over 20 years of research and focuses on vegetarians and vegans. There were some caveats, including consumption of unhealthy plant-based foods and processed products; junk food veganism is a self-own. And the reviewers did not suggest cutting out meat completely, but the study easily implies that prioritizing plants in diets could go a long way to better health. Yet another reason why fresh produce should be free at point of sale.
More Than An Organic Feeling:
When I was at Whole Foods (until 2016), my team scaled organic to over $2 billion, nearly 40% of our department sales. Organic grew faster than the rest of the store every year, including the tough recession years 2009-2012. And organic suppliers, like Organic Valley, Nature’s Path and Equal Exchange, were always among my favorites.
The organic news lately is mostly good. Organic product sales in the U.S. approached $70 billion in 2023. Organic produce led the way, with $20.5 billion in sales. Produce now accounts for more than 15 percent of total U.S. fruit and vegetable sales. And organic groceries, beverages and dairy products saw decent growth and stable market share in an industry beset by inflation and stagnation. The USDA Organic seal continues to be the leading light of the “better for you” food movement.
Why is that? Over 70% of consumers trust the organic seal and 90% are familiar with it. Organic production methods vibe with Gen Z and millennial consumers (as well salty Gen X’ers like yours truly) who are looking for sustainability, transparency and climate friendly products. They are rejecting GMOs, hormones and antibiotics, and carcinogenic herbicides and pesticides. They want food that supports a stable climate and increases biodiversity. And they are embracing plant-based eating and humanely raised animal products. Organic delivers all.
While organic products cost more, most consumers think the price gap is warranted, especially considering that organic supply chains externalize vastly lower costs than conventional products. The retail price gap is narrowing thanks to commodity inflation and price gouging across the rest of the CPG sector. While pricing is bullshit, it is working in organic’s favor.
As for the imperfections, there is plenty of work for the organic sector to do. There is little farmworker input on organic standards. There is a defensiveness from the organic sector when it comes to overlapping certifications such as Non GMO and “regenerative”. Organic could partner better with Non GMO Project. Non GMO Project adds an additional level of scrutiny that customers want. Products with both seals sell better. The organic movement should also clarify its relationship with the growing horde of regenerative claims. Some are better than others and there is room to learn from the efforts of regenerative organic producers.
There is a quality and consistency issue in private label dairy and eggs, particularly whether producers utilize so-called “organic CAFO’s”, that are essentially factory farms. Hydroponic products should have their own labeling rubric, distinguishing between organic soil-based, agrochemical-based and “hydro-organic” methods. And why is CAFO/factory farm-sourced manure allowed in organic systems? That is nasty stuff.
With all the public scrutiny on ultra-processed foods, it is a good time for the organic sector to tighten up sunset rules that govern the non-organic processed ingredients and materials allowed in organic production. Organic has the opportunity to lead the “better for you” segment more than ever.
Organic is 5% of grocery sales and just 1% of acreage in the U.S. While obstacles such as GMO corn subsidies and cost externalities are a big part of this, what else can be done to bridge such a huge disconnect between supply and demand, especially with significant federal transition funds available? But maybe the organic sector’s biggest obstacles are their own marketing efforts. Hire more of those Gen Z’ers to put together a relevant communications strategy to help the sector grow even faster. $100 billion in organic product sales should be around the corner.
Product Review: This one is polarizing. An acquired taste. A bitter pill to swallow.
I love 100% dark chocolate. Am I a masochist? Maybe I am just attracted to extremes. Sure, I don’t mind a nice friendly bar of dark chocolate once in a while, like Equal Exchange or Chocolove. But I can’t stand the sweet, cloying, milky mess at the convenience stores. Why bother? Chocolate is the main character here. And chocolate prices are skyrocketing, and not because processors finally eliminated child labor. No folks, climate change and the unregulated, highly volatile speculation and profiteering by traders and processors has killed cheap chocolate. Maybe it’s a good time to retrain your taste buds? Reframe your chocoholism?
Alter Eco 100% Total Blackout could be a good place to start. I helped launch this brand at Whole Foods almost 20 years ago. They have gone through a couple ownership and leadership changes but is still ethically sourced through Fair For Life Fair Trade. It is organic, great quality and almost unique in the marketplace at the 100% cacao tier. Bitterness has never tasted so sweet.
Campbell’s Kills Pacific Foods Plant.
Campbell’s has announced it will be closing the iconic Pacific Foods Tualatin processing plant by 2026. They will be laying off over 300 workers, starting in August 2024. The soup and processed food conglomerate gave the usual reasoning of efficiencies, optimization, yadda yadda. But it is always about lowering expenses to drive profits, especially as consumer demand growth has cooled due to price inflation.
Campbells’s profits increased 2% from 2023 to 2024 on a 100 basis point increase in net profits, and up over 11% from 2022 to 2023, while 2023 fourth quarter profits jumped over 200 basis points. They are doing quite well. People still eat soup.
Before being acquired, Pacific Foods stood out among its CPG peers for developing a highly regionalized, farmer-focused and mostly organic supply chain in the Pacific Northwest. Their product quality and ingredients made them best in class, a step above competitors such as Progresso, Imagine and Campbell’s.
Once Pacific was acquired, Campbell’s folded procurement into its global headquarters, cutting off much of the local sourcing that made them unique. They also made some tweaks to formulas and ingredients to drive down costs, but did not make major changes. The brand went from best in class to just better than average.
The plant closures mark an end of an era and the penultimate phase of many “better for you” CPG acquisitions; assimilation, effifiencies, closures, layoffs and “optimization” over innovation, regeneration and boundary breaking. Now Pacific Foods is just another face in the crowd.
Tunes: Life is a bitch. Am I wrong? Linton Kwesi Johnson, a radical dub poet from the U.K., said it perfectly. Only the names have changed, still the same old.
peace.