Pundit’s Mailbag —
Taco Bell & FDA’s Rush To Judgment
Taco Bell continued its efforts to rehabilitate its reputation over the holidays, announcing that Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell would have lunch at a Taco Bell in Philadelphia. The press release said this would provide “…further demonstration that its food is completely safe to eat.” Of course this is not true and they could have another […]
Tip Murphy Leaves Chiquita For Paganini
He had been Vice President of Sales, Chiquita Fresh North America, but when the Produce Marketing Association in San Diego announced the line-up of its new members of the Board of Directors, his company affiliation had quietly disappeared. But Terrence P. (his friends… and everybody else… call him “Tip”) Murphy has landed on his feet […]
Disney Disconnect
Here at the Pundit, we’ve dealt fairly extensively with the Disney Garden here, here, here and here. And, recently word came out that Imagination Farms, which is the non-transactional produce company that markets the Disney Garden brand, was awarded the Disney Consumer Product Award by Disney Consumer Products. Yet during the Pundit family holiday trip […]
Pundit Rewind LI
The Pundit originally ran the Pundit Rewind on September 21, 2006. We continuously update it in order to keep everyone organized with respect to reference material on this subject; we have updated it with new items and run it again today. Spinach Crisis Summary With so much having been written in so short a time, […]
Buyer-led Food Safety Initiative Recap XXIII
There is an ad-hoc group that started it all, the National Restaurant Association has its group working on a program and the Food Marketing Institute held a conference. All these buyer-led initiatives can get confusing, so to assist the trade in keeping track of them all, we are publishing this recap of coverage all in […]
Crisis Management
In countless seminars and articles, we are reminded of the need for every business to have a crisis management plan. Certainly the recent food safety issues have branded that lesson in the collective memory of the food industry. Pretty typical for these recommendations is that they urge each organization to appoint a single spokesperson for […]
Publix And C.H. Robinson Join
Buyer-led Food Safety Initiative
The Buyer-led Food Safety Initiative has picked up a couple of more signatories, and they are important ones. Garry Bergstrom, Business Development Director of Produce/Floral for Publix and Jim Lemke, Vice President, Produce for C.H. Robinson Worldwide have signed onto the Initiative. Publix joining the Initiative is significant. The company is almost reclusive and rarely […]
Viral Marketing: Advertising With A Twist
One of the things we are always doing here is looking for ways to advance the industry. Obviously we try to have the kind of content that will help move the industry forward, but this attitude also includes pushing industry marketing to the next level. When we started PRODUCE BUSINESS magazine, a sister publication of […]
What Andrew Young Should Have Said
Andrew Young, the civil rights leader, close associate of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., former member of Congress, mayor of Atlanta and Ambassador to the United Nations, resigned suddenly from his paid position as Chairman of the national steering committee of Working Families for Wal-Mart, a group largely funded by Wal-Mart that consists of clergymen, […]
Room For Improvement At New Wal-Marts
This past weekend, I checked out the opening weekend of not one but two Wal-Mart Supercenters in Miami Gardens, Florida, about an hour from my home. Wal-Mart promoted these stores as being heavily focused on international products, and I thought it was interesting that Wal-Mart opened two supercenters in one city, less than five miles […]
