Ok, I know that this article is a few weeks old, but I’ve been meaning to highlight some outrageous figures from this article as food for thought (no pun intended).  

• The Park Slope Food Coop (PSFC), the largest consumer-owned single-store coop by sales in the U.S., had $39.4 million in sales during its last fiscal year, raking in more than $6,500 per square foot annually. 
• Trader Joe’s outdoes its competition with an average of $1,750 in sales per square foot, more than double those of Whole Foods.

So what can we learn from this?  Well, we know that the two biggest expenses for a grocer (and any food business, actually) are labor and the cost of goods…

1. “PSFC’s members provide about 75% of the store’s work, which translates into big savings.”  How can other food businesses adapt this model of a “contributing member” to their own operations to alleviate some of their prime costs?     
2. “PSFC covers most food categories even though it sells only several thousand items, which sets it apart from a specialty food store. Much like a Trader Joe’s, which also doesn’t use slotting fees, goods are on the shelves because members want them, not because manufacturers essentially rent shelf space through extra charges. The store can therefore capture most of the money its customers spend on food in any given week.”  Sometimes less is more.  Avoid product / SKU creep and just offer what your customers really want.  You’ve heard about the ‘paradox of choice’, right?  Sometimes more isn’t better - it’s just waste.

Check out goodfoodjobs.com - “a gastro-job search tool, designed to link people looking for meaningful food work with the businesses that need their energy, enthusiasm, and intellect.”  

The National Institute of Health (NIH) reported that about 7.6 million Americans — or 2.6 percent of the country — suffer from food allergies, noting that age, gender and ethnicity all seem to play a role…

• Black male kids are 4.4 times more likely than the general population to have a food allergy, though the factors behind the discrepancy are not yet clear.

• Children aged one to five showed the highest food allergy rates (4.2 percent). 

• Adults over the age of 60 had the lowest rates (1.3 percent).  

• Peanut allergies were found in 1.8 percent of kids aged one to five, and in 2.7 percent of kids between six and 19.

Doing business over breakfast is no news to the creative circles of New York (e.g., the Big Business Breakfast at Katz’s Deli), but now even the suits have taken to this new business dining occasion.  It’s a time efficient, lower budget way to host a meeting, and more and more restaurants are opening their doors early to accommodate the increasing interest.  Bring on the Breakfast Renaissance, I say!

Product tie-ins and partnerships lay out the consumerist path to an Eat, Pray, Love lifestyle.  The irony here does not escape me.  

“With 20 days and counting until the opening, media outlets have been picking up the [4food] story, alternating between viewing the concept as a cool new way to serve lunch in a health-conscious digital age and the more skeptical POV that the eatery’s doughnut-shaped burgers and social media bells and whistles are more gimmicky than innovative.”  

My question is, if 4food is so into social media, why won’t they let me embed and pass along its quirky story video? A missed opportunity if you ask me…