Did We "Scoop" The Times?

Well, we use "Scoop" loosely, but it’s still kinda cool that this was in last Saturday’s Times, ELEVEN whole days after we put a very similar post up here on “The Biz."

We questioned the Dark Side WEEKS ago...

While we hope that this means the venerable folks at America’s “Paper of Record” are reading us, we also realize that this story is growing and have to tip our hat to what the reporter, Randall Stross, has brought to the coverage.

We also had a lot of questions about how competition would affect OpenTable’s less-than-benign hegemony in the market that they seem to have created and Stross uses his space in the paper to introduce us to RezBook, a newly-minted offshoot of IAC’s (read: Barry Diller’s) UrbanSpoon that is aiming to take a bite out of OpenTable’s pie (food analogy… cute, right?).

But RezBook, according to Stross, does not seem to be straying too far from the original business model, charging similar prohibitive fees that are passed on to the restaurateurs. It would seem to follow that either (A) this model is the only one that works in this sector, or (B) Diller and Co. are looking to capitalize on OpenTable’s ongoing demonization with a site that does the same thing, with the same drawbacks, under a different name.

We’re currently on the lookout for local joints that use or don’t use OpenTable, so stay tuned for Updates…

Who's Paying for All This New Food Safety (Hint: It's you... twice)

The new food safety legislation passed by the Senate last week that will have a revolutionary impact on the way that food is tested, and inevitably produced, in America, will also have a mindboggling price tag.

The Omaha World-Herald, a great paper for agribusiness stories by the by, quotes the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) as estimating the cost of the bill at $1.4 billion over the next five years.

One point four billion. With a “B.”

And that’s just the government’s tab.

While no estimates have been made, or in all honestly could reasonably be made, of what the new legislation will cost the businesses who make the food that need to be inspected under the newly intensified strictures demanded by the bill, we can only expect it to be enormous.

And, whatever the number, it will most definitely be passed on to the consumer in the end.

The bill calls for unprecedented FDA oversight on all food inspections nationwide, which will demand an increase in FDA facilities to handle the extra workload. The Senate debate (or lack thereof as the bill was passed with an almost 3-1 margin) circled around the recent outbreak of deadly food-borne illnesses in a number of foods, namely eggs, that were responsible for a few deaths over the summer throughout the country.

Senators seemed enamored of presenting the bill as a health crusade that would “save lives” and help the government offset a health care cost associated with food-borne illnesses that the CBO also wagered a guess at, coming up with a figure of $152 billion.

While the government investment of $1.4 billion seems like a no-brainer investment to offset that huge healthcare number, it looks paltry and “spun” when put in contrast with the amount that implementation of the bill will cost businesses and, inevitably, the American consumer.

Doing anything to raise the cost of food (even imported food, per the language of the legislation) during the climb out this recession while simultaneously suspending unemployment benefit extensions to the most desperate Americans and asking them to pay tax dollars into a $1.4 billion government program that their government can't afford during this historical budget crisis, feels less-than savory to us humble editors at “The Biz.”


And the cost to on-the-margins, smaller fine food purveyors will inevitably be draconian. Off the top of our head, we have to speculate that this bill will have some real-life impact on the "Locavore" market.

Meaning, we hope you have budgetary wiggle room for that locally-sourced duck confit you like so much...  

The Beef Lobby's New Hipster PR Army

The current issue of Mother Jones has a story about a group of pro-agribusiness college students who are being simultaneously educated in press relations by “Big Beef” (agree with them or not, you have to appreciate Mother Jones’ anti-establishment literary aplomb).

As we’ve discussed here at “The Biz” a few times lately (scroll away), the price on beef commodities and beef futures are soaring due to a number of factors, not the least of which being some overseas grain crises, and the rise in cost could provide oxygen to the burgeoning flame of the various “locavore”/organic movements across the country.

Obviously “Big Beef,” or the “National Cattlemen’s Beef Association if we’re being journalistically proper, would prefer not to allow any threats to the profitability of their product to grow stronger, especially with the Senate’s decision on Tuesday* to increase standards of food safety nationwide, a decision that will certainly drive the costs of production and retail value upwards.

According to the MJ piece, at least part of the Beef Lobby’s plan is to target the de facto poet laureate of the “Locavore” movement, Michael Pollan.

Pollan, a best-selling author and quasi-prophetic figure in the hipster food community, has been a powerful opponent to the “factory farming” model of beef production that powers the financial engine of the vehicle that is the Beef Lobby.

And targeting Pollan apparently means creating “sleeper-cell” type groups of students that will make their livings in the worlds that agribusiness allows to exist in their economic shadow.

So the MBA’s (“Masters of Beef Advocacy”) are now on the prowl, with money from the Beef Lobby lining their pockets, and they’re apparent mission is to reach out within their own age group and zeitgeist to counterweigh the effects of Pollan and his messianic message of an American palate devoid of agribusiness-created foods.

* - (ed note: More on that Senate bill ASAP)