SAINTS PRESERVE US

The Condiment of Revelations

When a multi-national food or beverage company can’t leave well enough alone, it’s called a category extension. The resulting brand mutant is always touted as incredibly convenient to harried gatekeepers – those who make the purchasing decisions in a grocery store on behalf of their households. Consequently, the average shopper roams aisles lined with shelves arrayed with some wrong-headed and gut-wrenching choices.

Sometimes I think chemists could be more gainfully employed other than experimenting with synthesizing processes to swirl jam or honey into peanut butter jars, infusing lime flavouring into cola or dusting potato chips with powdered sour cream and onion dip. The marketing implications are insulting: I’m too lazy or stupid to open two jars to make a quick sandwich; I’m too lazy or stupid to slice a lime to spritz my soda; I’m too lazy or stupid to open a tub of chip dip. Those are valid corporate assumptions because these days we buy back our own free tap water repackaged in attractively tinted plastic bottles. We’ll buy anything. Conversely, “What the fuck are they thinking?” is also a fair question on our part.

3G is not archaic Huawei telecommunications hardware. It is a private-equity firm based in Brazil whose lean and young staff came of age watching slasher flicks. In Canada it has destroyed incalculable brand equity of the Tim Hortons coffee chain by cutting corners, raising prices and alienating franchisees. Globally it’s the stingy chaperone of the corporate fiasco that is Kraft Heinz. This shotgun marriage of processed food behemoths has cost the reputation of modern capitalist wizard Warren Buffett (Jimmy’s cousin) some $3-billion. The combined value of the two companies pre-merger and the new entity’s value following 3G’s gutting are like a Led Zeppelin song, they remain the same.

The solution pitched to Wall Street analysts and shareholders is a bastard condiment. Mayochup will refloat the ship, right it and turn the whole damn thing around. Mayonnaise and ketchup should never mingle unless they accidentally encounter each other on a hamburger, let alone be glopped together in a single squeeze bottle. Mayochup is not without misguided precedent because somebody in research and development once thought a compound called dijonnaise was an inspired idea, innovative even.

There are fundamental flaws in the concept of pre-packaged convenience. Logic dictates that should the consumer desire a combination of condiment flavours with their food, both the retailer and the supplier would prefer they’re acquired in multiple transactions at the cash register rather than as a single purchase for less money. The reactionary whiff of desperation around mayochup suggests something else: the post-war hegemony of big brands is past its sell-by date. I would argue that End Times loom for the likes of Kraft Heinz simply because of time itself, that notorious thief always advancing up Main Street restlessly going from house to house, creeping through garden gates.

My mother died on the first of the year. Honest to God, one of my fondest memories of Mom is her making Kraft Dinner for me when I was a kid, Mom gagging over the saucepan the moment she opened the pouch of processed cheese food powder and inhaled its reek. She called what are now known as Kraft Singles “rat trap cheese.” In those days I enjoyed Heinz tinned spaghetti as a hot lunch on a cold winter’s day. Mom made wonderful egg salad sandwiches but never with “disgusting” Kraft Miracle Whip salad dressing. The only cookbook in the house described lasagna as “exotic foreign fare.”

I was born in February 1960, about six weeks into the sociological cut-off of the baby boom. As I aged and my palate became more sophisticated I shed the brands that fed me; nostalgia doesn’t taste so good. And so I harbour no warm and fuzzies for Kraft Heinz products unless they’ve overstayed their welcome in the refrigerator. Even worse for the conglomerate, my cohort and I are getting on and as such are attempting to eat food we perceive as better for us; we who are imprisoned in our sagging, deteriorating bodies. Oh, by the way, we’re dying off too - maybe because we ate their products growing up. The grand old brands will soon follow us down.

These are days of mergers and acquisitions, immediate supply chains, software solutions and synergies. I pay attention to the advertising and business news but I’ve little clue as to who owns what company or which brand anymore. 3G for instance owns Tim Hortons (at this moment) but operates the stores through a middle party called Restaurant Brands International (RBI). Timmy’s used to be owned by the Wendy’s hamburger chain which is now the property of fuck if I know.

Classic brands, whether on the shelf or on the street, have become commodities to be bought and sold. Ever-changing ownership dilutes their heritage, uniqueness, and ultimately their quality. Warren Buffett could be almost old enough to have trod the Earth with H.J. Heinz and so I wonder if he longs for a simpler and sepia era, perhaps one with a reddish tint, those halcyon days when a mere 57 varieties of pickles and food products would suffice.

Signs of the times seem to indicate too that wobbly boomers have not been automatically replaced on the conveyor belt by subsequent generations of customers. There’s a righteous cynical sabot in the gears of mass production. It took a while but it’s becoming increasingly apparent that the message of the anti-globalization protests which coloured the final years of the last century has resonated with today’s newly minted adults. The new rank and file refuses to abide by the established consumer canon. The rules of engagement have changed.

Younger people today aren’t buying into the old ways. They will not be patronized. Corporations are now being called to account for their ethics and business practices; profit itself isn’t criminal but the exponential cost of a healthy margin to the well-being of the environment and the citizens of the planet might be. These youthful aficionados of Amazon and apps, such a sought-after demographic, aren’t shopping Main Street for anything, especially goop like mayochup. Their embrace of the digital marketplace has in turn fostered the growth of boutique brands who promote a more authentic experience to intrigued consumers; a promise of the real, a promise most major brands cannot match.          

The Kraft and Heinz boardroom coupling has birthed what’s known as a nothing burger in contemporary slang. And what a whopper it is. There’s no other way to garnish this. A few squirts of maychup ain’t the fixin’s required.

Copies of my latest novel The Garage Sailor are still available and ready to ship. Get aboard at Megeoff.com.