Like Budweiser who has already sponsored various breweries, General Mills is better positioning themselves for the future by funding food start-ups. Cereal-maker General Mills has seen their market shares shrink as consumers’ tastes change. General Mills has announced changes in their products like ridding GMOs and artificial coloring. However, General Mills has courted to new partnerships to better their future market shares.

The company has previously paid $820 million to acquire popular natural-food makers Annie’s. General Mills also has a stake in producers Beyond Meat. These acquisitions and investments will continue through a new venture-capital arm called 301 Inc. The company will start to invest in smaller-scale, more innovative food start-ups.

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“All-Day breakfast” has become a major spur for McDonalds, and now executives have released that more implementations will take part for McDonalds. One of these will be to sell Monster energy drinks as part of value meals. “We’re always gathering feedback form customers on the food and beverages they’d like to be served at McDonald’s.” a representative said. Implementing Monster in value meals is still in limited trial at 20 locations throughout Michigan, Ohio, Georgia, Florida and Illinois. The chain says that many people are coming in to just purchase Monster, and the deal in itself could potentially be worth billions for Monster. Because, Monster is now distributed by Coke the logistics of selling Monster is fairly simple for McDonald’s as they are in partners with Coke products.

While many consumers have expressed negativity to levels of sodium and other unhealthy factors of McDonald’s, selling loads of caffeinated drinks can be a concern. The FDA has been reviewing “hundreds” or so-called “adverse event” reports involving energy drinks, and recent studies have connected them to hypertension and high chances of traumatic brain injury in athletes The American Medical Association says it should be illegal to market the beverages to anyone under 18. These regulations can potentially disregard McDonald’s plans of selling Monster drinks in all locations.

However, McDonald’s right now, don’t seem to be concerned with these rioting regulations. A spokesperson for McDonald’s said the company is also testing a value deal of two 16 ounce cans of Monster for $4.

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Starbuck’s is a global chains with locations all over the world. However, one major hub that the company has difficulty entering into is Italy. However, Howard Schultz has announced its plans to expand with a franchising partnership with Antonio Percassi. Antonio Percassi is a businessman who gave Italy Victoria’s Secret and Zara. It is rumored that there will be an official Starbucks by Christmas.

Schultz has been planning his expansion into Italy, but because of Italy’s peculiar culture of coffee and cappuccinos, it has become difficult. However, Starbucks alters its menu to cater to regional tastes like Japan’s espresso-lemon lattes. Starbuck’s plans to colonize Italy by creating cafés to be high-tech meet-up spots where middle-aged bankers, lawyers, and businesspeople can sit in quasi-comfy chairs and use free WiFi.

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An all day breakfast menu has been an option that McDonald’s fans have been requesting for a long time. However, while McDonald’s did open breakfast menu’s to all day in 229 locations, results have showed that, more havoc was caused then making greater sales.

Franchisees for 229 U.S. locations participated in a survey about the breakfast menu and called all-day breakfast “erratic, distorted, disorganized” and “a non-starter.” Offering all-day breakfast slows down service considerably and creates inconvenient damages, and situations in the kitchen. “People falling over each other” and “equipment jammed in everywhere.” Franchisees also report that sales aren’t that great, and even if they were it’s damage is worse. “We are trading customers down from regular menu to lower-priced breakfast items.”

McDonald’s hoped with its extension of the breakfast menu, many locations would grow in sales. However, while customer demands were met, because of the effects of slow service and sub-par quality, many customers are tending away from the fast-food chain. All-day breakfast also creates more work, and for franchisees to hire extra labor.

Company executives in Oak Brook seem to be the only locations that insist that all-day breakfast was “successful.”

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Chobani, the Greek-yogurt company, has announced their plans to sell off between 10 and 20 percent of the company. Although Chobani is a gree-yogure company, the two biggest suitors for the company shares is Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. With either of the company’s investment, Chobani can be potentially worth as much as $3 billion. Moreover, with an investment from an empire company like Coca-Cola or PepsiCo, Chobani can collaborate with strategic plans for distribution and manufacturing of their products.

Coca-Cola and PepsiCo plan to acquire shares of Chobani and its products, one that trends have catered towards. Industry analysis and trends show people are not diverging from the greek-yogurt trend. Moreover, with Chobani’s recent headlines of Chobani founder, Hamdi Ulukaya acquiring shares of La Colombe, and its future plans on collaborating with both companies, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. are eager to be involved with Chobani’s growing partnerships.

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Starbucks has been moving quickly to adopt new technology in their restaurant. It invested in Square, installed Clover coffee machines, which makes more individual cups of brewed coffee, and recently introduced “Mobile Order and Pay.” This focus in technology has inevitably proposed a new position at Starbucks- Chief Technology Officer. The company has announced that Gerri Martin-Flickinger will serve as the company’s first-ever chief technology officer. She served as the senior vice-president and chief information officer recently at Adobe, where she got major praise for shifting the company’s software to a cloud-based system.

This new position is replacing the title of chief information officer. This swap in title reflects the mobile focus that Starbucks is shifting to in the future. Starbucks has announced that “We needed leadership talent with deep experience in cloud, big analytics, mobile and security to take us to the next level…Gerri stood out as someone who has years of experience in Silicon Valley and brings deep management and technical expertise to help us navigate the future.”

Starbucks hopes that with Martin-Flickinger, the company will enter “its next phase” in technology. Martin-Flickinger will take up the role officially on November 2.

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Many specialty coffee companies have been growing and playing major effect on the coffee industry. Key players in the industry include La Colombe and Blue Bottle. However, with the recent acquisition by Peet’s Coffee & Tea, this Berkeley-based company is hitting major headlines and expanding beyond their existing sites.

Duane Sorenson founded Stumptown Coffee Roasters in Portland in 1999. It currently has ten stores across America. With the recent acquisition of Stumptown by Peet’s, continue growth is forecasted. Stumptown will be preserved in that they will be operated independently, but will  benefit from Peet’s resources and funds. President at Stumptown, Joth Ricci said “As we look to share Stumptown with even more coffee lovers, Peet’s, the original coffee company, has the expertise and capabilities to help us to continue to grow.”

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Starbucks has announced their “Animal Welfare-Friendly Practices” plan where they will source food items that are from animal protected welfare companies. The Human Society immediately praised Starbucks on their new program as “the most comprehensive animal welfare policy of any national restaurant chain.” Starbucks’ largest action within the program is to source more humanely raised eggs. However, Starbucks predicts their company change in all locations in North America will take five years max.

Starbucks has been making efforts to make the witch since 2008. They have released that they have made “significant progress” with farmers, enough to pledge to be entirely cage-free by 2020. Not only did Starbucks pledge to source eggs from cage-free hens, they have announce plans to phase out gestation crates for pigs, eliminate growth hormones and end other inhumane farming practices.

While Starbucks’ shift is commendable for advocates in animal-welfare, some worry that there will be a shortage of eggs. Like Starbucks, other restaurant chains are shifting to sourcing materials from Animal Welfare farmers. McDonalds has been working on their switch since 2010, and are now committed to going cage-free. U.S. supplies, however, just revived from the worst-ever bird flu epidemic.

Many companies are creating shifts to animal welfare policies, and creating more demand for organic, humane sources.

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The world-wide shift to vegetarian based, and overall healthier foods has become apparent in the food industry. Taco Bell, a Mexican-food chain, is the first major fas-food company to offer a certified-vegetarian menu. The American Vegetarian Association confirmed menu items to be meat-free. Taco Bell will offer 13 different items including the Cantina Power Veggie Bowl, and the Seven-layer Burrito.

Customers can view the vegetarian categories through the company’s website and the mobile-ordering application. However, while this category may seem new to consumers, CEO Brian Niccol regards this “shift” as something that has already been implemented in Taco Bell’s menus as they already sell 350 million vegetarian menu items a year. However, now they just make it more apparent and clearer as a vegetarian option.

Vegetarians will be able to combine 35 certified-vegetarian ingredients to create different vegetarian combinations. There will also be an option to substitute beans for meat. This array of options will ideally appeal to a bigger market for Taco Bell- vegetarians. Moreover, Taco Bell has also announced that along with the vegetarian option they do have 26 items that are certified-vegan ingredients that vegans can combine as their own meal.

With many fast-food chains restaurants becoming less appealing to consumers, Taco Bell’s efforts to shift their brand image and appeal to a healthier menu choice can potentially create customers in more markets like vegetarian and vegan.

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