Current trend-watchers would be hard pressed to say that instant coffee is making a comeback. If anything, coffee these days is getting more and more upscale, and words like “single origin” are now almost expected in both coffee shops and pantries. All this makes it even more surprising that Folgers, the coffee brand largely known for its instant coffee and ear-worm of a jingle, is seeing an impressive increase in profits beyond what any investors expected. In the last quarter of 2015, those profits jumped 15%, causing parent company J.M. Sucker to sharply increase their earnings guidance for the year.
Folgers attributes its success to “on-trend” products like K-cups, although many would argue that that trend is doomed by its own wastefulness. The partnership with Dunkin’ Donuts to produce the K-cups, however, is undoubtedly a boon to their business. It’s possible that this profit spike is just the crest of that coffee pod wave, but Folgers is still betting that consumers will always have a place in their hearts for easy, and instantaneous, caffeination.
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The song, now watched almost three million times on YouTube, includes an (explicitly worded) line about visiting Red Lobster after sex. That line immediately (and perhaps predictably) blew up social media with references to the seafood chain. The phenomenon might have ended with a few tweets, but instead Red Lobster’s sales actually spiked 33% according to CNN. Of course, that kind of publicity may only provide a flash in the pan, but if you’re looking for flash, nobody brings it better than Beyoncé.
Ravi DeRossi, the restaurateur behind Death and Co, Avant Garden, Mother of Pearl and 12 other bars and restaurants around the city, is making a serious push to turn all of his operations fully animal-free. He’ll be starting by expanding the already vegan Avant Garden into multiple spinoff concepts, as well as closing the charcuterie-focused The Bourgeois Pig and reopening it as vegan wine and tapas bar LadyBird. All of his restaurants are in for some sort of shake-up, and it seems his mixologists won’t be safe either, as cocktail and beer lists will be purged of the often ignored animal ingredients that are sometimes used in drinks.
Danny Meyer may have been the first to really make headlines by eliminating tipping, but Andrew Tarlow has now gone a step further by taking on the anti-tipping movement’s PR as well. Marlow recently pitched a standard sign which he believes all gratuity free restaurants should display in their windows in order to help retrain guests who have spent their whole lives living in a world of tips.
Per Se, the $325-a-plate dining experience which until today ranked among the only restaurants The New York Times deemed 4-star worthy, just received a deeply critical review from Pete Wells. Wells has been a restaurant critic for the Times since 2011, and he recently gained a little internet notoriety outside the circle of dedicated Times readers by giving a generally positive review to Señor Frog’s, the loosely Mexican chain whose motto (“Unleash Your Fiesta!”) tells you probably all you need to know.
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