Welcome to the first episode of The Weekly Takeaway from IFMA The Food Away from Home Association. Communications Director Heather Lalley and Managing Editor Peter Romeo discuss the ongoing cyclospora outbreak, upcoming changes to immigration regulations, innovations in grocery and c-store foodservice and more stories impacting the food-away-from-home industry. Find The Weekly Takeaway on  Spotify and Apple Podcasts. 

 

Heather: Welcome to The Weekly Takeaway, the new podcast from IFMA The Food Away from Home Association. I'm Heather Lalley, the association's director of communications, and I'm joined by managing editor Peter Romeo. Each week, we'll be taking a look at the big stories impacting the food-away-from-home industry. We'll break down what the developments mean for industry stakeholders.

We'll also give you a look ahead at the news and trends on the horizon that could impact food away from home, and sometimes we'll have special guests on the podcast, too. Be sure to subscribe to The Weekly Takeaway on your favorite podcast platform. New episodes are released every Friday.

There has been no bigger story in our industry in the last week or so than this cyclospora outbreak that appears to be tied to romaine lettuce. Peter, you've been covering this one. What's the latest?

 

Peter: Well, I wish I could report that there's been some blockbuster breakthrough, but that sadly has not been the case. The FDA and the CDC—the two government watchdogs on food safety—are still looking for the cause. It looks like it's connected to lettuce; that's the supposition. It was much publicized that the FDA declared initially that they had found traces of cyclospora in lettuce from Taylor Farms, the nation's largest supplier, and that proved to be a false positive, so they're back on the hunt.

Meantime, Placer.ai tells us that many chains that deal with lettuce or have lettuce on the menu—either as a salad or as a garnish for sandwiches—are feeling the effects. People are not coming as often, and of course, the real victim of that is Taco Bell, which has seen its sales really tank. So we're still in a wait-and-see situation, and meantime, consumers are making their own decision on the matter by voting with their feet.

 

Heather: We're also seeing some potential shakeups coming on the labor front before the end of this month, right? And also finally some movement again on tariffs.

 

Peter: Yeah, if you're wondering what the connection is between those two things, the connection is that this Friday is a deadline on both fronts.

First, with labor: that's the day that immigrants who are here and allowed to work under a government program called TPS—Temporary Protected Status—will lose that right to work here. The government has pretty much flatly said to all employers: you need to put these people off your payroll. You need to let them go. Now, in the instance of the food service industry, they're probably the second-largest employer of this group, which is just under 400,000 employees. So that's going to be a huge thing, and it's happening now as we speak. People are being let go because they're here under that TPS status.

On the tariffs front, there's also a deadline. The workaround that President Trump imposed when the Supreme Court struck down its first round of tariffs was to impose 10% tariffs under a very obscure law that allows him to impose tariffs during wartime. A court said, "Well, there's no wartime, so you can't really do that. But we'll allow you to keep collecting the tariffs until our decision on appeal is held." That is still underway, but in any case, those 10% tariffs expire on Friday.

Now, the president has already indicated that he plans to impose tariffs using other justifications. We saw a taste of that this week when he imposed 50% tariffs on cheeses and alcoholic beverages, as well as some more industrial-type products imported from Canada, and that's under a stipulation in a 95-year-old law that has never been invoked before. So clearly, the White House is searching for ways to keep these tariffs in place.

 

Heather: Thanks for that update. So, readers of our website might have noticed that we have started a regular retail foodservice roundup that chronicles the developments happening in the convenience store and the grocery space as it pertains to foodservice. There are tremendous growth opportunities in this space, both for operators but also for suppliers, especially in the C-store space, where we have seen C-stores basically going head-to-head with fast-food chains in terms of bundle meals, value pricing—all of the aspects of the quick-service playbook are being implemented by C-stores. So it is a fascinating topic to pay attention to.

In the latest roundup, we actually looked at some grocery store innovation. There's a small regional chain, Stew Leonard's, out on the East Coast that has now started doing kids' meals—obviously something any fast-food patron is very familiar with. The Stew Leonard's kids' meals come in these cute little handheld boxes that look suspiciously like a Happy Meal, shaped like a little red barn, and they come with chicken nuggets, fries, a juice box, and a surprise, all for about six bucks. Very interesting to see a grocery store taking on an initiative like this that has traditionally been seen in fast food.

We also reported this week that the convenience store chain Circle K has forged its first CPG partnership. That is something that we have seen a lot in the restaurant space, obviously, with dual-branded menu items. In this case, Circle K has partnered with PepsiCo Frito-Lay, debuting some Flamin' Hot boneless wings that I'm sure Peter will be very excited to try. The terms of this partnership state that basically Circle K gets first dibs on this product for about six weeks before it can be released in other locations. So it's a very interesting space to watch—seeing a lot of innovation coming to grocery stores and convenience stores that previously had been seen at fast-food or big restaurant chains.

So how about you, Peter? What are you seeing for the rest of this month? I know that you're heading to Silicon Valley soon for Go-to-Market Edge. Tell us a little bit about that event and what you're going to be doing there.

 

Peter: Yeah, so we're about two weeks away from Go-to-Market Edge, which is IFMA, the Food Away from Home Association's technology conference. The focus there is squarely on AI, and this year—this is our second time doing this event—the emphasis is on practicality. We want to take the discussion of AI beyond the state where we're just talking about what could happen, and look at how it's actually being used by the food manufacturing community as well as by operators.

So we will be out in Mountain View, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley, week after next. We'll have a day of speakers talking about what's going on, sharing their experiences with AI, and then on the second day we head out to see AI in action at the homes of some of the pioneers. We're going to be visiting Google, Amazon, and an outfit that bills itself as an AI accelerator called Plug and Play, which takes small AI users, helps them ramp up their AI program, and then decides whether to invest in them to help them grow. So it should be a very interesting endeavor.

And not to let the cat out of the bag, but we'll be announcing some new research endeavors during that time. I don't want to reveal too much, but it will be looking at AI in a very unusual and breakthrough way. So we hope to see you there out in Mountain View.

 

Heather: That's very exciting, Peter. So thanks everyone for tuning into our first episode of The Weekly Takeaway. Be sure to check back each Friday for a new episode, and to read more about these topics and many more, head to foodaway.org and click on the news tab. I'm Heather Lalley.

 

Peter: And I'm Peter Romeo. Have a great day.