I barely eat turkey during most of the year, but I take the protein very seriously on Thanksgiving. If you cook it right, it’s pretty awesome. But if you aren’t careful, you end up with a dry, flavorless waste of a bird’s life. This year I’m experimenting with a turchetta, but I have no idea how it’s going to turn out. If you prefer to play it safer with your meat products, you may want to check out Hillshire Brands. They are the Chicago, IL based company behind brands like Hillshire Farm, Ball Park, Jimmy Dean, Sara Lee, and quite a few others. They’re also one of the top turkey producers in the U.S. (which is the top turkey producing country) according to this list.
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I cook a lot, but with Thanksgiving only a few weeks away, it’s time to make sure my skills are as sharp as my knives (doesn’t that sound like a promo for some silly cooking show?). Most of my culinary skills are semi-self-taught. Television, cookbooks, and lots of dinners out have exposed me to all kinds of new concepts, but the Internet is where I go to get the definitive answer on how to cook what I want to cook. Often all it takes is a Google search to find what I’m looking for, but sometimes I want to get new ideas. My go to is Serious Eats, but today I found a new site with a similar approach. The company is called Food52, and it’s a New York, NY based online community that brings “cooks together from all over to exchange recipes and ideas and to support each other in the kitchen.” (Side note: Food52 and Serious Eats are celebrating the the one-in-70,000-ish-years holiday of Thanksgivukkah with a cook off.) In their first few years they’ve been able to reach millions of people and get them talking about food, which is no small feat.
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When I was a kid trick-or-treating was a failure if I didn’t reach double digits. I’m not talking about pieces of candy. I’m talking pounds. I laughed at the kids with the jack-o-lantern candy basket. Amateurs. Any real kid would use a backpack, an oversized pillowcase, or–better yet–both. There’s nothing better than getting home, pouring all your candy on the floor, and looking at the majesty of it all. It’s hard to recreate that feeling as an adult, but I kind of get it when I walk into Dylan’s Candy Bar. They are a New York, NY based retailer (with stores in Miami Beach and LA as well) that has merged “the worlds of art, fashion and pop culture with candy” to build “the world’s largest confectionary emporium and lifestyle brand.” Oddly enough, they don’t seem to dedicate much attention to Halloween, but I guess you don’t have to when your brand is all candy all the time.
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I love meat. I even got an A+ in the Meat Science course that I took in college (it wasn’t nearly as easy as it sounds). In my opinion, animal protein gets an unfairly bad rap for being unhealthy. I went on a diet of mostly high-fat meat and vegetables before my wedding, and lost forty pounds–there’s no way that I’m not healthier because of that. However, there are plenty of people who feel that animal-based diets have significantly negative health and environmental repercussions. Many of them would like to be able to enjoy meat, but can’t because of what they know, think, or feel. Beyond Meat is going to change that… kind of. They are a Manhattan Beach, CA (headquarters) and Columbia, MO (plant) based company that is “focused on perfectly replacing animal protein with plant protein where doing so creates nutritional value at lower cost.” I’d rather just eat a nice steak, but all the veggie burgers and seitan ribs are proof enough that there’s a market for this kind of stuff.
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I’ve been working at eating healthier for a while now. I have a huge appetite–and it gets bigger when I work out, so it’s not easy. I’ve made a lot of progress by shopping only around the perimeter at the grocery store and avoiding snacking, but I know that the latter is hard for people. If you’re going to snack, you might as well try to be healthy. NatureBox is a company that wants to make that easier for everyone. They’re a San Carlos, CA based ” high-growth e-commerce company that is reinventing the way people purchase healthy foods and groceries.” While I’ll assume that they have bigger plans, they’ve started by offering a monthly subscription that helps you discover “healthy, hand-picked snacks.”
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Nearly every culture has its own take on bread. From tortillas to bialys to focaccias to baguettes to naan, there are innumerable ways to turn a grain into something a little easier to eat. There is evidence of rudimentary flatbreads from over 30,000 years ago, but we’ve come a long way since then. What I find interesting is that the staple breads from across the world are becoming luxury items here in the U.S. A non-profit that is taking advantage of this trend is Hot Bread Kitchen. They’re based in New York, NY, and they increase “economic security for foreign-born and low-income women and men by opening access to the billion dollar specialty food industry.” How? They sell a multi-ethnic line of breads that are inspired by the people whom they are training for jobs.
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At this time last year I was still playing beach volleyball. This year I’ve already worn gloves. There’s no doubt about it–it’s soup weather. While I’m not really a soup guy, I’m sure a lot of you are excited about this development. It’s nearly impossible to think about soup without thinking about Campbell’s. They have one of the most recognizable brands in the world, but somewhat surprisingly the Campbell Soup Company brand goes well beyond soup. The Camden, NJ based company call itself “the world’s leading maker and marketer of soup,” but they also own brands like Prego, Pace, Pepperidge Farms, Swanson, and V8. In addition to those, they have some major European and Asia Pacific brands. When you add them all up, you get a company that generates over $7 billion in annual revenue.
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Ahoy, matey! It’s International Talk Like a Pirate Day. I first learned of this bilge-sucking holiday when I was but a wee lad (actually it was freshman year of college from Dave Barry’s syndicated column in my school’s newspaper). Now that I’m an old salt, I tend to lose patience with all of the pirate talk after the first few Facebook posts and wish that some of my friends would walk the plank already. But I promise to have a good attitude this year, which is why we’re going to take a look at Pirate Brands. They’re a Sea Cliff, NY based healthy snack (I hear they prevent scurvy) company that is behind brands like Pirate’s Booty, Smart Puffs, and Potato Flyers. Could there be a better company to feature today?
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Cornell University students! I’ll be on campus tomorrow (Friday). E-mail me at willy@onedayonejob.com if you’d like to meet up.
I usually try to eat a high protein, low carb breakfast. Eggs are the perfect answer, but I find eggs completely unpalatable. Instead I’ll usually cobble together a breakfast of bacon or sausage and some fruit, but that isn’t quite enough. Lately I’ve been having Greek yogurt, and I really like it. I haven’t tried Chobani, but they seem to have become the big name in yogurt these days. In fact, they came in at #117 on the Inc. 500 with some really impressive numbers. Their 2,662% three-year growth rate is far more impressive than higher growth rates because the Norwich, NY based company started with $23 million in revenue and grew to $633.9 million in revenue. They could sell a billion dollars in yogurt this year. That’s absolutely ridiculous when you consider that Chobani’s Founder Hamdi Ulukaya started the company because he “stumbled upon a classified ad for a yogurt plant recently closed down by Kraft.”
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This is going to blow your mind. I’ve never had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Peanut butter sandwich, yes. Peanut butter and jelly, no. I don’t have an explanation except that there was this kid at my elementary school who always had jelly on his face and it kind of grossed me out. I’m sure this is a travesty in the eyes of the people at The J.M. Smucker Company. Luckily for the Orrville, OH based company, not having me as a customer has not kept them out of the Fortune 500 (though their grasp on that title is tenuous at #495). While they’re best known for their fruit spreads, they also manufacture and market “peanut butter, shortening and oils, ice cream toppings, sweetened condensed milk, and health and natural foods beverages.” Though publicly traded, The J.M. Smucker Company is still a family company–their CEO is still a Smucker.
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If you’re like most internship seekers, you’re mainly using job boards. Go where the internships are, right? Not exactly. I’m a strong believer that looking for companies is more important than looking for internships. I explain why in Foundation 3 of our free job search prep course. If you just look for internships that are posted on job boards (or even companies that have intenrships posted on their own site), you’re going to miss out on great opportunities. Sometimes you just need to think about the products that you like, and investigate who makes them. For instance, I occasionally enjoy coconut water. I’ve tried a number of brands, and El Segundo, CA based ZICO tastes the best to me (but only the Natural flavor). I’m not one of those people who believes coconut water is magic, but I do think it makes a far better sports drink than Gatorade.
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Yesterday we talked about filling your head with all kinds of useless pop culture. I don’t recommend it, but I guess you can make a career out of it if you really want to. Why not spend your time on more useful trivia like food industry facts and insights? That’s what the people at Technomic do. It’s a Chicago, IL based consulting company that has been serving the food industry since 1966. They offer “proprietary research, trend analysis, forecasts, common-interest studies and state-of-the-industry reports” to clients in every part of the food industry. Their clients range from supermarkets to chain restaurants to financial institutions that serve the industry. If it has anything at all to do with food, there’s a good chance that Technomic is on top of it.
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In my fiancée’s mind there is no better dessert than fresh berries and whipped cream. I’d probably add a piece of chocolate cake to that, but the biggest variable in the equation is almost always the berries. Good berries, whether they’re strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, or snozberries, taste better than candy, while bad berries often taste like dirt. Since I share Jerry Seinfeld’s feeling that fruit is a gamble, I’m not particularly brand conscious, but checking my refrigerator tells me that my most recently purchased strawberries are from Driscoll’s. They’re a Watsonville, CA based berry purveyor that has been family owned and operated for more than 100 years.
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I’ve never been great about eating breakfast, but when I do eat breakfast, I try to get as much protein into the meal as I can. My problem is that I find eggs completely unpalatable. One can only eat so much sausage and bacon, so I’ve had to find some other protein sources. Sometimes it’s a glass of milk and a scoop of peanut butter, and other times it’a bowl of yogurt. Yogurt’s certainly nothing new (it’s essentially been around since bacteria and milk mixed, but humans have been producing it for millennia), but it’s experienced quite a spike in popularity lately. Probiotics and Greek yogurt are probably the two biggest trends in the industry right now, and they’re part of the reason that Dannon is “one of the fastest growing consumer products companies in the U.S.” While based in White Plains, NY, Dannon is a subsidiary of a multi-billion dollar French company called Groupe Danone). That shouldn’t matter all that much to you, though, as Dannon seems to operate mostly independently.
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Apparently IHOP has declared it National Pancake Day. (Shouldn’t the company formerly known as The International House of Pancakes call it International Pancake Day?) I tried checking out their website to look for interesting opportunities, but it’s getting slammed from all of the holiday related traffic and the site is inaccessible. I’m not kidding. Free pancakes do that to people. Since I’m a fan of making my own pancakes, I decided to celebrate a corporation’s self-created, self-serving holiday by spotlighting one of their competitors. Since I’ve already featured King Arthur Flour, my favorite source of raw materials for pancakes, I thought it would be fun to take a look at Austin, TX based Batter Blaster in celebration of such an important holiday. In case you’re the type who hasn’t been exposed to the finer things in life, Batter Blaster is essentially a whipped cream can that releases pancake or waffle batter. It sounds completely ridiculous, and then you try it. It’s so easy and mess-free, but what’s in it. Then you look at the label and the ingredients are organic. Genius.
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Memorial Day is one of my favorite holidays. Some think that it’s unfortunate that the day has taken on a dual meaning, but I really enjoy both parts of the holiday. That’s why we took a look at Hope for the Warriors and their potential internship opportunities yesterday, and today we’re going to look at the lighter side of Memorial Day. In past years we’ve featured internships at Weber-Stephen, The National Park Service, and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway because all three have solid connections to the holiday. Today it’s all about Johnsonville Sausage, which is based in Sheboygan Falls, WI. I’m back to talking about grilling because it’s the first Memorial Day in three years that I’ll actually have a grill at my disposable. I’ll admit that Johnsonville products aren’t my first choice for grilling (I like steaks), but I do love brats.
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Happy Cinco de Mayo! I haven’t done a celebratory post for today’s holiday since I featured Party City in 2008, so I think it’s about time. In the United States, Cinco de Mayo is mostly a general celebration of Mexican culture (much like St. Patrick’s Day celebrates Irish culture). In my opinion there’s no better way to observe this kind of holiday than by enjoying the culture’s food (some may prefer imbibing the culture’s alcoholic beverage of choice). When I think of Mexican food, Secaucus, NJ based Goya Foods is one of the brands that comes to mind. They are the “the largest, Hispanic-owned food company in the United States,” and they consider themselves “the premier source for authentic Latino cuisine” (that also includes Spanish, Puerto Rican, Caribbean, and Central & South American foods). The company offers more than 1,500 products, and many of them are ingredients for home cooking, which is exactly what holidays like Cinco de Mayo should really be about.
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I always like to tie in holidays to the companies that I feature, so when Easter comes around I usually go looking for candy companies. Last year I actually found a candy related non-profit in PMCA, but in previous years I’ve featured Jelly Belly and Just Born Quality Confections (Peeps!) on Good Friday. I’ve also used other holidays like Halloween and Valentine’s Day to look at even more candy companies including Mars, The Hershey Company, NECCO, Charles Chocolates, and Vosges. I guess you can tell that I have a sweet tooth. This year we’re going to take a look at Russell Stover, a Kansas City, MO based confectioner that also owns Whitman’s and Pangburn’s. They’re the nation’s third largest chocolate manufacturer behind Hershey’s and Mars, and they’re the leader when it comes to boxed chocolates.
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I’m offering up a prize for the first person to find a college aged subscriber to Reader’s Digest. Ok, there’s no prize (unless you want a One Day, One Job sticker–I don’t even have One Day, One Internship ones made yet), but does anyone actually know a Reader’s Digest subscriber under the age of 60? The magazine was tops in circulation for its category for a long time up until 2009, but now demographics are working against them. At least they still can claim “more readers with household incomes of $100,000+ than Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week and Inc. combined.” That means that they have some serious advertising power. Reader’s Digest is just one of the publications owned and operated by New York, NY based Reader’s Digest Association, which is “a global multi-brand media and marketing company that educates, entertains and connects audiences around the world.” They also have AllRecipes, Every Day with Rachel Ray, The Family Handyman, and quite a few other brands.
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A few days ago I started reading The 4-Hour Body
by Tim Ferriss on my Kindle. I enjoyed his first book, The 4-Hour Workweek
, and I like Tim’s blog, so I figured it was worth a read. It’s a little out there, but I find that there’s always something that I can learn from Tim whether it’s what he’s actually teaching or how he’s teaching it. Anyway, The 4-Hour Body focuses on hacking your body to improve performance, so most of the focus is on diet, exercise, and supplementation. I’m somewhat familiar with diet and exercise, but I’ve never used supplements beyond a few scoops of whey protein. I do know that supplements are big business, and one of the big players in the industry is CytoSport, which is based in Benicia, CA. They aim to provide the highest quality nutritional products to professional and amateur athletes striving to reach their potential,” and they do that one of the biggest brands in the space, Muscle Milk.
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Today we’re going to talk about Cheetos. They are the epitome of snack food—you can’t stop eating them. Do you know why? Because they taste awful. It makes sense if you think about it. The only way to get the awful taste out of your mouth from the previous Cheeto is to eat another one. Then you eat the whole bag. You trick yourself into thinking they taste good. I can take something that tastes bad if it’s healthy, but that’s something that Cheetos definitely aren’t. Food Should Taste Good. That’s not just a statement, but it’s the name of today’s company. They’re a Needham, MA based company that is “dedicated to making wholesome, healthy snacks.” They think that real ingredients are the key to great tasting food, and I think they’re right. Their name may seem kind of obvious, but judging by some of the stuff that I see on store shelves, maybe it’s not.
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