375: Emily Sundberg

0:00This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. Resi is a digital platform that connects restaurants to restaurant lovers by elevating dining experiences, providing original industry content, and helping to fill some of the country's most exciting dining rooms. Because restaurants have always been more than just places to eat. The amazing world of restaurants is just a few taps away in the Resi app and at resi.com.

0:31I don't think that we have seen proof that vertical farming is solving any hunger issues, especially with companies like Bowery Farming and basil is not solving hunger issues. Strawberries and tomatoes aren't either. So I have my own feelings about that technology and ad tech in general and how it's marketed.

0:53This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbard. Today on the show, we have a really special conversation with Emily Sundberg, the voice behind the must-read and much-read Feed Me, a newsletter about business, culture, food, and good gossip. Emily and I shared the stage at a recent Adweek Commerce Week event, and we shared, I'd say, some pretty interesting things. We talked about all sorts of craziness, including the probiotic soda boom, graza potato chips the future of food media the rise of retail media the best and worst food retail and really so much more thanks to our friends at ad week for inviting us to the stage and i hope you enjoy this conversation

1:45sorry that we're the the first one after lunch but hopefully this will be fun Hi, Emily. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. I didn't have lunch yet, but how are you doing? We haven't had lunch yet together, but what we're going to do is start with a little taste test because I think it's important for what we're going to discuss today. I have a can of Olipop Cola Classic, and I have a can of Poppy Classic Cola. So they go both. They kind of flip it a bit. So I wanted you—you've never tried them, so I wanted you to kind of participate in the new Cola Awards Because as we know, Poppy was just on the Super Bowl, and Alipop has done really well in the past few years.

2:22So to us, this is the new Soda Wars. And, yeah, what do you think? It's not Diet Coke. You traditionally do not drink sodas that were invented after 1992. Is that right? 2004. 2004 is your – okay. Yeah. So we can marinate on that. I'll let you sip it. I'm Matt Rodbard. I'm the editor-in-chief of Taste and host the podcast, This Is Taste. And we're part of Penguin Random House. And I've been there for eight years. I'm Emily. I'm a writer. And I write a daily business newsletter on Substack called Feed Me. Yeah. Is anyone a Feed Me reader here? Let's get some hands in the air. We got a few hands.

3:00I love to see that. Well, more folks. Oh, yeah. Person that invited us. Yeah. I appreciate that. So I think right now, the first question I want to ask you is about Frog Club. What do you think about this private club that's taking over food media right now? So Frog Club is a new restaurant that opened in New York in the West Village a few weeks ago. And it was opened by the partner of somebody who went through a big scandal last year that was written about in New York Magazine about a restaurant called Horses. And part of the deal with frog club that's probably had like what eight shifts now yeah it's like three weeks old basically yeah you when you go inside they put a sticker on your phone cameras so you can't take any photos yeah um and they've they've made it really difficult to make reservations i went um maybe on night three yeah you're returning tonight and yeah that was not my plan but i am returning tonight um yeah i think that there's this big boom of membership clubs in new york right now and that was their way of sort of playing into that i don't like the idea of putting stickers on people's music it makes me feel like a child yeah it really does makes me feel like you don't trust me to like be cool it's also like you're paying them money to have a meal why should i be censored like that yeah strange yeah the reason i wanted to bring this up really was was important Food media is unique.

4:29We have a very low attention span and we move around a lot. And so right now we're talking about Frog Club. But the next day we might be talking about$200 million funding for a berry company, which we will talk about in a second. But we wanted to come up here and talk about just the way the grocery store and CPG has become kind of a little bit of a movement in media. There's great places like Andrea Hernandez doing Snackshot and Nate Rosen doing his work and, of course, lots of the traditional trades. But we think that the grocery store is an interesting place to write about and live about. And you write about it quite a bit in your newsletter, which is not just about food, but has a bit of a food threat.

5:11Yeah, I wrote this story for New York Magazine a little bit over a year ago, and it was about this idea of shoppy shops. So there was this store that was appearing everywhere in New York or pretty much anywhere you went, right? It was like your neighborhood store and the hotel lobby in the middle of Austin and the bookstore in Los Angeles all were selling Graza olive oil and diaspora spices and... Fish Wife. Fish Wife, Tinned Fish. And it was everywhere. And it felt really quickly that this switch happened to seeing these brands constantly on Instagram in the store. So part of the story was about the homogeneity of retail.

5:54But then the other part of it was about this massive tech company that was the underlying reason that those products were showing up everywhere. And it's called Fair. Yeah, Fair is an interesting company. I don't know if it's lexicon yet, but it's the company that the Shoppy Shop owners are using to stock their stores. It's the platform. And I wanted to talk a little bit about Fair. And we've dug into Fair a bit on taste in our podcast. This is Taste. But I wanted to get a sense that Fair was kind of a main character in this really memorable story about the Shoppy Shop. But you know what? If I'm a brand, how am I like, is it fair or nothing to get into retail?

6:32Or is there a better way to crack into the shoppy shops, which, as you mentioned, are everywhere. It's not just traditional street level brick mortar. It's in spaces. It's really everywhere right now. Yeah, I think if you're trying to make the most amount of money possible and reach the most amount of markets possible, there's the answer. Yeah. I wonder if FAIR is going to be a pushback on FAIR. Do you think that people are going to actually maybe make competitors to FAIR and have? It's so hard. They're a decacorn. They're like this very special, incredibly profitable platform. And the traditional model of going to wholesale markets to discover new products is expensive.

7:23You have to travel. You have to spend time there. You have to do the handshaking. It's so exhausting to shake hands. And now you can just go on this platform and see what you should put into your store immediately and get it sent to you. So, I mean, just from an ease and cost perspective, it's… Yeah. Oishi,$134 million in funding, I guess$200 million as of this week, which you wrote about in your letter earlier this week. Are you guys familiar with the Oishi strawberries? They come in a tray. It's like six berries for$100. It follows kind of a longstanding East Asian culture of prizing fruit and putting a lot of money into fruit and using fruit as a gift.

8:04And I think that's a beautiful tradition. So we certainly have nothing against that. I find it interesting that Oishi, what they represent, and is a food company that is really focusing on vertical farming, which has had its ups and downs. I mean, Smallhold just shuttered, which is a vertically farmed mushroom company that got a lot of press and put a lot of money into ads folded. I wonder what your take is on this kind of it feels like a lot of funding, but maybe it's not a lot of funding, actually. Well, to back up for a second, I'm not even sure if that release is public yet, but they put up that release.

8:42There's a screenshot of it. There's a screenshot of it that a few people found for the few hours that that fundraising announcement was up. And if you look at where the cash was coming from, it's not like, hey, Forerunner invested a ton of money into this strawberry company. It's more like, hey, Ford Motors and the U.S. government and J.P. Morgan put money into this company. So it was Japanese banks and Mitsubishi. It's like a Mitsubishi strawberry. And it's more to me when I saw where that money was coming from, it was more of like a symbolic. We're supporting this movement, ribbon cutting nonprofit.

9:17We believe in vertical farming and a big part of the fundraise was also around the solar panels that that company is using. I don't think that we have seen proof that vertical farming is solving any hunger issues, especially with companies like Bowery Farming. Basil is not solving hunger issues. Strawberries and tomatoes aren't either. So I have my own feelings about that technology and ad tech in general and how it's marketed. But I do think that that announcement is going to have people on their toes and look at those products differently as they're in more stores. But talk about a rich text.

9:59And we're talking about a vertically farmed strawberry that is over$20 for a dozen of them and with$200 million in funding. So for my seat, writing about food, where previously I might have been writing about Frog Club and the transactions in restaurants in Los Angeles and San Francisco, now it feels a little more interesting to write about an Oishi, to write about Graz's new chip release, which happened this very morning. And Emily's newsletter, I would say, uncovered some nutritional information about it. Oh. You're like, oh, I forgot I wrote that. No, I did not forget it. I didn't see that on the agenda.

10:36that. Sorry, Google Adlib. Yeah, I think Graza launching chips, sure. I don't think olive oil is the best oil to fry chips in for an ultimate, like a premium product. And that was sort of the feedback that I heard from friends who have tried it already. I haven't tried it yet. I only have been texted by people who have tried those chips. But yeah, Graza is an interesting company. Andrew Benin is a friend, so I have to disclose that. And I find he has always been a great guest on my show. And Graz is that brand that just really exploded. I think they're projecting 144 million in sales this year.

11:10That's up into the right growth for a company that is basically selling Spanish olive oil, now branching into Portugal and Italy. And I find the squeeze bottle nature of it has been genius and certainly has been copied. And we talk about that. New York Times wrote a little funny story about that when Andrew went a little ham on LinkedIn. But I will say this, as a content play, it seems really interesting to do this kind of fringe product that I guess peripheral product, we'll call it fringe, we don't even know what the distribution is of these chips. It also kind of aligns with their interest in breaking into water into beverage with their Ouroboros collaboration, which I really, it was really good.

11:54I really love the Ouroboros olive oil collaboration. And this feels, it feels organic to me in a sense. The chips? Yeah. Am I wrong? You seem skeptical still. I am, but I don't think it matters if they do well or not, if those are the numbers that they're projecting this year, because if it fails, it probably wasn't the most expensive projects. Like potatoes aren't that expensive. But what I will say about Graza is that their investment in artwork and branding has built them quite a moat to protect themselves like i think that they did invest heavily into looking different than what was already on the shelf which is usually this sort of agriculturally looking dark green or brown bottle that's glass maybe shows like an olive leaf so for them to make it more of this joyful experience immediately set them apart from what else was on the aisle in addition to the bottles does anyone have brats on their a countertop?

12:48Is anyone cooking with it? I think I see about, I would see 10 hands in a room. I'd say probably more in the next year, looking at talking to Andrew. Let's do a little zoom out. I feel like us being on the stage with agencies and marketers in the room who have ad spend, who have control over our industry, my industry, your industry, media, publishing, how the heck Can we reverse course with food media? It's been a tough couple of years, guys. It's been a tough couple of years. We'll have some thoughts on retail media. It's been a big topic at this conference. So we'll have a little bit about that.

13:25Broadly speaking, how can we fix it? Specifically, which parts are we going to try to fix right now? The money to help. Yeah, like all of it. Like the way that we can create a sustainable environment for editors and staff to work, create content that the readers enjoy and of course have sustainable business where the marketers and advertisers are helping make it happen i think it's really hard to compete with platforms like instagram tiktok and now substack if you're a writer and you're talented and you're good at it um you can start a substack tomorrow and if you specifically write about food they have an entire team there that wants you there because they don't have enough food writers right now they're going to give you the tools, teach you how to use them, and you can make money yourself.

14:11You can write whatever you want and not have to make any advertisers happy. I'm somebody who uses Substack is my job now. So it would be hard for me to go back to a magazine or a newspaper and work there knowing that half of my stories would probably be like chopped and thrown away. But I would say for the magazines that are still still have lights on like a bon appetit or taste or the new york times cooking stuff josh meredith has a few of course totally well yeah um you probably need to go where food success successful food publications have always gone which is like to the julia or the martha or the aina or the mario or the whoever and invest in talent whether that's building somebody up that you're seeing that doesn't have an audience yet and growing them or having somebody who already has a platform invite them in and sort of let them do their thing.

15:09Because there is so many ways to make money without being housed in these larger organizations. Yeah. Well said. I might push back a little bit and just say just programmatic advertising needs to not be kind of the focus of your revenue and the way you keep the lights on. I feel if you go to any website, try to look for a recipe these days. If it's not called New York Times Cooking, it's a disaster. It's a complete shit show. You just don't want to be there. And talk about engagement. I know it's a huge metric here for many in this room. My engagement with an ad that's blocking my bolognese recipe is I hate that brand.

15:42That's truly how I feel and how everyday people, we hear readers from places that don't know what ad tech is, and they just don't like it. So for me, it's about thinking through what is your ad spend? Are you working with a brand that's responsible, that actually can do ad loads in a unique way, if it's through an ad network? Or is it just custom, which obviously data and scale is different for more custom jobs. But certainly, I think finding the right brands, and I think many of the big brands at Condé Nast and at Dot Dash are going to have that ability to do custom. So I'm not just going to speak for myself at Taste, but you can, of course, work with us.

16:19And I just want to say about retail media, which has been obviously a very big topic at this conference. And it's very interesting about retail media how, you know, you got to pay to play if you're a founder. Andrew Benin from Graza said that to me on our last episode. I met him. And, of course, giving money to Walmart, Amazon, Instacart, et cetera, is important. But certainly looking at your friends in publishing, too, as a possible place to spend certainly is going to create this ecosystem that we need as publishers. and I think there's maybe a cooling of the retail media space just from the little bit I read in the trades.

16:58Please disagree with me. If you want to catch up afterwards, you can please disagree with me, but I feel like it's been a real death for our industry is that the way these brands, and I don't blame the brands. Obviously, they're working closest to their consumers with the retailers, but we're going to go away, you know, as people creating food content, and we're never coming back. So I think there needs to be a little bit of a recalibration there. Yeah, I agree. And the cool thing about working inside advertising with these brands that have talented editorial and creative teams is that you can make something completely different than if you were to spend with like a Walmart.

17:34Very different experience and both have pros and cons. I want to show Dan Frommer too, just for his writing about the Walmart acquisition of Visio, really interesting work there. I definitely recommend reading The New Consumer and that piece. And I think that's part of an interesting and smart move by retail media. I'm not going to shoot on retail media at this conference. Obviously, it would be very inappropriate. I have a few more topics to cover. And I just want to really thank you, Emily, for being so open and joining the stage. That's all I know. Let's talk about retail. Because I feel I've asked Andrea Hernandez from Snackshot, Ellie Truesdale from New Fair Ventures, this question on the podcast.

18:15And let's talk about indie retail, specifically in the food space and food CPG. Is there any indie retail that is exciting you right now that you think is doing it right? So I feel like a lot of the brands that come to or the stores that come to mind here are like Foxtrot and Big Night and Pop-Up Grocer. I live in South Brooklyn, so my indie retail is like the Italian store and then like the Mexican store. It's a little different when you live in the city. Yeah, but that's what I interact with all the time. I'm seeing more restaurants start to open like little grocery stores on the side, which I think is a really cool way to buy into a restaurant that you can't necessarily go to because maybe you don't live around it or maybe it's impossible to get a reservation if you're talking about like Missy or Lilia or something.

19:08So I am excited to see how more restaurant brands start to create their little grocery experiences, whether they're white labeling or not. I don't really know. And I don't really care that much. I just think it's sort of an interesting exercise also to help them stay open. I don't go to like Foxtrot. Yeah, I go to Foxtrot in Chicago, just get a coffee and check out their selection. I like pop-up grocery a lot. I think the model that Emily Schilt has built there, creating a low barrier entry for founders, lower shelving prices and working with diversity inclusion measures for founders is important.

19:42Cool events. She brings people in. Emily's nice. I feel let's flip it then. Let's talk about big box. Big box retailers that excites you right now. Anybody? What jumps out of your head? I know you write about it weekly or daily, actually. I mean, I write about Sephora a lot. That's not in this category specifically. they do have some consumable or like adaptogenics chocolates probably like weed and sex gummies yeah something for sure um but i think about support a lot and i think that the way that suddenly like anything they do passes for the new york times journalistic standards now it's kind of funny i don't think 10 years ago we would have been reading about that store as much as we do now yeah um so i will have to say that even though that's not part of the umbrella that we're under right now in terms of grocery?

20:29I'm going to say Walmart. Speaking with founders on our show, it seems like, and this is obviously just anecdotal, it seems Walmart is treating founders in a better way than maybe some of the others, not to name names. But also, I just walked into Walmart. I live in Orange County, New York, just outside the city. It's a standard Walmart. And I'm seeing brands I recognize. I'm also seeing new brands. I'm seeing protein-based cereals. I'm seeing the new Van Leeuwen flavors. I'm seeing things. I'm seeing Graza eventually, which I think they're launching there soon. Or maybe are. They're already there, I believe.

21:03So maybe that is on the record. I guess it is now. So I feel like Walmart to me as a massive retailer in our country has embraced baby brands in a way that's exciting to me. Go back to the colas. What do you think? What do you think? They're not, they're not doing it for me. Really? No, I love Diet Coke. I don't mind the chemicals in Diet Coke. They're not. No, the chemicals are part of the joy. They make me so happy. I get it. I understand those Super Bowl ads, but yeah, these are not very good to me. Okay, fair enough. I like Olipop personally a little bit over Poppy. I just think from a media perspective, just seeing how the probiotic soda category has exploded.

21:46Gentleman backstage told me how Q1 last year, it was a top, Poppy was top selling on Amazon. So that's pretty impressive. Yeah, that's crazy. I really think it's just one example of why the grocery store is content, which is the name of this panel. I think from us, from our seats, writing about commerce and trend and home cooking, nothing is more exciting than walking into your local grocery store and writing about it. So I feel very strongly it's the big future. Yeah, I do too. Alright. I think that's it. So I appreciate you guys listening.

22:26This is Taste is hosted by Eliza Abarbanel and me Matt Rodbar. The show is produced by Shalia Harris and Pat Stango and edited by Clayton Gumbert. Theme music by Steve Rydell. Visit Taste Online at tastecooking.com and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter for updates on all cool things that are happening.