Seattle Bewilderment Blog

Seattle #23: The sad state of mainstream American chocolate.

2/3/2018

It's no secret that Hershey's is the dominant chocolate manufacturer in the US with a 45% market share. In 1988 Hershey paid $300m for Cadbury's operations and right to manufacture Cadbury brands in the US. Hershey also makes Nestle's KitKats under license here. It's also well known that Hershey are unique for using use soured milk in their recipe. Close your eyes and Hershey's and it smells like puke for a reason.

So I spend more on Lindt (with a 9% market share) and local niche brands (Theo's), and ask visiting Brits and Aussies to supply me with the good stuff (Tim Tams, Kinder Bueno, Tunnock's Caramel Bars).

I think I'm known as the person with an amazing imported sweets bowl.

Oh my god, I am becoming my grandmother!

My private haul from my recent trip to Scotland and Germany. This makes up my secret stash and will NOT make the sharing bowl.

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Seattle #16: Food snobbery, especially ...corn?

19/1/2018

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I mean this in the nicest way, really, I do.
I am a total sushi snob. It doesn't have to be amazing, but at least average. I did after all live in Tokyo, and I could get amazing sashimi salmon in Scotland. Cheese, ice cream, and tea too, I know what I like, and I'll accept something average by my standards, but all too many places disappoint.

I'm discovering locals are snobs about other, unexpected foods.
On a summer's day in June a friend from Iowa (America's biggest corn grower) came over for a BBQ and I asked him to bring over some corn. He almost refused, saying it's a terrible idea, it's far too early in the year for that, and he tried to talk me out of it.
The following morning he sent me this message:
"I'm with [two friends], both from Iowa. I told them you asked me to bring corn on the cob last night. They both scoffed and said "wtf it's way too early for that. Do they even sell it? You actually bought some? Was it horrible?""

So I put the call out to my friends for comments. One in Whistler, rural Washington said "Was there corn available? It isn't at my local grocer." Seattle had it. A Nebraskan, Minnesotan, a New Yorker and another Iowan friend all agreed it's best when bought off the road from the back of someone's truck. The Minnesotan, whom I knew from my time in Japan, grew his own corn on his Tokyo balcony just to have some!

I also received multiple offers to have some corn sent by post from corn-growing regions, but only once they're properly in-season. Apparently the saying "knee-high by the 4th of July" is important for this.

I probably shouldn't have my mind blown by the fact that certain foods are seasonal. There are plenty of foods I know to consume at their peak. Carrots produce sugar in the winter, watermelons in summer harvested after a hot and dry day are better, and virgin blood is best drank under a full moon.

I need to be careful though. I might become a convert to the cult of the children-of-the-corn-(snobs).

What snob I didn't even know existed will I disappoint next?
Apple aficionado? Juice junkie? Fish fanatic?

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Seattle #14: Food, part 2.

29/12/2017

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Some foods are so rich they're out of this world, like American sweet corn, cotton-candy grapes and Irish-imported Kerrygold butter. (Mixing the ultra-tasty corn with the rich butter is too rich though.) But as is well documented in academia, Americans like their food sweeter. Why anyone would want their canned chopped tomatoes to have added sugar, I don't know. Most American bread is also far too sweet for me to stomach, but not as sweet as Japan which was even worse.

Bulk purchase discounts at normal supermarkets are a bit crazy here - why I would want to buy 10 large cucumbers at once, I don't know (or want to know?), and 4L (1 gallon) bottles of milk are the most popular size sold.

I'm going through a process of finding out what products I like here, and where to get them. Many big international brands here are diferent to their overseas versions, such as Special K, so that heuristic goes out the window (not that there are many international brands I recognise here).

The good news is I'm slowly getting there. So far I can scratch gouda cheese off the list, but it's the only cheese so far. Premium gelato brands are sorted, as are luncheon meats and water-crackers, but other than that I have to be prepared for disappointment wen shopping and eating, at least for a while.

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Seattle #12: How judgmental people are of food, especially non-organic food

15/12/2017

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Tonight, a complete stranger in my apartment building walked up to me eating my dinner on the communal rooftop area to point out the BBQ sauce was a cheap one that uses high fructose corn syrup. I checked the label, and sure enough, it's the first listed ingredient, and therefore main ingredient. Something I wish I knew when I bought it. Good to know. Really.

He then went on to explain he only buys organic, and the lack of the word 'organic' on the label' is another reason he wouldn't buy it. I had to bite my tongue before I made a comment about how blindly following such things is foolish. I could easily have given him many specific examples where it's simply a money-maker because the items were organic anyway, there is little or no advantage or a serious disadvantage for certain foods to be organic, or certain foods aren't really organic because of greedy companies labeling non-organic items as organic to boost their profits.

I did that 'smile and nod' thing I have heard so much about. It worked wonders. He moved on to ask what I do and what my thesis is on. Of course I excitedly told him it's on food labeling, and how we can alter consumers perceptions, even taste perceptions of foods through packaging. I grabbed the sauce bottle and used it as a prop to explain how we marketers can get consumers to pay more by making them *think* something is premium, when it really isn't.

He...did not like that. He did not like that at all.

Other label gimmicks are rampant. Chickens here can't be given growth hormones or raised in cages, but every chicken product in the supermarket has to say "hormone and cage free", lest consumers think the company that doesn't do this is worse than the others. Not to mention gluten free items for product types that have no gluten to begin with.
Game show idea: give three marketers 30 minutes in a supermarket to find as many products that they can that do this. Winner gets a year's supply of fat-free yogurt that is packed wish sugar.

Addendum:
My favorite podcast did an episode on organic food, and I'm stoked they mention the type of research my thesis was on. In blind taste tests people think vegetables *labelled* organic taste better (when it definitely doesn't).
I'm tempted to do a talk on organic food and market it to people who consume organic food, if only for the schadenfreude of being like a person telling a class of kids Santa isn't real.
To be clear, I'm not saying it isn't good, but it is not what most people think it is. Check out the Organic Food episode of Science Vs podcast.

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#7 Tipping and Tax

10/11/2017

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Before moving here I assumed tipping was the same across America, at a flat 15%. It turns out it is...
0% if you're poor and mean, or just mean.
15% as a bare minimum if the service was below-average. Some people just do this all the time though.
20% if it was good.
Up to 30% (and beyond) if it was amazing.

Tax is never included when listed in the advertisement, label or menu. It is layered on at multiple levels, and sometimes invoices show this. Here the taxes are:
Washington State: 6.5%
King County: 3.5%
Seattle city: 0.1%
Total: 10.1%
(Supermarket raw ingredients are not taxed, which is normal in the other places I have lived.)

This makes calculating tips in Seattle easy - just double the tax on your bill. However travel outside the Seattle city zip code (e.g. go to a satellite city), county or state, and your tax, total at the till, and the tip you must calculate change.

It's all become a bit much for me and I've resigned myself to just paying whatever the new total is.

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Seattle #23: The sad state of mainstream American chocolate.

Seattle #16: Food snobbery, especially ...corn?

Seattle #14: Food, part 2.

Seattle #12: How judgmental people are of food, especially non-organic food

#7 Tipping and Tax

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Seattle #23: The sad state of mainstream American chocolate.

Seattle #16: Food snobbery, especially ...corn?

Seattle #14: Food, part 2.

​Seattle #12: How judgmental people are of food, especially non-organic food

#7 Tipping and Tax

About this blog

Subscribe

Archives

Categories

Seattle #12: How judgmental people are of food, especially non-organic food