While the Summer of Grimace is fading away, there’s one thing McDonald’s is very good at: merchandising and creating products people want. Whether it’s food in the aforementioned Grimace Shake or a Happy Meal for adults, it’s a company that gets people in the door for a variety of reasons. But the little-known McD’s-run Smilemakers site lets you browse and purchase merch straight from the company itself. Smilemakers is generally geared toward restaurant operators and managers to provide shirts, pins, accessories, and awards for employees. But the site is open to the public. Right now, there is a Heritage Collection…
Tag: food
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Grimace’s Return… To The Game Boy
The current craze with McDonald’s Grimace, the longtime purple blob mascot, is a cultural moment here in 2023. Deciding to roll out a purple shake, the fast food chain is putting Grimace front and center in its marketing. Weirdly, the Grimace shake has become a TikTok trend wherein Gen Z is drinking it and making short horror skits out of what happens next. It’s weird, and obscure, but also very creative. Now, Grimace is pulling another out-of-nowhere stunt: appearing on the Game Boy Color. Andrew Cunningham at Ars Technica has more. Grimace’s Birthday was developed by Krool Toys, a Brooklyn-based…
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Wendy’s AI
While I don’t think ChatGPT is taking over the world any time soon, one technology that has come far in the last decade is voice recognition. In the early days of Siri and Google Assistant, they were wrong a lot. Now, those and other assistants capture our speech with extremely high accuracy. Using this, Wendy’s is piloting a program to let their Drive-Thrus be staffed by Google’s AI. Michael Crider at PC World has more. The system has been trained to tune out extraneous noises, like the sound of a passing conversation or kids fighting in the backseat, and can…
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Cooking With Brian Baumgartner
Brian Baumgartner’s character of Kevin from The Office is legendary. There are many reasons, but of course, his chili segment is The One that everyone remembers. Even Peacock put the recipe into its Terms of Service simply as an easter egg to see who’d notice. While The Office is long over, its popularity remains. In the Binging with Babish series on YouTube, Brian does some of his own series-inspired cooking. The 16-minute video is a fun look at how Kevin’s snacks on the show could actually be cooked and even if it’s a good idea. Baumgartner is a lot of…
As a lover of all things sweet, I’ve always been intrigued by the Twinkie. Known for their yellow cake and creamy filling, Twinkies have been a go-to snack for generations. One rumor that has persisted since I was a kid is that Twinkies don’t expire. Is this really true? According to Shea Simmons over at Lifesavvy, the answer is sort of yes and no. In general, Twinkies are shelf-stable for up to 25 days. That’s markedly longer than many other snack cakes but way shorter than the infinite date cited by many. The thing that makes Twinkies last longer than others is…
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A Lawsuit to Fix Hot Sauce
If there is one thing Americans love to do, it’s file lawsuits. Our legal system is gunked up again by a man in California who felt the best way to use his time and resources was to file a lawsuit. About hot sauce. Because it’s not made in Texas. If you’re saying “really??” then let Ariana Garcia at Chron tell you more. A Los Angeles man has filed a class action lawsuit accusing Winston-Salem-based T.W. Garner Food Co. of false advertising after learning that its Texas Pete hot sauce is made in North Carolina—not the Lone Star State. As reported…
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Fine-Dining Restaurant… For Dogs
Another story from the “I can’t believe this is a real thing” department. This time the reporting from Elena Kadvany at the SF Chronicle details a high-end restaurant for dogs complete with a $75 tasting menu. Dogue opened last week at 988 Valencia St. with pastries and “dogguccinos” served during the day and a $75, three-course tasting menu on Sundays. Passersby could easily confuse this for San Francisco’s hottest new all-day cafe. A glass case is filled with elegant pastries, like a rose-shaped cake filled with wild venison heart and a doggy petit gâteau modeled after the creations of acclaimed French pastry…
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The Happy Meal for Adults
McDonald’s is doing what a lot of other companies love to do: cash in on nostalgia. Many things from the ’80s and ’90s are back these days. Now “Mickey D’s” has done something pretty cool: an adult happy meal. It’s a collaboration with a secretive streetwear brand called Cactus Plant Flea Market. Even better, it still comes with a toy. Nicholas Vega at CNBC gives us the details. The Cactus Plant Flea Market Box is a collaboration between McDonald’s and the famous streetwear brand, and will roll out to participating stores starting on Oct. 3. Unlike the smaller menu items…
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Every State’s Favorite Ice Cream
Ice cream is one of the best desserts out there. There are enough flavors being made all over that there is truly something for everyone’s tastes. But, like most food, cultural and geographic differences can change what is popular. We can now see, thanks to the Top agency, how each state in the US stacks up against the others. Top Data team analyzed digital commerce trends in 2022 to determine the most searched ice cream flavors in America. Looking through Top’s analysis of search data, we get some interesting results. Rocky Road is quite popular, along with Strawberry. One I…
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A mile and a Half for a Dunkin’
Stow, Massachusettes is in a bit of a crisis. The small town that sits about 30 miles east of Boston has had the most Massachusetts of slights committed against it: the closing of its Dunkin’ Donuts locations. WBZ’s Matt Shearer reports that where there were once two locations in the small town, there are now zero. Shearer interviews various people. One notable local is frustrated he now has to drive a lot further for his Dunkin’ fix: a mile and a half.
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Bologna Smugglers
The border of the US and Mexico has a smuggling problem. One that causes hundreds of pounds of meat to illicitly flow into the US. This high-value item is definitely unexpected. It’s bologna. Madeleine Aggeler at Texas Monthly tells us more. The bologna arrives in darkness. Hundreds of pounds cross into the U.S. from Mexico at once. Rolls are stuffed into the backs of SUVs, sewn into car seats, shoved into spare tires, or hidden in suitcases beneath heaps of shirts and socks. Once, in El Paso, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer drilled into a car’s bumper and…
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Wave G’bye to HoJo
It’s 2022 and incredibly it is only this year that we see the closure of the final location of Howard Johnson’s restaurants. Once sporting a thousand locations, “HoJo’s” as many called it, is really gone for good. The final location resided in Lake George, NY which is a popular summer destination. Many visit the area to camp, fish, and boat along the massive lake. With a captive group of vacationers, it makes sense that this location was able to stay open well past the years of all the other HoJo’s. Ed Mazza at HuffPo has more on this and how…
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Orange Breakfast
Breakfast cereal has been a staple in homes for decades. The marketing for it has been quite clever. Cereal was positioned as something integral for breakfast and by doing this, companies like Kellog’s and Post have become morning empires. Now Tropicana, yes THAT Tropicana has decided they want a piece of the action. Orange juice on cereal.Some call it weird. Some call it breakfast. We . . . didn’t even know it was a thing. But turns out, there are totally normal people amongst us juicing up their cereal bowls. You might be one of them! So for those who…
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Unauthorized Storefront
A restaurant group in Florida is suing Google for allegedly setting up landing pages that don’t belong to the eateries. According to the group, Google is providing a profile within their search results that have “Order Online” buttons but those point to delivery apps. Tim De Champ at Ars Technica has the story. When users click the “Order Online” button, they’re directed to a page that in many cases contains large links to food delivery companies, complete with their logos. The restaurant’s own site gets a link as well, though it’s a small, generic “website” button. In some cases, Google…
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Nobody Asks That
Most companies / brands have a ‘voice’ or style that they look to use everywhere. Whether it’s in their advertising, website, copy on its products itself, etc. Oat milk company Oatly decided to have some fun with their website and dedicate a section of their website to infrequently asked questions. The page itself is funny, but more so because many of the questions are accompanied by a user manual or poster-style graphic that visualizes the question. Some of the questions they’ve been “asked” include getting an electric vehicle tax credit by buying their oat milk and asking if any oats…
“I’ve never been out of cream cheese for 30 years,” said Joseph Yemma, the owner of F&H Dairies in Brooklyn, a dairy product distributor for many of the city’s bagel shops. “There’s no end in sight.” In interviews with owners and workers at about 20 bagel shops and delis across the city, many said they were frazzled, frustrated and rushing to find cream cheese after learning about the shortage in the past few days. Absolute Bagels has enough cream cheese to last until Thursday, Mr. Patta said. But employees at his typical supplier told him they could not confirm when…