Marketing Spoonful

Once, long before she had celebrated her Bicentennial, America had a local-regional food system.
The Spoon is not quite 40, but there used to be a dairy that supplied reusable milk bottles full of ice-cold milk just across town from where we lived. There was a meat market. And a bread store. It wasn’t until 1978 [...]

Tags: Desmond Jolly, farmer's markets, Food, food ethics, food supply chain, green consumerism, local, localvore, Marketing

Dear Betty Crocker,
We’d like to tell you about how much we love your brownies. We love them so much that not even the absence of an oven will keep us from their moist, chocolatey goodness.
Our love for your brownies inspired us to not only make an heroic effort to cook them on the road, but [...]

Tags: Betty Crocker, Branding, brownies, camp cooking, camping, family fun, favorite snack, Food, homeade stove, passion for brownies, rustic, rustic cabin, stone stove, Travel

Does it count as a snack if you eat it for breakfast? When does it stop being a snack and become a meal?
A meal should fill one completely. Maybe breakfast is less about filling the tank and more about providing enough fuel for the initial spark that gets the engine going for the day.
If that’s [...]

Tags: Borden, breakfast, breakfast brownie, breakfast pie, brownies, cherry pie, energy cookie, Kramer, milk, Odwalla, priming the engine, protein, Shatto, snack, Snickers

Apparently, the answer to that question is an unqualified “Yes.”
Early one morning of the trip, the Spoon walked out and discovered a mess from what looked to be a week’s worth of trash strewn all over the driveway, about 50 feet from where it should have been in the storage shed. (See photo above.)
And not [...]

Tags: bacon, bears, cantaloupe, Coca-Cola, grease, junk food, mess

Whether it’s Washington, D.C., or Lamar, Colo., (pictured here), Safeway does so many things right. We’ve worked with Safeway for a few years now, but we’re always observing new things.
The small-town version of the store proves you can be small town and still stock the essentials and so much more, from an extensive line of [...]

Tags: beef, Customer Service, Dillons, Eastern Colorado, Family, Henry Winehard, multi-tier branding, O, organic, private label, Rancher's Reserve, root beer, Safeway, savings card, selection, small town, tender, Travel, vacation

Oberto natural beef jerky and a bag of Art and Mary’s potato chips, after a big breakfast at the Famous Serveteria sustained us well. But 200 miles into our 500-mile trip, it was time to top off the gas tank in the Honda Odyssey and top off the road pantry with our favorite snacks. Here [...]

Tags: altitude sickness, beef jerky, Big K, candy bar, Corn Nuts, dark chocolate, Dillons, Doritos, driving, energy, Food, G2, Gatorade, green tea, gummies, Kroger, LifeSavers, Lipton, Mounds, Oberto, QUEST, snack, sweet, tart, Travel, vacation

We’re just hankerin’ to get out on the open road, and our little excursion down Route 66 this week whet our appetite for snack foods. As promised in an earlier post, we’ll chronicle our food finds while on vacation. In the meantime, check out this little beauty from Everybody’s Nuts.
These pistachios come in a bag [...]

Tags: discovery, Everybody's Nuts, Food, fun, nut, pistachio, Route 66, snack, Travel, vacation

We got the chance to peruse the surroundings and selection at a brand-new Wal-Mart Supercenter in South Tulsa this week. Here’s what we liked most about it, in no particular order:

Stained concrete floors made to look like giant slabs of stone. Elegant, functional and clean-looking.
Oversized, wide side aisles. They make it easier to browse alongside [...]

Tags: attractive building, energy, green, shopping experience, Supercenter, Target, Tulsa, utilitarian, Wal-Mart, wide aisles

Even the Spoon has to take time to eat. And today’s epicurean excursion was to El Guapo’s in Tulsa, billed as “Probablamente la mejor cantina en Tulsa.” Translated: Probably the best cantina in Tulsa.

The shrimp cocktail (coctel de camarones) was menued as ceviche. It was spicy, fresh and loaded with shrimp. It was a meal [...]

Tags: camaron, ceviche, El Guapo's, Food, food art, Marketing, mexican restaurant, presentation, shrimp cocktail, Tulsa

On the ground in Tulsa less than three hours and already there are exciting food marketing revelations in this town along the Great American Highway. After a tasty and filling early dinner at Pei Wei, it was off to Wild Oats to see the latest products and brands of natural and organic food.
The decidely neighborhoodly [...]

Tags: 365, antioxidant, better first than better, cat, chips, green tea, GT, health, holistic, Honest Tea, indulgence, Innovation, kombucha, Lipton, natural, Nestea, no compromise, nutrition, organic, Pei Wei, pet food, Republic of Tea, Route 66, snack, tea, Terra, Tulsa, wellness, Whole Foods, Wild oats