Chefs are the new spokespeople
Oishii has partnered with more than a dozen local restaurants, bakeries and bars to get its berries on menus.
Good evening everyone.
In case you missed it, last night I posted this update to Milk Bag’s Instagram page:
This partnership caught my attention because it’s rare to see American companies put this much effort into a Canadian launch. Maybe something is… changing? Late last night, an Oishii representative told me they have spent months on the ground, getting to know the right chefs to bring these collaborations to life. In New York, partnerships with Overstory, Lady M, and Iota have resulted in cocktails, cakes, and body wash. They saw Toronto as complementary market.
It works, of course, because getting a stamp of approval from someone like Eva Chin means everything to a food business. Even more so these days, since people now care a lot about following the chefs behind the restaurants they love. Social media has made it that way, but traditional media outlets have also prioritized profiling buzzy culinary talent. (David Schwartz alone has 24 stories tagged under his name in Toronto Life since opening Mimi Chinese).
I understand the title of this letter is deeply disconnected with the sentiment in the industry right now (see below), but I still think it’s worth observing the power chefs have to sell trendy desserts, launch merch, or grocery offerings. Do all that without treating your staff terribly, and people will be happy to (literally) eat it up.
NEWS:
“Garbled spelling, a missed space, improper capitalization are a new way to signal that you are powerful and elite.” I had a similar takeaway after reading through some of the emails in the Epstein files, and this week The Wall Street Journal looked at several examples from powerful company execs showing a disregard for proper grammar: “Jack Dorsey’s memo last month laying off nearly half of Block’s staff was almost entirely in lowercase. Paramount CEO David Ellison addressed Warner Bros. Discovery’s David Zaslav as “Daivd” over text last year while trying to strike a deal. The famous hack at Sony Pictures revealed executives sending messages like “WE ALL HAVE TO SIT DOWNTTO TALK ABOUT TH NEXT DRAYFT.” What this piece doesn’t capture is CEOs who write emails like this are also, from experience, often responding to your email in under a minute.
A Google Maps update promises recommendations for detours, drawing from reviews from more than 500 million contributors. No confirmation on whether the recommendations will be paid ads, which would be terrible.
Everything I have learned about the René Redzepi scandal has been from Jen Agg’s Instagram account. After 23 years of running Noma, widely seen as the best restaurant in the world, the chef is stepping down in light of reports of employee abuse in the 2000s and 2010s. Protesters have shown up outside of the restaurant’s Los Angeles pop-up, where tickets cost $1,500 a head, and companies like Amex, GM, and Resy have pulled back their involvement.
Article is expanding its physical store presence across Canada. Article has quickly grown to become one of the country’s most valuable retailers, in part (probably) thanks to my reckless decision to spend $1,400 on teak patio chairs in 2021. CEO Aamir Baig told Susan Krashinsky Robertson they’ve realized there is value in having physical stores where customers can think over big purchases, following the lead of companies like Casper, Skims, and Knix. A Toronto store will open this summer, and more will follow in the U.S. by 2027.
Arcadian Sturgeon and Caviar in Saint John, New Brunswick is expanding its programming to offer caviar safari tours this summer. $600 a person.
Some executives swear by the Hoffman Process, and this week GQ wrote a feature about it. I will happily attend and write about this $10,000-a-week phone-less group therapy retreat for any media outlet that sends me, and if fact I’ve had the pitch drafted in my inbox since the end of last year.
A former principal dancer of the National Ballet of Canada wrote an open letter to Timothée Chalamet in the Toronto Star.
Tilman Fertitta is bidding against Carl Icahn to buy Ceasars Entertainment for $7 billion. Last week, Ceasars signed an agreement to operate the Ceasars casino in Windsor for 20 years on behalf of the OLG, as part of the province’s push to move day-to-day operations of casinos to ‘private sector providers.’
If you’re feeling burnt out, maybe you just need to go on a craft retreat.
Cabot is opening a golf course in the Scottish Highlands in May. The company operates seven properties across Canada (the original being Cabot Links in Nova Scotia) and in France, Scotland, St. Lucia and the U.S. If I had millions of dollars I would have invested in golf tourism ten years ago.
Peter Rahal says the lawsuit against David fails to understand how the FDA measures calories. As you’re probably aware of by now, the company is facing a class action lawsuit for allegedly misrepresenting calorie and fat contents.
People obviously re-thinking their tax-free existence in the Middle East. Speaking of drafts, I’m sitting on a piece about whether the Dubai dream is still alive that might not be worth writing anymore. I spoke to mostly people working in finance and law, who had moved over before the pandemic, made bank, and went back to their lives with a great safety net. They all told me the expectation of this happening for everyone has always been misguided, and that the cost of living has gotten high enough to cancel out some of the tax-free gains. Not even three weeks ago I came across a Dubai-based investor who scolded me for “not thinking big enough” for saying I didn’t have any interest in moving over there, and I think those people need to get a grip.
The EV critics are awfully quiet now that the price of gas is ticking up.