Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Is the Future of Food Artisanal?

I don't think so but I tend to get shunned when I bring it up at the Thursday evening soirées.
This is a personal bookmark as much as anything, I wanted to keep track of the names.
By the way, I think the six bottles of 2000 Chateau Petrus that Christies auctioned on Sunday are artisanal, at $26,620 for the lot.
From Minyanville:

10 Stocks for Foodies: Public Companies Making 'Artisanal' Goods
If menus are anything to go by, the best thing to be in the food industry right now is an artisan chef. America’s health food obsession has led to words like “artisan,” “gourmet,” and “organic” getting tossed around with such frequency that they’ve ceased to mean what they once did. In the midst of faux-artisan breakfast sandwiches from places like Starbucks (SBUX) and the garlic-butter-gourmet options from Domino’s (DPZ), a few publicly-traded companies are still churning out the good stuff…more or less. A handful of brands have managed to keep their heads up and continue producing high-quality food and drink, and the financial bump that public trading gives them has allowed little companies to compete handily with the big names. When big numbers get thrown around, though, companies cut corners, and consumers and watchdog organizations are constantly on the lookout for brands that cry "artisan" when their products are merely ordinary....

...Innovative Food, Artisanal Brands, Hain Celestial
When there’s as much demand as there is now for natural, organic foods, the industry’s going to start getting bigger than its devotees would like it to be. Innovative Food Holdings (IVFH), Artisanal Brands Inc. (AHFP), and Hain Celestial Group (HAIN) are snapping up artisan and organic food companies like whole-wheat hotcakes, to the chagrin of foodies. Gourmet blogs grumbled when Artisanal Brands purchased Artisanal Cheese LLC recently; Real Filling claimed outright that “when you’re buying artisanal foods from a publicly traded company, something is wrong.” As the organic food business continues to boom (whatever that means for the quality of the products themselves), profits will continue to rise. Hain, which has its fingers in perhaps the most pies, exceeded analyst expectations in the third quarter, posting a profit increase of 43.7% over the previous year.
...MUCH MORE