Company results and news
£1bn sale on menu at Pizza Express
The owner of the restaurant empire behind Pizza Express is finalising plans for a £1bn sale or float.
The private equity backer of Gondola Holdings, which also owns the Zizzi and Ask restaurant chains, are expected to appoint an investment bank in the coming weeks to draw up exit plans. The move follows Gondola’s sale of the Byron burger chain for £100m this month.
It is understood Cinven, which has owned the business since 2006, favours a sale or break-up of the company next year over a stock market listing.
Gondola, which employs more than 15,000 people and has 750 restaurants, has been publicly owned twice before. It made its stock market debut when the entrepreneurs Luke Johnson and Hugh Osmond reversed Pizza Express into a shell company called Star Computer Group in 1993.
Ten years later it was taken private. It was relisted in 2005, having acquired Ask and Zizzi.
The enlarged business was bought by Cinven the following year. Under its ownership, annual sales have grown to £604m. Pizza Express, by far the biggest of its brands, has 477 sites and a growing international presence, including restaurants in Jakarta, Shanghai, Mumbai and Kuwait City. Senior bankers said Goldman Sachs was favourite to win the mandate to advise the restaurant operator.
The Sunday Times
Whitbread should resist the bonus-mining M&A boys
It’s more than a decade since Whitbread brewed its last pint and, for the shareholders, giving up the booze was the best thing the management ever did, writes Neil Collins.
The company has reinvented itself as the owner of Premier Inn budget hotels, Costa Coffee and a clutch of restaurant chains.
Profits have sailed on through the recession. This week its 40,000-strong army of smiley happy people, under chief executive Andy Harrison (formerly of easyJet), showed that they were Good Together, as Whitbread calls its corporate responsibility programme, with some tasty half-time results and an upbeat statement.Yet the City being what it is, there are those who reckon Good Together should be Better Apart. On its own, Costa might get a Starbucks-sized rating. Premier Inn could look like InterContinental Hotels. Well, maybe.
Costa has international ambitions and its 283 China stores may get a boost from accusations that Starbucks is price-gouging there.
Breaking up businesses and reassembling them is routine bonus-mining for the M&A boys who love to point to the “conglomerate discount” to justify their work. Unfortunately for their fees, there’s little sign of it here. As with Associated British Foods, owners of Primark, Twinings and Silver Spoon sugar, it’s clear that good management can indeed do more than one thing at once, whatever the current investment fashion dictates. The break-up boys are not the only ones to have noticed.
Since Whitbread abandoned brewing, the shares have more than tripled and sell on more than 20 times earnings. Definitely not cheap but almost certainly better together.
The Weekend FT
Conran’s former chain to hit £100m
The operator of top restaurants such as Le Pont de la Tour in London is on course to hit £100m of annual sales for the first time.
D&D London is set to announce that turnover is up 5% to £79m for the year to March and, propelled by a string of openings, is expected to hit the milestone in the spring. Last year earnings before interest, tax and financial charges increased by 6% to £7.1m.
Guastavino’s, in New York, had the strongest growth of any of the restaurant owner’s 34 outlets last year, with sales up 14%. The next best performer was Kensington Place in London, with a 9% rise.
Last year D&D opened its first hotel, South Place in London’s Moorgate. It is home to the Michelin-starred Angler fish restaurant.
LDC, the private equity arm of Lloyds Banking Group, led a £50m buyout of D&D, the former Conran Restaurants, in April. The deal ended the involvement of Sir Terence Conran in the group that he helped create. It is run today by Des Gunewardena and David Loewi.
The Sunday Times
Made in Chelsea pubs seek riches
The pub group whose upmarket watering holes have been made famous by the reality TV hit Made In Chelsea is looking to capitalise on its fame by seeking £10 million in new funding to expand.
The City Pub Company is headed by entrepreneur Clive Watson, whose daughter Lucy is also one of the stars of the show. It will launch its fundraising this week.
The group owns The Phene pub in Chelsea, South-West London, which makes frequent appearances in the programme, and 11 other pubs across London and the South East, but hopes to have 20 pubs by the end of the year.
The City Pub Company was established early last year by Watson and pub veteran David Bruce, who has a record for successful pub chain launches, becoming a millionaire in the 1990s after founding and later selling the popular Firkin chain of pubs.
The Mail on Sunday
Innocent staff share £19m
Innocent Drinks has handed its staff bonuses worth nearly £20m after being swallowed by Coca-Cola in the spring.
The American soft drinks giant took full control of the smoothie maker in February after snapping up a minority stake in the business in 2009.
The takeover triggered a £100m windfall for Richard Reed, Adam Balon and Jon Wright — the three Cambridge graduates who founded the company in 1999.
However, staff at Fruit Towers — its west London headquarters — also enjoyed a bumper payday on the back of the sale, filings lodged at Companies House reveal.
About 250 staff shared a £19m payout from a long-term stock bonus scheme — equivalent to an average of £76,000 each.
Since forging its unlikely alliance with Coca-Cola, Innocent has doubled its turnover to £206m last year, according to accounts for Fresh Trading, its parent company.
The fruit drink maker reported a £27.5m profit in 2012, compared with a £9.8m loss the year before.
The Sunday Times
Investors see magic in Merlin
The runaway success of the Royal Mail float appears to have given Merlin Entertainments the nudge it needed.
Earlier this week the British owner of Alton Towers, Legoland and Madame Tussauds unveiled plans for a £3bn London listing.
This will include the sale of shares to private investors, who will receive 10-15% of the £200m-worth of stock being issued.
As an added incentive to buy, Merlin is offering would-be shareholders money off the cost of annual passes worth up to £107. You have to buy £1,000-worth of shares to qualify for this perk.
Gimmicks like this are fine, but they can’t magically transform a poor investment into a good one.
The 1990s float of Euro Disney is the car crash introduction to the markets Merlin will hope to avoid. And there is every reason to believe it will. Merlin looks well run, has a thriving and growing visitor base and possesses what looks like a coherent business plan.
In fact the worry among the sceptics is not that Merlin is the next Euro Disney (now Disneyland Paris), but that it has been dressed up for sale to look more attractive than it actually is.
Often cited is the case of private equity-owned Debenhams, which was refloated in May 2006 with net debts of £1.2bn and a seriously under-invested retail estate. What followed the IPO was not pretty.
Merlin’s debts also stand at around £1.2bn, but they will drop to £1bn when the group lists in the middle of next month.
The issue is not the size of the liability but the company’s ability to repay what it owes. And in that regard Merlin is fairly conservatively geared, with debts of two and a half times its forecast earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA).
Its cash generation is such that it can comfortably meet its loan repayments while investing a significant sum of money in its 99 visitor attractions. Last year its net operating cash flow was £348m while its capital expenditure was £163m.
The business itself, while private equity backed, is hardly a quick flip. It has been built by chief executive Nick Varney and his team over 14 years. In that time the business has grown and last year 53 million visitors walked through the gates and doors of its parks and attractions, placing it second only to Walt Disney globally.
But how much is Merlin worth? Reports suggest the group will be valued at around £3bn on listing next month, or £4bn including debt. The latter figure is what analysts call the enterprise value of the company. And this number will help us decide whether Merlin’s shares are a bargain or not.
The experts brought in to price the shares will look at the company’s EV/EBITDA – worked out by dividing the enterprise value of the company (£4bn) by the forecast earnings before tax (circa £400m). On this basis Merlin is worth around 10 times forecast EBITDA. Firms such as parks giants Six Flags, Cedar Fair, Sea World and the granddaddy Walt Disney tend to trade on an average 9.5 times EBITDA. That said, the four mentioned are predominantly North America-based businesses whose fortunes are closely allied to the ups and downs of the world’s largest economy.
But there is an argument that with attractions such as Tussauds, the London Eye, Thorpe Park and Warwick Castle, Merlin is a brands business and demands a rating closer to the 12 times EBITDA drinks group Diageo enjoys. The company also manages big international names. Any way you cut it, the mooted price tag looks like fair value, rather than a raging Royal Mail-style bargain.
As well as the £200m of new money being raised via the sale of shares, the company’s existing shareholders – private equity pair Blackstone and CVC Capital Partners, plus Kirkbi, the Danish family trust which owns the Lego brand – are selling a further £400m of stock.
Expect this to be a more keenly priced float than the Royal Mail’s. The valuation is likely to be fair rather than generous. But the current management has a record of delivering strong underlying growth.
The Daily Mail
Sky shares get a kicking on fears of football rights war
BT lost ground earlier in the week on worries it will not recoup the £450m a year it is spending to go up against BSkyB in sports broadcasting. Today, however, investors were weighing the potential damage the rivalry might inflict on Sky.
Shares in BSkyB slid 21½p, or 2.3%, to 928½p after analysts at Macquarie warned that the company should expect “fierce competition” in the forthcoming bidding process for the pay-TV rights to broadcast Champions League matches from 2015 to 2018.
They estimated the price Sky will pay to secure the rights will rise 70%, which would knock the company’s 2016 estimated earnings by 4%.
“We believe bidding will be aggressive due to BT Sport’s current lack of meaningful mid-week content and the BT Sport product seeing only middling success, despite significant marketing spend,” the analyst said. “We also expect Sky to look to retain these rights at almost any cost, as was the case with the English Premier League rights last year.”
The Daily Telegraph
Carlsberg moves to raise capital
The Carlsberg Foundation, which controls Carlsberg, the world’s fourth-largest beer maker by sales, is seeking approval to change a key rule in its charter that would allow the Danish brewer to raise capital and pursue deals.
The charter currently stipulates that the foundation – Carlsberg’s main owner – must hold at least 51% of the voting rights and more than 25% of the share capital in Carlsberg.
Removing this requirement would allow the foundation to issue more non-voting shares and still retain control.
The foundation last changed its charter in 2007, which allowed Carlsberg to sell shares to help finance its takeover of the Russian and Baltic part of a joint venture with UK brewer Scottish & Newcastle. Carlsberg doubled its share capital by raising DKr30.5bn in what was Denmark’s largest rights issue at the time.
Analysts at Bernstein said possible targets for the brewer could include bolt-on deals in Asia, including buying out minorities in some of its existing operating companies in China or increasing its stake in joint ventures in Vietnam.
“Carlsberg could also contemplate a bigger deal in China,” the analysts said, but dismissed a possible combination with one of the other large global brewers such as AB InBev.
Joergen Buhl Rasmussen, chief executive, said the amendment would increase the group’s financial flexibility, but there were no plans for any immediate capital increases or big structural changes.
“In the event that value-enhancing opportunities arise, we can pursue these more easily with the changed charter. As a result of this, and as the group continues to deliver a stable and strong cash flow, we have decided to propose a more explicit dividend policy,” Mr Rasmussen said. The foundation will still control at least 51% of the voting rights through preferred A-shares.
Carlsberg has a complicated governance structure, with two classes of shares. Both have the same economic rights; but the A shares have 10-times greater voting rights. The Carlsberg Foundation owns 97% of the A shares and 11% of the B shares, giving it a 30% economic interest but 75% of the votes.
After the amendment, the foundation will still control at least 51% of the voting rights through preferred A-shares.The board on Friday also proposed to phase in a new dividend policy over a two-year period, so that dividends for 2014 and onwards would be at least 25% of adjusted net profit.
Set up in 1876 by JC Jacobsen, the founder of Carlsberg, to support Danish scientific research, the foundation is run by five trustees elected by and from the 250 domestic members of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. The five trustees also sit on the board of Carlsberg.
Changes to the charter must go through a lengthy procedure, and is subject to approval by Denmark’s Ministry of Justice.
Shares in Carlsberg were up 1.1% to SKr571.
The Weekend FT
Appetite for new food app
The founder of Toptable, the booking website, has contributed to a £1m fundraising by a new app that allows users to book nearby restaurants.
Karen Hanton is backing Aaron Ross and Laurence Carver, who are launching the Ruffl service in London before expanding.
The app allows diners to search and reserve tables at participating restaurants. More than 450 outlets have signed up to the operation. Other Ruffl investors include David Pritchard, former European boss of Open Table, a US booking site.
The Sunday Times
Health and regulation
Fast food restaurants vital for Britain’s high streets, minister says
Brandon Lewis, the high streets minister, said that fast food outlets are “massively important” to town centres and warned against governments attempting to limit people’s access to unhealthy food. He said that it would be “wholly wrong” for ministers to tell people not to eat at popular fast food chains like McDonald’s and Burger King.
Mr Lewis, who took over the high streets brief in David Cameron’s reshuffle this month, said that people have a “responsibility” to stop them and their families “eating [fast food] three times a day”.
However, he said it would be “socialist” to force the restaurants off UK high streets. Labour MPs have criticised changes to planning regulations which they say makes it easier to convert premises into betting shops, pay-day lenders and fast food restaurants.
“Labour kept having a go at fast food places when actually McDonald’s, Burger King…those kind of places, whichever your fast food place of choice is, are massively important,” Mr Lewis told The Daily Telegraph. They are massive employers, they are not coming to the high streets to annoy us.
They are coming to the high streets because we all go to McDonalds, or whatever our personal taste is.” The Tories have previously suggested a “fat tax” on fatty foods to help prevent health costs soaring.
Daily Telegraph
Sups and downs of beer drinker
The average strength of beer has dropped to its lowest point since the turn of the century, figures reveal.
But experts say the move could save nearly 1,000 drink-related deaths a year.
The change has seen the average alcoholic content of a pint drop to 4.15% last year, down from 4.21% in 2011. The figure, which covers beers and lagers, is the lowest since at least 2000, according to the British Beer and Pub Association.
It says the fall is due to new low-strength beers hitting the market, major brands cutting alcohol levels and a boom in weaker cask ales.
The drop is likely to have major health benefits and follows a pledge from the industry to cut one billion alcohol units a year from sales by 2015, in the Responsibility Deal.
The move will result in almost 1,000 fewer deaths and a dramatic fall in hospital admissions and alcohol-related crime each year, experts say.
Brewers have introduced new low-strength beers after tax on ales and lagers under 2.8% was halved in 2011.
Public Health Minister Jane Ellison said: “Through the Responsibility Deal we are working with industry to make people more aware of how much alcohol they are drinking, helping consumers make healthier choices.”
Brits are drinking less anyway, supping 7.8 billion pints last year — a massive 35% down on the 1979 peak of 12.1 billion.
But while beer is weaker and we are drinking less of it, the price of our booze has shot up.
The average price of a pub pint hit £3.19 for lager and £2.80 for beer last year —- a rise of 65% and 57% respectively since 2000.
A spokesman for brewing industry campaign group Let There Be Beer said: “Beer is the nation’s favourite alcoholic drink and it’s important that as an industry we offer a beer for every occasion and strength to suit people’s lifestyles.”
The Sun on Sunday
Food stores agree to reduce fat
Supermarket and take-away meals will have their saturated fat content reduced under a deal brokered by ministers, despite claims that they are focusing on the wrong target.
Almost half the food manufacturing industry has pledged to reduce the amount of saturated fat in its products, including chocolate bars and snacks.
The Department of Health argues that cutting the country’s saturated fat intake by 15% would save 2,600 lives a year by reducing heart disease.
However, this week a prominent cardiologist argued in the British Medical Journal that the demonisation of saturated fat was misguided and counterproductive. Aseem Malhotra questioned the link between saturated fat and heart disease and instead blamed sugar and refined carbohydrates such as white bread.
Under the Government-brokered “Responsibility Deal”, Nestlé will reformulate Kit Kats to remove a total of 3,800 tonnes of fat a year, while Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Aldi, Subway and Unilever have promised to make changes to their products.
Jane Ellison, the Public Health Minister, said: “One in six male deaths and one in nine female deaths are from coronary heart disease — this is why it’s critical that we challenge the way we eat and that we all make changes where we can.”
John Ashton, president of the Faculty of Public Health, welcomed the development but said: “It is a good thing that some companies are making food that has less saturated fat than before. They need to ensure that at the same time they lower the sugar and salt that they have used to make foods more tasty as a result of lowering the fat content.”
“However, today’s announcement is a drop in the ocean in comparison with the scale of the obesity crisis. We cannot rely on the voluntary approach of the Responsibility Deal to solve this problem.”
“It now lacks credibility and can be seen as a feeble attempt by the industry to save face.”
Professor Susan Jebb, who chairs the Government’s Responsibility Deal with industry, said: “These commitments to help reduce saturated fat are an important step forward. They recognise that too much saturated fat can increase cholesterol levels and cause heart disease and premature deaths which is why it’s fantastic that so many companies have committed to helping people cut down on their consumption.”
The Times
Healthy options hit top of the menu
Reduced-fat French fries. Diet drinks made with natural sweeteners. Fruits and vegetables served with kid’s meals. The purveyors of salt, sugar and fat are trying to clean up their images.
As consumers have grown more aware of exactly what is in the products they buy, food and beverage groups are stepping up efforts to shed their unhealthy reputations to capture or retain customers looking for alternatives to the fare they have traditionally peddled.
“We are seeing a fundamental shift in consumer habits and behaviours,” Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo chief executive, told investors last week. She was talking about “an accelerated decline in diet drinks” as consumers wary of aspartame and other artificial sugar substitutes are demanding naturally sweetened drinks.
That push is also behind Coca-Cola’s move to replace Sprite in the UK and France with a lower-calorie version sweetened with sugar and stevia – a plant-derived sweetener – and the June launch of similarly formulated “Coca-Cola Life” in Argentina.
Coke also recently patented a stevia product that analysts say may be used in zero-calorie drinks, while Pepsi is working on its own natural sweetener.
Sales of sugary drinks have been falling for years, with fizzy drinks now making up about 40% of the US beverage market, compared with more than 50% a decade ago, Ms Nooyi said. But now diet drinks are struggling too.
Sales of Diet Coke fell 3% last year, compared with Coke’s 1% decline, while Diet Pepsi’s 6.2% drop was nearly double the 3.4% decrease for Pepsi, according to Beverage Digest.
Diet Coke and similar food and drinks “are under a bit of pressure as people are questioning ingredients [and] ingredient safety,” said Steve Cahillane, who heads Coca-Cola’s North American and Latin American business.
Fast-food chains are not immune either. Amid continued criticism of its role in the US obesity epidemic, McDonald’s last month said it would only advertise milk, juice and water with Happy Meals. It would also offer fruit, salads and vegetables as alternatives to fries in value meals. The move followed Burger King’s introduction of reduced-fat, reduced-calorie fries.
The restaurants are in part responding to losing higher-income customers to chains such as Chipotle, the fast-growing burrito chain with more than 900 stores, which serve food that is perceived as healthier. Chipotle’s shares are up more than 75% this year, compared with 6.8% for McDonald’s.
“It’s really about building their brand perception around healthy and quality ingredients because…that’s what gets people into the restaurants,” said Dylan Bolden, of BCG.
The Weekend FT
High street coffees that have 10 times the caffeine of Coke
For those of us who are tired, stressed or even downright exhausted, they offer a much-needed pick-me-up in an increasingly fast-paced world.
But it turns out that just one cup of coffee picked up from a high street chain could contain ten times as much caffeine as a can of Coca-Cola.
A snapshot survey of some of the most popular coffee shops and sandwich chains revealed that a large americano from Costa Coffee contains 370mg of caffeine.
Choosing to add an extra shot of espresso would take the figure to above 400mg in a single cup.
This is compared with the 32mg in a can of Coke, a drink already perceived as being high in caffeine.
It is almost twice the daily caffeine limit recommended for pregnant women in the UK – and close to some countries’ threshold for healthy adults.
Other coffees with high levels of caffeine include a large americano from Starbucks, which contains 300mg of the stimulant and a medium americano from Costa Coffee, which contains 277mg.
But the survey found that choosing the cheaper option and enjoying a hot drink at home could also help people cut down their caffeine intake.
A mug of instant coffee made at home contained an estimated 100mg of caffeine, while a cup of tea only had around 75mg.
Health authorities in the UK have not issued official guidelines on how much caffeine an adult should consume in a day. However they have released advice about how much caffeine a pregnant women should expose their baby to.
Thanks to fears about birth defects, miscarriages and premature deliveries, they advise women to take in no more than 200mg a day during pregnancy.
And in Canada, officials have suggested that adults should normally limit themselves to 400mg – meaning that just one cup of coffee from a high street chain could contain an adult’s total recommended daily allowance.
Dr Alan Crozier, from Glasgow University, said: “This is clearly a problem. People at risk could unwittingly ingest far more caffeine than they would dream of.”
A spokesman for Costa Coffee said: “Customers are able to request a reduction in their coffee strength or order any of our drinks as a decaf option.”
The Daily Mail
Economy and politics
Strong recovery fuels fears of early interest rate rise
Households and businesses were yesterday told to brace for an early rise in interest rates after figures showed the economy growing at its fastest pace for three years.
The Office for National Statistics said gross domestic product – the total output of the UK economy – grew 0.8% between July and September.
That was the fastest since spring 2010 and built on the 0.7% growth seen in the second quarter of 2013 and 0.4% in the first three months.
The growth spurt fuelled speculation that the Bank of England will raise interest rates sooner than expected – despite warnings from governor Mark Carney that the recovery lacks ‘traction’.
Rob Wood, a former Bank economist now at Berenberg, said: ‘The recovery is running faster than the Bank had anticipated. We expect the first interest rate rise to come at least a year earlier than the late 2016 date the Bank has signalled.’
Output in the services sector, which accounts for around three-quarters of the UK economy, rose 0.7% to an all-time high in the third quarter, meaning it has clawed back all the ground lost during the recession. Production output rose 0.5% but the sector remains 12.8% below its pre-recession peak.
Within that, manufacturing output rose 0.9% but is still 8.9% less than it was in 2008.
And the construction sector grew 2.5% but is still 12.5% smaller than it was before boom turned to bust under the last Labour government.
It means that GDP is still 2.5% lower than it was in early 2008 – leaving Britain trapped in the longest downturn for more a century.
Against that backdrop, the Bank said in August that rates will remain at 0.5% until unemployment falls to 7% or lower, something it does not expect until late 2016. Unemployment is currently 7.7%.
On Thursday night, just hours before the GDP figures were published, Carney played down fears of an early rate hike. But analysts believe unemployment will fall faster than Carney predicted in August and expect the Bank to revise its forecasts in the inflation report next month.
Azad Zangana, European economist at Schroders, said: “Due to unemployment falling somewhat faster than expected, the Bank may bring forward its own forecast of when it may start considering an increase in interest rates.”
The Daily Mail
High street ‘saviour’ faces grilling by MPs
Newly appointed High Streets Minister Brandon Lewis will face his first public grilling this week before the Parliamentary Business Committee.
Brandon, who took over responsibility for resuscitating Britain’s ailing town centres two weeks ago, will appear alongside Bill Grimsey, the former Iceland chief who is a vocal critic of Government efforts to revive traditional stores.
The MPs are looking at the state of Britain’s high streets, where 15% of shops are vacant. The blight is blamed on recession, the rampant growth of out-of-town shopping centres and the rise of online selling.
Small retailers also complain of sharp rises in business rates, which are set to rise in April by 3.2% – in line with inflation but far faster than shop sales.
Ed Miliband has raised concerns over business rates and MP Priti Patel, Tory chairwoman of the small shops group, has written to the Chancellor demanding an overhaul.
The Mail on Sunday
Bill Grimsey is speaking at the Pub Retail Summit on 14 November. To book your tickets, visit: www.ukpubretailsummit.com
Food and drink
Tyrrells Crisps founder wins with potato vodka
Glasses are being raised at Chase Distillery – set up by the Tyrrells Crisps founder to make potato vodka – after it was crowned winner of the Made in Britain category at the 2013 Growing Business Awards.
The awards, which are in their 15th year, recognise the UK’s exciting, innovative and high-growth firms. They were set up by publisher Real Business and are backed by Lloyds Banking Group and the CBI, the business lobby group.
Chase Distillery, which makes the premium Chase Vodka brand, was set up by William Chase in 2008 using money from the sale of his Tyrrells Crisps business.
It is the only single-estate distillery in the UK, which means Chase grows its own King Edward potatoes on the farm in Hereford where the vodka is distilled and bottled.
Chase this month reopened the Running Horse, a pub in Mayfair, Central London, where it now sells its vodka and gin, in a process described by James Chase, the son of William, as ‘from ground, to bottle, to throat’.
Judges described Chase as ‘a successful brand demonstrating that despite difficult economic times, people are still willing to part with their cash for quality food and drink’.
The Mail on Sunday
McDonald’s sauce of anger
McDonald’s is dumping Heinz ketchup from its restaurants – because the sauce’s new boss used to head a rival fast-food chain.
Bernardo Hees was chief executive of Burger King before switching to Heinz four months ago.
So – after using the famous red sauce for 40 years – McDonalds announced: “As a result of recent management changes at Heinz we’ve decided to transition our business to other suppliers.”
Heinz refused to comment.
The Sun on Sunday
Can we survive without olive oil and almonds?
As if the squeezed middle classes hadn’t suffered enough of late, now a shortage of their favourite foods threatens to leave their cupboards bare.
Last week, a dearth of Halkidiki olives, blamed on a poor crop after bad weather in Greece, was said to have led to a 50% price rise.
The news came after a shortage of Green & Black’s organic almond chocolate bars was revealed by The Independent. California – where 80% of the world’s almonds are grown – had the double whammy of a slump in bee populations, causing problems with pollination, and a severe drought in the US state. UK importers report a price increase of up to 35%.
Earlier this month, demand for goat’s cheese, which tops off salads the length and breadth of Britain, was thwarted by a dramatic slump in supplies. There has been a major cull of goats across Europe after an outbreak of Q fever, a tick-borne disease.
Foodies have also been left reeling after a crisis in the trade of extra virgin olive oil, after Spain, which produces 50% of the world’s olive crop, suffered a drought that has slashed yields by 62%. The drop in supply comes when the demand for olive oil is at an all-time high, as more people develop a taste for the kitchen staple.
Sam Higgins, a senior product marketing manager at RH Amar, a fines foods distributor, told trade magazine The Grocer: “Some olive supplies will struggle to meet existing contracts, with the impact of this felt as soon as the next one or two months.”
The Independent on Sunday
Top chefs aim to reintroduce forgotten foods
Ever tasted a hopshoot? Or a Northdown clawnut? What about Huntingdon fidget pie? Chances are those dishes are about as familiar to you as dodo meat. But maybe not for much longer.
Slow Food UK, the British arm of the group founded in Italy in 1986 to counter the rise of fast food, have added those three, along with whey butter, Musselburgh leeks, Manx kippers and blue grey beef, to its list of forgotten foods.
The group is committed to rescuing all 68 dishes and ingredients on the list from culinary obscurity, by way of education programmes and high-profile partnerships. To celebrate the latest additions, for instance, and the launch of a forgotten foods online recipe bank on 6 November, they have teamed up with London chefs Tom Aikens, chef/proprietor of Tom’s Kitchen, and Lukas Pfaff of Sartoria.
Both will be serving menus throughout November which showcase Britain’s “endangered foods”.
“The aim is simple,” says Nathalie Nötzold of Slow Food UK. “We want to ensure these foods aren’t forgotten and that the small-scale producers who make them are given the support they need to continue working.”
But why should we care if certain foods fall out of favour? “It is incredibly important that we don’t lose them,” says Nötzold. “If you care about edible biodiversity and food security, it is important that these dishes survive. And aside from all of that, they are culturally significant – all the dishes have to be regionally important to get on the list.”
If all that sounds a little academic and flighty, heed the words of Lukas Pfaff, a long-time devotee of Slow Food. He says that to lose the dishes to history is to lose a whole world of flavour. “Take Morecambe shrimp for instance. To eat it is not just to have the pleasure of knowing you are eating the food that your grandparents ate, but also to try a fantastic tasting food,” he said. “For me it is about variety.”
Are we then now all likely to all be eating fidget pie (made from bacon, onions and apples) for supper and breakfasting on Manx kippers at every opportunity? Probably not. It can only be to the good that local, seasonal food has found such deft and sensitive champions as these.
The Independent on Sunday
