The Business of Food Is Also a Playground
It’s filled with Aldi’s deals and oddities, Dutch Bros’ crazy concoctions and Wonder’s takeout-optimized robots.
Photo illustration: Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari for Bloomberg Businessweek
Welcome to the Businessweek Daily, the Bloomberg Businessweek newsletter. In this edition, we’re featuring stories about the business of food from the February issue. If this has been forwarded to you, click here to sign up. Let us know what you think by emailing our editor.
Food is nourishing, connective, delicious—and a massive industry endlessly experimenting to sell you more of what you eat. Look at how German giant Aldi hooked Americans on supercheap supermarket hauls or how Dutch Bros has us slurping neon drinks with crazy-high sugar counts. Organ meat is going mainstream thanks to the MAHA set, while Amazonian thinking can be credited (or blamed) for Wonder’s attempts to optimize takeout. And now we’re stocking our own kitchens with all manner of restaurant brands, while chefs are testing smaller portions for weight-loss drug patients. Hold on to your wallets: Things are strange, and pretty tasty, out there.