Stephan's Thursday Picks

• McDonald's tests out new value deal bundles at select US stores (Bloomberg)
• Chiquita sees cheap bananas at risk on El Nino supply threat (Bloomberg)
• Burger King posted the boss's number for feedback. He got 100,000 calls (Bloomberg)
• Ben & Jerry's founders have been exploring deal to separate company from Magnum (WSJ)
• Coca-Cola raises outlook as increased volumes, prices boost results (WSJ)

 Stephan's Wednesday Picks

• How Aldi is pushing down grocery prices (NPR)
• Inside the five-year quest to reinvent Goldfish to be gluten-free (WSJ)
• 7-Brew, Gen Z's anti-Starbucks, is on an expansion spree (Bloomberg)
• How do you save the world's chocolate supply? You reinvent chocolate (Bloomberg)
• The grease hunters of Bengaluru want leftover fryer oil to fuel India's jets (Bloomberg)

 Stephan's Tuesday Picks

• Who wins when agents do the shopping (McKinsey)
• How retailers can reinvent the digital flywheel for agentic commerce (BCG)
• Fraud concerns emerge over Loblaw bread price-fixing settlement payments (Globe and Mail)
• After the codfathers (Globe and Mail)
• Tesco agrees to sale of Czech and Slovak units to Ahold Delhaize for £1.5 billion (FT)

 Stephan's Monday Picks

• The winners and losers of the weight-loss economy (FT)
• Weight-loss pioneer says the food industry needs to listen (FT)
• DoorDash to buy Instacart for $17 billion (WSJ)
• How CEO Tony Xu led DoorDash to delivery dominance (WSJ)
• Japanese seafood giant Umios to buy High Liner Foods for more than $800 billion (Globe and Mail)

 Stephan's Friday Picks

• Sulphur scramble poses latest threat to global food prices (FT)
• Inside the world of 'dark nutrition' (NYT)
• The peculiar charms of douzhi, Beijing's fermented bean juice (FT)
• As private equity scales up small restaurants, customers push back (NYT)
• From the archives (2009): The taste makers (The New Yorker)

 Stephan's Thursday Picks

• Couche-Tard deal for Cumberland would make strategic sense, analysts say (Bloomberg)
• Has substitution culture gone too far (Eater)
• Barilla paid $750 million for Goodles in all-cash deal (Bloomberg)
• How smart does my fridge need to be (FT)
• DoorDash is in advanced talks to acquire delivery rival Instacart (WSJ)

 Stephan's Wednesday Picks

• Carrefour's $2 billion stock plunge shows cost of France unrest (Bloomberg)
• Hershey, king of Halloween, wants to win all the holidays (Bloomberg)
• Oxford Street's pedestrian revolution is finally here (FT)
• Why so many shoppers think retailers are using AI to jack up prices (WSJ)
• California wines don't age? Think again (FT)