Best of Pax Westona: December 2019

• A Montreal bagel war unites rival kings (NYT)
• Long-awaited Cosmic Crisp apples to hit shelves (The Spokesman Review)
• Canada's food price report (Dalhousie University)
• Free shipping isn't really free (The Atlantic)
• Every Instant Pot user should be cooking with dried beans (Eater)
• The volatile economics of natural vanilla in Madagascar (Bloomberg)
• What have we done to lunch (City Lab)
• How 'direct-to-consumer' blew up retail (BoF)
• How L.O.L dolls became the dopamine hit of a generation (NYT)
• Walmart's secret weapon to fight off Amazon: The supercenter (WSJ)

Stephan's Tuesday Picks

• The town that lost its Walmart (NYT)
• When Jacques Pepin made all the world an omelette (Taste)
• Sparkling wine sales lose fizz in UK as tastes change (FT)
• How Instagram changed the way we shop (Bloomberg)
• Consumer staples may come undone after 2019 rally (WSJ)

Stephan's Monday Picks

• Supermarkets pick fruits, vegetables for healthy growth (WSJ)
• Italy is in a hazelnut cream-filled civil war (NYT)
• The great makeup crash of 2019 (BoF)
• Cabbage will be on menus everywhere in 2020 (Eater)
• The homespun joy of Coca-Cola chicken wings (Taste)

Stephan's Friday Picks

• 'Amazon's Choice' isn't the endorsement it appears (WSJ)
• Hard times for a hot commodity, the hot chile of New Mexico (NYT)
• For Uber and Amazon, 2020 offers promising food delivery acquisitions (Bloomberg)
• HelloFresh grabs a bigger slice of shrinking meal kit business (WSJ)
• From the archives (2007): Sobeys buys Thrifty, gains foothold in B.C. (Globe and Mail)

Stephan's Tuesday Picks

• How L.O.L dolls became the dopamine hit of a generation (NYT)
• Walmart's secret weapon to fight off Amazon: The supercenter (WSJ)
• The forgotten glories of department stores (The Atlantic)
• Everything that top chefs and bartenders hated in 2019 (Bloomberg)
• Self-checkout and the ethical test of the cashier free line (CBC)

Stephan's Monday Picks

• How Amazon squeezes the businesses behind its store (NYT)
• Amazon's van-buying spree delivers a gift to auto industry (Bloomberg)
• IKEA 2.0 (The Verge)
• How Amazon changed America's malls in the 2010's (CNBC)
• Who made your clothes (NYT)

Stephan's Friday Picks

• 2019 Person of the Year: Brian Cornell (Twin Cities Business)
• How 'direct-to-consumer' blew up retail (BoF)
• Is our misguided affair with agility putting speed ahead of good work (Quartz)
• Why Illinois will rule the meatless future (Chicago Mag)
• From the archives (2012): How Dollarama turns pocket change into billions (Globe and Mail)

Stephan's Thursday Picks

• The volatile economics of natural vanilla in Madagascar (Bloomberg)
• What have we done to lunch (City Lab)
• The loyalty economy (HBR)
• Regenerating New York Harbor, one million oysters at a time (Civil Eats)
• Majority of Canadians think food prices rising faster than household income (CBC) 

Stephan's Wednesday Picks

• Cultured or cell-based. The struggle to find the name for lab-grown meat (Quartz)
• Retailers gave you free returns and you ruined it (Bloomberg)
• Amazon bans FedEx from delivering some deliveries (NYT)
• Facing a 'food desert', Oklahoma City wants dollar stores to sell more fresh food (WSJ)
• How Wayfair is poised to meet massive new demand for home goods - and home delivery (McKinsey)

Stephan's Tuesday Picks

• Olive oil makers want to go gourmet, but shoppers aren't buying (Bloomberg)
• Barbie at 60. Trivial Pursuit at 40. Toymakers navigate midlife (WSJ)
• Hey Canada, prepare for a dollar store invasion (CG)
• IFF to merge with DuPont's $26.2 billion nutrition unit (Reuters)
• Consumer backlash over plastic packages has retailers looking for solutions, but none are easy (Globe and Mail)

Stephan's Monday Picks

• Every Instant Pot user should be cooking with dried beans (Eater)
• The incredible shrinking wallet (NYT)
• Best Buy bucks the trend that's crushing other retailers (Wired)
• Safeway owner, rival grocers, bet on smaller warehouses (WSJ)
• Delivery Hero nears agreement to buy Woowa in $4 billion deal (Bloomberg)

Stephan's Friday Picks

• Free shipping isn't really free (The Atlantic)
• Lululemon leans in to menswear as segment expands (WSJ)
• Walmart has made another bet on India's e-commerce sector (Quartz)
• Nestle sells U.S. ice cream brands for $4 billion to joint venture Fronieri (Reuters)
• From the archives (2016): IKEA forever (NYT)

Stephan's Thursday Picks

• America's dairy farmers are hurting. A merger could make things worse (NYT)
• Empire wants to crack the Toronto market with Farm Boy (FP)
• Kroger, Walgreens form group purchasing organization (Supermarket News)
• Does tapping the bottom of a beer can really make it less fizzy (MIT TR)
• E-commerce made warehouses hot. Now investors are warming to cold storage (WSJ)

Stephan's Wednesday Picks

• The dark side of recycling (Worth)
• Why the conscious consumerism movement is stalling (Fast Company)
• 2019 saw a dramatic shift in the way America drinks (Vox)
• Big brands, online startups find success on store shelves (WSJ)
• Britain's Just Eat rejects raised offer from Prosus (Reuters)

Stephan's Tuesday Picks

• Tesco considers sale of Asian supermarkets in pivot to the U.K. (Bloomberg)
• Why brands steal jokes and memes (The Atlantic)
• A ban is coming on single-use shopping bags. This plastic producer is not worried (CBC)
• Puffer coats aren't going anywhere (Vanity Fair)
• What the rise of fake meat means for ADM (Chicago Tribune)

Stephan's Monday Picks

• The rise of restaurants with no diners as apps take orders (NPR)
• Unintended perk of the online mattress wars: Never-ending free returns (WSJ)
• Palettes are what every teen wants for the holidays (NYT)
• First, Burger King. Now fancy tasting menus are ditching meat (Bloomberg)
• Call it a crime of pasta (NYT)

Stephan's Friday Picks

• Supermarket survival means matching Amazon (Bloomberg)
• Now that IKEA has colonized Earth, it's going after Mars (Fast Company)
• Fake meat vs real meat (NYT)
• Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods hungry for a piece of China's meat market (WSJ)
• From the archives (2006): The true story of how Tim Hortons was founded on greed and betrayal (Macleans)

Stephan's Thursday Picks

• French fry squeeze hits North America after poor potato harvest (Bloomberg)
• Chew on this: Gum that promises to help you sleep and make you skinny (WSJ)
• Canada's food price report (Dalhousie University)
• Ontario hunger report says 1 in 10 Ontarians can't afford a basic standard of living (CBC)
• The Amazon effect is flooding a struggling recycling system with cardboard (The Verge)

Stephan's Wednesday Picks

• When department stores were theater (NYT)
• Can babies learn to love vegetables (The New Yorker)
• Smaller loaves of bread are on the rise (WSJ)
• Next-day delivery spawns Amazon warehouse fix (Bloomberg)
• Cosmic Crisp apple that can reportedly last for a year to hit U.S. stores this week (The Guardian)

Stephan's Tuesday Picks

• 'Bags for life' making plastic problem worse (The Guardian)
• How Amazon wove itself into an American city (NYT)
• Long-awaited Cosmic Crisp apples to hit shelves (The Spokesman Review)
• Retailers revamp staffing as viewer shoppers visit stores (WSJ)
• How kombucha went from seaweed tea in Japan to a hit in North America (CBC)

Stephan's Monday Picks

• A Montreal bagel war unites rival kings (NYT)
• It's getting more expensive to eat, and economists are worried (Bloomberg)
• How Target became a model retailer (LA Times)
• America's cattle ranchers are fighting back against fake meat (WSJ)
• The bonkers bristly story of how Big Toothbrush took over the world (Wired)