There have been a few new subscribers over the past few weeks – welcome! I hope you enjoy these Monday briefings, and if you have any comments or suggestions, I’d love to hear them.
When Secrets Are Serious Business
Anyone remember PostSecrets, that mid-aughts online sensation started by Frank Warren? I’d nearly forgotten about it in the wake of Whispa, NGL and their ilk, but Hazlitt shone a spotlight on the business of secrets – running it, keeping them, and everything in between. What struck me most after reading the article was that Warren’s PostSecret became an anonymous dumpster for our collective shame and guilt in the form of the secrets, and if he profited from being a societal dumpster… so be it.
Flame Wars
Can you even “own” a generic culinary concept that involves chopping up chillies into bits and frying those bits in oil and other aromatics until they crisp? Momofuku’s David Chang thinks he does, and it’s causing a stir in the so-called ethnic scene in North America. To me, this is a good example of late-stage capitalism in desperate search of something new, anything new, to cash in on. Irony is what’s new to them is pretty old to the rest of the world. Take a page from Lao Gan Ma – she doesn’t claim to own “chile crunch”, but she sure has a good slice of the market cornered.
Sneaky Labelling
In another ethnic-food kerfuffle, it looks like Trader Joe’s has been a bad, bad boy. As with chilli crisp, no one can claim to own achar, but one can certainly claim and mark one’s recipe as proprietary. That is literally the foundation for all the food-business-feuds between families in Singapore (each party claims to be the original or the superior). Where Trader Joe’s has apparently engaged in objectionable behaviour is in their private labelling process. It would appear they invite small (sometimes ethnic) independent producers to engage in business negotiations for private labelling, and then go quiet, only to launch their own version a few months later. Sneaky.
Just Walk On
In more food-related shenanigans, it turns out that Amazon Fresh’s Just Walk Out technology for a checkout-less grocery shopping experience was literally manned by more than a thousand workers in India playing big brother. This would be hilarious if it didn’t also drive home the point that technologies are rarely as shiny in the real world as they are in a lab. Thankfully, I can report that here in Singapore, grocery chain Fairprice’s Scan & Go (not quite Amazon’s new Dash Carts but probably much better) has been working well for several years now. Something for “smart sensor cart” Dash Carts to work towards, I’m sure.
Speaking of secrets: https://open.substack.com/pub/jitha/p/sunday-reads-194-uncertainty-as-a-moat?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=obwj