The comic strip “Keeping Up with the Joneses”—written and drawn by Arthur R. “Pop” Momand—debuted in 1916, ran for 28 years in papers across the country and the phrase became, and remains, part of the American lexicon.
For those in the food business—from producers, to distributors and brokers, to restaurateurs, chefs and buyers for retail stores—recognizing and embracing emerging trends is a fact of life. And starting your own is the stuff of genius.
Food is an obvious fact of life and essential for survival. Hunger is a driving force.
We all have to eat for sustenance and to fuel our “body machines.” But the human relationship with food—and the acts of choosing, preparing, sharing and eating it, and even washing the dishes after a big meal—goes much deeper than the necessity of merely providing us with nutritional value.
There are a lot of people in our business with blinders on who think social networking – things like Facebook, Twitter and blogging- are clever and fun but merely “fads.” That kind of thinking, like Thalberg’s, is not just “in the box,” it’s more like Russian matryoshkas, the nesting dolls. It’s WAAAAY inside the box, surrounded by layer upon layer of conventional thinking. Instant global communication is not the future. It’s the NOW.
