Defenestrating Thoughts from the Bivouac

Lately I’ve been coming up with lots of new business ideas. Some are pretty good ideas that I need to dedicate time to; the others are definitely profitable, but likely to cause bad karma (but tend to be very amusing). Today, I discovered a new one that rides along with the “marketing is everything” philosophy of business: fake-healthful food. (A quick pet peeve: you want food to be “healthful” not just “healthy”. “Healthful” means the food is good for you; “healthy food” just means the food isn’t sick.)

There’s lots of healthful food in places like Whole Foods Market, where they are priced at a huge premium since they have the words “organic”, “100% pure” and “No GMOs” on the packaging. The implication from this marketing is that the food is good for you (and a lot of it is). A large number of brands, like Amy’s Kitchen, are built on the “good for you” theme. I personally like Amy’s food; as far as frozen dinners go, it’s pretty good. And a number of the dishes are pretty healthful too; so a lot of people are loyal to the brand because they are trying to eat right.

However some of dishes are really bad for you (which would make it a good brand-marketing study). Take the Cheese Enchiladas, one serving has 240 calories, but has about 20% of your daily fat intake and salt intake. Roughly 10% of my daily calories would account for 20% of my fat and salt? But wait, a serving size is half the package (who eats half of a frozen dinner?). Now we’re looking at 480 calories (about one meal) being 44% of your fat (60% of your saturated fat) and 36% of your salt. Not terribly bad, but not exactly healthy.

So anyway, what’s my business idea? My idea is to start a consulting firm that solely specializes on gearing your products and marketing to take advantage of trends. Is low-carb popular? No problem, we’ll make your slices of bread one third smaller, label it “33% fewer carbs than brand X”, and mark it up 125% (if you think I’m kidding, pay close attention next time you’re in the bread aisle). Or, if fair trade coffee is big, charge the customer a markup 10 times the cost of purchasing “fair trade beans”.

The list of potential use cases goes on and on. Sure similar firms already exist (it’s just basic marketing after all), but my differentiating factor would be that I would be completely open about it, including having paid seminars explaining to consumers how not to be duped. :-)

In reality, I wouldn’t actually start this business (it feels too sleazy), but it’s fun to talk about. :-)