Ron Shaich
👤 PersonAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Because there's all this stuff coming at you.
But what are the deeper trends?
And what had become clear to me as I was traveling the country and watching people and their angst around fast food,
their need for speed, but their need for quality, their need for an experience that elevated them.
As I was doing that, I began to understand a deeper theme.
Post-World War II, all food was local.
But you fast forward that to now,
1990, almost every major consumer category had been commodified.
It had been turned into an oligopoly.
You can take beer.
It had all once been local beer.
It was Anheuser-Busch and Miller.
You can take coffee.
It was also, again, once local coffee roasters.
That had morphed into...
Folgers and Maxwell House.
You can take soft drinks.
Once it had been local soft drink manufacturers, that had become Coke and Pepsi.
And every action draws reaction.
And that's the deeper trend.