Back in 2014, Great Harvest Bread Company trademarked what it thought was a neat slogan: “Bread. The Way it Ought to Be.” So when fellow baked goods peddler Panera Bread introduced its slogan, “Food as it should be” in 2015, that hit a little too close to home for Great Harvest. [More]
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Wisconsin Farmers Challenging Law That Won’t Let Them Sell Baked Goods Without A Commercial License
By 1.13.16
Three Wisconsin entrepreneurs are on a mission, and that mission is to get muffins, bread, pastries, and other delicious baked goods into the mouths of the people. Sounds delicious. But it won’t be easy, considering state law doesn’t allow residents to sell baked goods directly to the public without a licensed commercial kitchen. [More]
Subway And Shortchanged Sandwich-Eaters Settle 2013 Lawsuit Over Footlong Sub Length
By 10.21.15
This news may shock you, but “footlong” sandwiches from the chain Subway have not historically been an entire foot long. Back in 2013, customers in different states filed class actions alleging that the sandwiches usually measure 11 to 11.5 inches. While most customers and many sandwich artists would say “close enough,” some literal-minded consumers were unable to abide 11.5-inch and 5.75-inch sandwiches. The lawsuit has finally been settled, and customers aren’t owed any money, because an extra half-inch of bread is apparently its own reward. [More]
Grocery Shrink Ray Strikes Aldi Bread, Gillette Anti-Perspirant
By 9.29.15
The Grocery Shrink Ray quietly removes almost imperceptible bits of our packaged goods, gradually shrinking some products over time so manufacturers can avoid raising prices. Once you’re aware of it, you begin to notice it every time you buy a slightly smaller replacement for a product that you use regularly. Two readers who bought bread and deodorant noticed exactly that. [More]
Brewer Forges Unholy Alliance Of Bread & Booze With Beer Made From Leftover Loaves
By 4.17.15
Eat a sandwich? Drink a beer? WHICH DO I DO FIRST?!? One brewer in Belgium has removed that choice by taking stale, leftover bread that nobody else wants and turning it into beer by way of that magical brewing process otherwise known as using awesome science to combine two delicious things. [More]
N.J. Wegmans, Whole Foods Customers Sue Over Claims Of “Store-Baked” Goods
By 1.27.15
How fresh is fresh? That’s the question at hand in a lawsuit brought by a group of Wegmans customers in New Jersey who say that just because the store’s rolls are technically put in an oven on the premises, that doesn’t mean they’re “store-baked.” The same group is going after Whole Foods in the lawsuit for similar reasons. [More]
Don’t Put Your Bread In The Fridge & Other Important Food Storage Tips
By 3.29.14 — Updated: 10.26.16
We’ve all got a somewhat innate sense of where to store the foods we eat in our modern cultures — you’re not going to stick your ice cream in the pantry and expect it to stay frozen, or freeze your fresh apples. But what about butter — countertop or refrigerator? Should I really use that “eggs” slot on the inside of my fridge door? Answer us, oh kitchen gods! [More]
Subway Says It’s Removing A Controversial Chemical From Its Bread
By 2.6.14
These days it seems like if there’s an ingredient in food sold to the masses with even the slightest whiff of controversy around it, someone will root it out and start a campaign to get rid of it. Thus, Subway now says it will remove a chemical from its bread — one that’s banned in Europe but legal in the U.S. — after a food blogger started a petition against it. [More]
Wegmans And King Arthur Recall Flour Due To Infestation Of Blue Balls
By 2.25.13
Wegmans, the Rochester, N.Y.-based chain that serves as the Platonic ideal of what a grocery store should be, currently has two recalls going. First came a recall of their in-store bread products, and now they’ve recalled bags of flour that may contain little blue balls. [More]
Baguette ATM Hits Paris Streets
By 8.16.11
A new vending machine just hit the streets of Paris dispensing freshly baked baguettes. [More]
Is A Footlong Sub Still A Footlong Sub With Only 6" Of Bread?
By 4.5.11
Ron has a problem that truly speaks to the dilemmas of our day. He wants to get a $5 footlong at Subway, but on a 6″ roll to save carbs and calories. The sandwich artists at his local Subway insist that this is not possible, and that he needs to pay more than the price of a $5 footlong because he is really ordering a six-inch sub with double meat. It’s an exquisite kind of fast-food logic where you pay more and get less. [More]
Color-Coded Plastic Ties Tell You Day Your Bread Was Baked
By 2.28.11
Turns out that the plastic tags and twists on loafs of bread aren’t just for looking pretty, they are coded to indicate what day the bread was baked on, writes Wise Bread. The most commonly-used code for 5-day a week delivery is is blue for Monday, green for Tuesday, red for Thursday, white for Friday, and yellow for Saturday. It’s a nifty “and now you know” factoid, though it probably won’t save you from getting a stale loaf, because the shelf stockers for whom the code was designed are already doing that for you. [More]
Consumers Are Ditching White Bread For Wheat Bread
By 8.1.10
Rejoice Michael Pollan, it’s finally happening: wheat bread is almost more popular than white bread. Consumers are increasingly skipping past the Wonderbread for healthier-looking fare that either has “natural” in the name or whole grains visible through the packaging. [More]
This Grocery Store Bakery Price War Seems To Be Heating Up
By 10.26.09
We don’t quite know what to say about this Mid-Atlantic regional grocery store bakery price war. It is intense, baby.
Loaf Of Bread Comes With Baked-In Rodent Goodness
By 6.11.09 — Updated: 2.24.14
Back in 2007, a man in Northern Ireland opened up a loaf of bread and found a whole, mercifully dead, rat. (The BBC is reporting that it’s a mouse, but it’s either a giant mutant mouse or a rat.) A judge heard the case this week, and fined the bakery ÔøΩ1,000 ($1,653) “plus costs.”
God Sells Bread
By 11.6.08
There’s now a whole line of bread products inspired by Ezekiel 4:9″ “Take also unto thee Wheat, and Barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and Spelt, and put them in one vessel, and make bread of it…” They say the result is something filled with lots of nice proteins and efficient amino acids. Hooray for God bread! It’s like God, in your mouth!
Sorry About The Rocks In Your Raisin Bread. Here's $5.
By 8.13.08
We’ve never really stopped to wonder what sort of compensation we would require if we found small rocks in our raisin bread, but we’re pretty sure that it’s more than $5. Maybe we’re being unrealistic, because when Michael Snyder found rocks in the raisin bread he bought from a bakery in Somerville, Massachusetts, he asked for 5 loaves of bread in compensation and settled for $5 instead.
Settlement: Sara Lee Agrees To Change Misleading "Whole Grain" Packaging
By 7.21.08
Back in December the Center for Science in the Public Interest became annoyed with Sara Lee for allegedly misleading consumers about the amount of “whole grain” in their breads. The organization announced its intention to sue Sara Lee over its “Soft & Smooth Made with Whole Grain White Bread,” which claims to combine “all the taste and texture of white bread with the goodness of whole grain,” when actually “there is more water in this product than whole grain,” according to the CSPI.
