This Oscar Mayer Turkey Is Spicier, And There’s Less Of It

Sure, extra spices really add something to a prepared food item. Do they add enough to justify making packages a whole ounce lighter? Well… in the case of this Oscar Mayer shaved turkey that got slightly spicier but lost an ounce, the answer is “probably not.”

Reader Chris sent along these pictures from Target. “If you haven’t seen already the shrink ray has hit Oscar Meyer lunch meats,” he writes.

Has it? These products differ slightly: one apparently has a little more spice than the other. Does that justify having eight ounces instead of nine?

We’re trying to find someone at Oscar Mayer to get back to us about this product and explain whether the spicier product is smaller or it has legitimately been Shrink Rayed. We’ll let you know when we hear back.

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Sbarro Officially Files For Bankruptcy Protection For Second Time Since 2011

(J.G. Park)

We told you last week that mediocre pizza-slinger and mall mainstay Sbarro would likely be filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Today, it made that filing official, making this the second bankruptcy for Sbarro since the spring of 2011.

The pizza chain has some $140 million in debt to lenders. According to the Wall Street Journal, the bankruptcy plan would hand over control of the company to the creditors in exchange for wiping away that red ink. The lenders involved in the deal will also provide a $20 million bankruptcy loan to aid in restructuring the chain that has faltered in the face of increased competition and decreased foot traffic to the malls that have called Sbarro home for decades.

Sbarro will also be put on the auction block to see if anyone is willing to buy the beleaguered restaurant chain.

The bankruptcy comes on the heels of a recent announcement to shutter 155 of the remaining 400 Sbarro locations in North America. There are another 600 Sbarro locations outside of North America that are unaffected by this filing.

The company filed for bankruptcy in 2011 and was able to substantially reduce its debt from $400 million to its current level.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Chiquita, Fyffes Merge To Form World’s Largest Banana Supplier

(frankieleon)

Miss Chiquita is getting hitched to an Irishman. The 144-year-old banana company is set to merge with its European rival, Fyffes, in a deal that would create the world’s biggest banana supplier.

Charlotte, North Carolina-based fruit company Chaiquita Brands announced Monday it is merging with Ireland-based Fyffes in an all-stock deal valued at $1.1 billion, Reuters reports.

The new company, which will be named ChiquitaFyffes, will control nearly 14% of the banana supplier market well ahead of Fresh Del Monte and Dole Food Company.

“This is a milestone transaction for Chiquita and Fyffes that brings together the best of both companies,” Ed Lonergan, Chaquita chief executive says.

Officials with the new company say the merger will bring new opportunities to the industry.

ChiquitaFyffes is estimated to have $4.6 billion in annual revenue from sales of more than 160 million boxes of bananas.

With approximately 32,000 employees, the new company will be based in Ireland where it will receive operational pre-tax savings of at least $40 million by the end of 2016.

The merger will be subject to review by competition authorities, but company officials say it is unlikely to face opposition as the two companies operate in different markets.

Chiquita and Fyffes merge to make world’s biggest banana firm [Reuters]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

Travel Channel’s Andrew Zimmern Suggests “Crowdsourced Expertise” Over Generic Yelp Reviews

Andrew Zimmern, chef and host of Travel Channel’s Bizarre Foods, has never held back his feelings about crowdsourced review site Yelp, once calling it a “tremendous forum for a bunch of uninformed morons to take down restaurants.” It’s all well and good to slam the site, but what are people to do when they’re looking for insight on where to eat?

His problem with Yelp, Zimmern explains in an interview with Eater.com, is that someone looking for reviews has no idea of a reviewer’s personal tastes, biases, or knowledge of food.

“I’m no one’s food snob. I consider a perfect hot dog on the street to be as valid a food experience as dinner at Blue Hill at Stone Barns,” he says. “I do not care what people — who I don’t know where they live, don’t know what their eating habits are, don’t know what sort of expertise or standards they bring to the experience — telling me what they think of a hot dog on the street or Blue Hill at Stone Barns. It’s meaningless to me.”

The solution, says Zimmern, is what he calls “crowdsourced expertise” — the use of social media to find people whose taste seem to be in line with yours and who you’d consider knowledgeable on the kind of food you’re looking for.

“I would be interested to know where Rick Bayless likes to eat Mexican food in Chicago,” he explains, referring to the chef/restaurateur/better Bayless brother. “I follow Rick Bayless. I follow Mexican chefs who are there. I follow line cooks. I build my own profile. I take food seriously, so I have my own resources. People who don’t want to spend a little bit of time building their own network and their own profile on their social media love to turn to Yelp, and that’s great. The problem is that they’re not crowdsourcing expertise. They’re just crowdsourcing noise. My suggestion is, why wouldn’t you spend 15, 20 minutes and search on Twitter and follow some people in the city?”

Zimmern says that asking for crowdsourced information from non-experts “is such a waste of time. It was really hard 20 years ago to do that. Now you can just flip on your phone.”

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Sprint Owner May Push T-Mobile Merger As Broadband Competition Solution

Since taking a controlling ownership in Sprint, Japanese telecom company SoftBank has made no attempt to hide the lust it has in its heart for fellow wireless company T-Mobile USA. Since then, federal regulators have basically told SoftBank to put its ardor on ice because there is already too little competition in the wireless market. But SoftBank may have a trick up its sleeve, coming at the deal through the lens of a market that is even less competitive — broadband.

Bloomberg reports that SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son will be in Washington, D.C., this week to put his revised sales pitch before regulators at the FCC and the Justice Dept.

Son had previously tried to woo regulators by reportedly claiming that the only way for Sprint and T-Mobile to compete with the much larger AT&T and Verizon is for the two smaller businesses to merge.

The new tactic is to convince folks in D.C. that a combined Sprint/T-Mobile could provide a viable competitive alternative to broadband services.

As we recently highlighted, many cities across America have little to no competition for residential broadband service. Even those cities where there are multiple companies involved, there is sometimes no overlap.

“In most markets you have one or two choices for broadband. SoftBank’s strategy is to convince the FCC and DOJ that a strengthened No. 3 player can compete with cable,” a Wells Fargo analyst explains to Bloomberg. “The key to this will be finding a way to make it politically palatable so it doesn’t look like regulators are doing an about-face on the four-player market preference.”

There are those who believe that the future of broadband is not fiber-to-the home but some form of wireless data delivery that can provide data speeds most customers need for Internet use and streaming video/music/games without the hassle of creating a wired network that connects to each end user.

It’s inevitable that such service will someday be commonplace, but the question is whether it will be the cable companies, the wireless providers, or some third party like Google, that will be the ones to make it a reality.

Given Sprint and T-Mobile’s comparatively sluggish rollout of LTE, we have a hard time believing that SoftBank will be able to convince regulators that these are the two companies that will successfully compete against the Comcasts of the world.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Durex Condom Makers Buy Global Rights To K-Y Lubricants Because, Well, Obviously

Get it? A bed? Yeah. Bow chicka bow bow. (Us)

There are some business deals we don’t really understand, the kind that just can’t be good for anyone. But when the owners of Durex condoms snatch up rights to sell K-Y globally, well that’s pretty much a natural match made in the bedroom.

Because condoms and “intimate lubricants” go together like well, condoms and lubricant, Reckitt Benkiser, Durex’s makers, have bought the global rights to Johnson & Johnson-owned McNeil’s K-Y, reports The Independent.

The will close in the next few months, with Reckitt hoping that with this big buy, it can “transform” its “sexual well-being category.”

The company said K-Y had sales of more than $100 million in 2013. That popularity could give a boost to Durex, which is marketed as sexual intimacy brand instead of just a health product. K-Y is seen as a global leader, Reckitt says, one that is very popular with the ladies as it has a “high trust score amongst women.”

In related news — I just learned that K-Y started as a prescription-only product back in 1917. And here I thought “I’m a love doctor” was just a pickup line.

You can follow MBQ on Twitter if you don’t mind bad jokes about K-Y now and again: @marybethquirk

Durex hopes for ‘intimate’ boost after K-Y acquisition [The Independent]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Pizza Hut New Zealand Introduces Marmite Stuffed Crust Pizza

Pizza Hut is out to become the global leader in pizzas with toppings crammed into the crusts. We have a morbid fascination with this product line, and now The Hut has introduced something even scarier than bacon cheeseburgers and chicken nuggets embedded in pizza crusts. In New Zealand, they’ve shoved Marmite in there.

Marmite, as you may now, is a yeast-based spread popular in the United Kingdom and in New Zealand, and similar to Vegemite in Australia. To say that it’s an acquired taste is an understatement. Not everyone in the countries where the yeasty spreads are popular even find them edible.

Around the World: Pizza Hut Adds Yeast Spread to Stuffed Crust Pizza in New Zealand [Brand Eating]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Microsoft Wants To Run More Political Campaign Ads On Xbox

(SA_Steve)

You know those ads that you ignore on your Xbox dashboard? President Obama used them as part of his re-election campaign in 2012, and with midterm elections on the horizon, Microsoft is doing its best to try to convince more politicians that these spots are ideal places to run targeted campaign and other political ads.

The Washington Post reports that Microsoft was pushing the idea on political movers and/or shakers at last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C.

Microsoft would take the demographic info it has gleaned about various Xbox Live users and use that info to give political advertisers the ability to send highly targeted ads to the users most likely to care about a certain candidate, campaign, or issue.

The advertisers would also be able to match up its own list of e-mail addresses with those of Xbox Live users, thus all but guaranteeing that the intended target will receive the ad.

The Post reports that Microsoft, which is also trying to sell campaigns on its other properties like Skype and MSN, is trying to make advertisers aware that 38% of its 25 million registered U.S. Xbox Live users are female, a demographic that has gone largely ignored in this method of advertising delivery, but which is often very important in determining election results.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

American And JetBlue End Frequent Flier Pact, Decide To Go Their Separate Ways

(JoelZimmer)

Former BAFFs (best airline friends forever) JetBlue and American Airlines are now moving on from their past frequent flier pact that allowed each other’s customers to buy connecting flights on one ticket. American doesn’t need JetBlue anymore now that it’s going steady with US Airways, giving the airline “greater connectivity” on the East Coast.

Previously, American customers could earn frequent flier miles on certain JetBlue connecting routes, and vice versa, reports Reuters. But the interline agreement is over as of right now, the two said today.

“Through the merger with US Airways, American’s network along the East Coast provides greater connectivity and customer benefits and there is no longer a need to supplement our combined network coverage with the JetBlue agreement,” American Airlines’ spokesman said in a statement.

It sounds like JetBlue is already shrugging things off and probably shredding that best pals bracelet, as it said that the partnership with American was “not overly material when we think about the other partnerships that we have,” JetBlue Chief Executive Dave Barger said at a JP Morgan conference today.

JetBlue has about 80% of its total operations on the East Coast, and does have plenty of other pals through similar agreements with 30 other carriers.

The airlines won’t accept interline tickets sales starting today, but customers using their reciprocal frequent-flyer programs still have until April 1 to earn miles or points on eligible flights.

American Airlines to end ticketing agreement with JetBlue [Reuters]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

McDonald’s Customers: We Were Asked To Leave Because Our “30 Minutes Were Up”

(SA_Steve)

Most stories about elderly customers possibly overstaying their welcome at fast food restaurants have focused on patrons who spent hours in the eateries, often buying little more than a coffee and a snack. But an octogenarian couple in Virginia say they were recently told to leave the McDonald’s they visited every afternoon because they had stayed beyond some imaginary 30-minute time limit.

In a recent letter to the editors of the Culpeper Star Exponent, the 85-year-old husband writes that he and his wife of 63 years would often go the McDonald’s in Culpeper during the early afternoon hours when the restaurant wasn’t as busy.

On Feb. 21, the husband says he and his wife were sitting at the restaurant when they noticed an employee cleaning the floor in their vicinity.

“[M]y wife asked her if she would mind not cleaning around our table until we were finished because of the dust it stirs up,” writes the husband, who says that this employee then took the issue up the franchise food chain to a manager who came out and allegedly asked them to leave because “we had used our 30 minutes of time allotted for customers who eat in.”

“[H]e says you two are going to have to leave,” the wife tells WTOP-FM radio. “He said your half hour is up and we need to clean this floor.”

The husband says they were not asked to relocate to another table so the employee could clean, or to sit with the WiFi-using customers who he says, “appear to spend a great amount of time with their computers at the establishment.” No says the WWII vet, “we were asked to leave.”

The couple left but they have not been back to that particular McDonald’s since.

The franchisee who owns the Culpeper location tells WTOP that he is investigating the claims and has reached out to the customers to apologize.

RELATED STORIES:

•Do Paying Fast Food Customers Have The Right To Sit In The Restaurant As Long As They Want?

•NYC Officials Broker A Peace Between McDonald’s And Loitering Seniors

•After Two Decades, Burger King Has Enough Of Little Old Ladies Using Parking Lot For Free

•Long Island Mall Bans Elderly Mall-Walker For 6 Months

by Chris Morran via Consumerist