For those in the industry who like to play golf, things have been quasi-busy in the past few weeks. For the rest of us, it’s been pretty quiet. As we’ve passed the Labor Day weekend and vacations are mostly in the rearview mirrors and schools are back in full swing, we can expect that to change.
However, coming out of a sleepy August, there isn’t really too much to report on from the biz. So, I’m going to tell you about an interesting read I found last month that is tangential to the back-to-school time of year we are in. Despite the years and years of all of us believing that, as we’d evolved to the digital age, paper was on the way out, I personally can attest that that is not at all how things have worked out. And, it seems that as we all continue to find ourselves mired in piles of paperwork, the lowly pencil is still going strong. According to MarketWatch, despite the digital age we find ourselves in, sales of the classic writing instrument have held steady and are projected to grow at an annual rate of 7.7 percent through 2028.
Trade data supplied to MarketWatch by the Writing Instrument Manufacturers Association shows that a key import category encompassing pencils and similar writing tools has grown by 17 percent from 2008 to 2022 — to a whopping figure of roughly 3.7 billion units annually. That’s a lot of pencils.
The reason the pencil, a writing tool that dates back centuries, is not only able to survive but flourish has much to do with who uses them: children.
The MarketWatch story quoted people who noted that pencils continue to be the essential, easy-to-use writing tool for grade schoolers, especially from the kindergarten level up to fourth grade.
And as the population of children in the U.S. grows — from 63.6 million in 1990 to 73.1 million in 2020, according to government and other data — that pretty much explains the growth in the pencil market, the MarketWatch story noted.
So, while most of us eventually evolve from writing on paper to typing on computers and various devices, the ABCs of learning to read and write essentially still involve putting pencil to paper.
Not that digitization hasn’t crept into the world of learning, especially as students advance from elementary school to high school. To wit, starting next year, the SAT, the key college-entrance exam that high-school students take, will be done online, with no need for pencils on test day. That could put a dent in pencil sales after a while.
Another story I found interesting recently that has a bit more of a connection to the food biz was one from Epicurious.com about ketchup titled “Where Does Ketchup Come From, Anyway?” by Janet Rausa Fuller which originally ran in 2016 but was repeated in a recent newsletter. What caught my eye and led me to read the article was the tagline for the story – “Once upon a time, America’s favorite condiment wasn’t red and it wasn’t made with tomatoes. It also wasn’t American.” (That’s some good wordsmithing, in my opinion.)
Rausa Fuller herself learned about ketchup’s origins from a book titled “The Language of Food” by Stanford University professor Dan Jurafsky. Those origins date to 17th-century China where ketchup started out as fish sauce, and it tomatoes weren’t one of its ingredients.
Jurafsky’s book said it was Vietnamese fishermen who introduced fermented fish sauce to Chinese traders traveling from their base in the southern Chinese province of Fujian. It was then called it ke-tchup. It was eventually brought into Southeast Asia, where the British discovered it. Over the years, the recipe evolved. Anchovies, mushrooms, walnuts, and oysters were common base ingredients for ketchup until the early 1800s, when tomatoes started showing up in recipes, Jurafsky wrote.
Ketchup turned sweeter in the mid-19th century, the story reported, with the addition of sugar to suit the American palate, according to Andrew F. Smith, author of “Pure Ketchup: A History of America’s National Condiment, with Recipes.”
In 1871, Heinz sold its first tomato ketchup. The brand, and the Heinz recipe, remain synonymous with ketchup in the U.S. today. Pittsburgh-based Heinz commands a 60 percent market share in the U.S., with ConAgra’s Hunt’s ketchup – its nearest competitor – taking less than 20 percent of the market, according to CNBC.
Today, ketchup can be found in 92 percent of U.S. households, according to research firm NPD Group, said the story.
I can highly recommend Epicurious.com for anyone who loves food and cooking. I first discovered it in September 2001 during an ill-fated trip I took to Greece to learn about the olive oil industry there. An editor from the digital subsidiary of Condé Nast that was created to develop content specifically for the Internet, was part of the junket of buyers and editors who were in the country to learn about the wonderful olive oil the Greek farmers there were producing. If you know me, you know the rest of the story. Our lovely trip was marred by the attacks of 9/11. While the trip didn’t go exactly as planned, I’ve loved Greek olive oil and Epicurious.com ever since.
Till next month…