Geography Is Nestle: The Global Food Company You Love To Hate

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Nestle is a truly dominant food company in the world. But its origins are actually fairly humble. In today's podcast episode, we'll track how Nestle expanded and grew through the decades to become one of the largest and most dominant food companies in the world and what they're up to today... controversies and all!
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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, Jeff.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
When I say Nestle, what products or brands come to mind?

Speaker 3 (00:10):
So all the brands that I think of first when
I think of Nessley, and I actually don't think this
is a huge part of their business. But the ones
that immediately popped mind are all candy based, okay, And
I think the one that for some reason most sticks
in my mind is KitKat. Is I don't even know
if KitKat is a NESTLEI brand or not.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
It is, actually it likes it.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
It's kind of fuzzy, actually because the KitKat distributed throughout
everywhere else in the world outside of the United States
is made by Nessley, but Hershey's has the license for
the United States. So if you get a Kitcat in
the United States, it's Hershey. Anywhere else it's a Nestle product.

Speaker 3 (00:50):
That seems so bizarre. That seems like something that would
be out of like the film industry, right. You hear
about like Paramount distributing films and you know, the United States,
but everywhere else it's thistributed by Warner Brothers or something
like that, and you're like, why is that? What's the
what's the what's the point? You know, what's the point?
Of Hershey's distributing kit kats.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
I suppose hers She's the major competitor of Nesle, and
I'm not exactly sure how that came about, but there
are instances like this where a product will be you know,
distributed and created by one company one place and somebody
another company someplace else, what what other?

Speaker 1 (01:25):
What else comes to mind?

Speaker 3 (01:27):
Well, I don't really have any others aside from like,
I think there's like like nest T like that, that's true,
it's a T brand, right. There's also lipt In I
think Unilever, that's correct, nest Cafe, I guess would be
like those are very on on brand, right, those are
very like those?

Speaker 1 (01:45):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:47):
I think when we get into it, and I'm sure
we will, when we get into sort of the brands
that they own, I'm going to be quite surprised by
what they own because I don't actually know all that
much about Nestley. As it turns out.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
Well it's this giant company, right, and but so let
me tell you just it turns out that Nestley owns
about two thousand brands, So I'm not going to go over.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
All of them.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
However, I'll do some highlights here, So Nest Cafe, as
you mentioned espresso, which.

Speaker 3 (02:15):
Is the little fancy version of cafe, right exactly.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
It's the little pods that you could put into a machine. Carnation,
any carnation product you see is owned by Nesli Libby's.
Do you know about Libby's, like's, I'm familiar with Libby.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
That was kind of had a bigger profile in the
seventy and eighties. I think San Pellegrino Water.

Speaker 3 (02:38):
Oh yeah, like a little water, A little water guys,
Sparkling water whatever it is, yeah, Perier, Oh yeah, totally.
That was like the that was the that was like
the brand of sparkling water that people drank before like
Sparkling Water became like really popular that we.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
Have like yes and yeah, yeah, that's the one that
got everybody into it.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
I think tell which is another water company.

Speaker 3 (03:03):
Cheerios what, No way, I thought that was like General
Mills or Kellogg's or something.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
I believe I think it's Nessley. I hope, so, because
that's what I have here. Nest Quick or formerly Quick.
That's the chocolate powder that you mix in to make
chocolate milk with a little rabbit.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
You remember that one.

Speaker 3 (03:21):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember that right, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Kit Kat outside the United States, Milo which is a
chocolate flavored malted power that sold in Australia. Smarties you
know Smarties.

Speaker 3 (03:33):
Oh yeah, those little candies.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
That's a little candies yep.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
But Toni California Kitchen, Pizza de Giorno, Hot Pockets, Lean Cuisine, Stofers, Tombstone, Pizza, Dryers,
Ice Cream, Hogan Das, Garden of Life, Nature's Bounty, Maggie Soups,
Alpo Friskies, Pirina, toll House, and Coffee Made. These are
just several of the two thousand brands that Nestle control.

Speaker 3 (04:01):
I mean, as you ran through those last ones, I
was definitely like, oh, I know, I see these at
my local fred Meyer on the regular. You know, Tombstone,
not to you know, get too into my diet. But
it's not. It's a regular occurrence in the Gibson household.
Didn't know it was Nestli though, and a.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
Lot of these products probably don't have Nestle on the
label anywhere, so it seems to be a separate thing.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
You know.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
There are a lot of different lists I came across
listing what the largest food companies in the world are
and as usual, they're not exactly the same. They use
different criteria to determine rank. There's sales, there's net revenue,
there's market capitalization, there's a bunch of different things. However,
every single list that I saw placed net Nestley first.
So Nestle is i think undisputedly the largest food company

(04:53):
on the planet, and in terms of just overall publicly
traded companies in the world. Forbes this this year twenty
twenty four placed it as the fiftieth largest company in
the world of any kind.

Speaker 3 (05:06):
So that's mean, it's impressive. Top fifty, that's a lot.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
Nestley sells food and beverages to one hundred and eighty
eight countries, that's most of them. The company has over
three hundred and forty factories in seventy six countries. It
has sixty two factories in the United States alone.

Speaker 3 (05:24):
I mean, that's also interesting because and I'm sure this happens,
in fact, I know it does, but I feel like
food is one of the things where having a localized
production is still highly beneficial, just for food spoilage reasons.
Like I'm sure there's some math equation out there that says, okay,
you can have, you know, factories wherever on the other
side of the planet, and it'll take three weeks now

(05:47):
to get to the US in you know, a reasonable
amount of time, I guess, And therefore there's like a
fifty percent chance that half your stuff's going to be
spoiled and you only have a week to sell it.
Or you could pay a little bit more money to
have a factory in the US and things are able
to last a little bit longer. I'm sure there's some
sort of economic math equation out there.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
Yeah, it probably has to do with a food shelf life.
It has to do with transportation costs and a bunch
of different things. Of course, many of the things on
that last don't spoil quickly, like Smarties.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
You know, it's like.

Speaker 3 (06:17):
Usually wouldn't be surprised. I wouldn't be surprised as smarties
from the nineteen eighties are still good today.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
It might be it'll be given out for Halloween. I
feel like possibly, I.

Speaker 3 (06:26):
Mean, it's just sugar, that's all it is. It's sugar,
and maybe like a little should die a lot.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
Of sugar and many of these products globally, NESTLEI employees
over two hundred and seventy thousand people, and this doesn't
include people who supply NESTLEI, such as farmers and things,
so that the knock on effect of employment is much larger.
In twenty twenty three, Nestley had a round one hundred
and four billion dollars in sales. About thirty four percent

(06:54):
of those sales. The revenue occurred in the United States
and Canada twenty one percent, and Asia, Africa and Oceania.
Six percent of that is from China alone, twenty four
percent revenue comes from Europe, and about fourteen percent comes
from Latin America.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
So this is truly a global company.

Speaker 3 (07:14):
In global company, but real quick, it's a global company.
But I'm I'm pretty impressed by how like the United
States and Canada are punching above their weight here if
you if you know about the respective populations here, right, Like,
for example, Europe twenty four percent of its revenue Europe
as a whole, I'm sure, I'm sure it's just sort
of the block of Europe, not like picking and chees

(07:35):
and countries. It's about twice the population of the United
States and Canada, right, that sounds right, Yeah, And then
if you take also Africa, Asia, and Oceania, which I'm
guessing that's six percent of China comes out of that, yeah,
twenty one percent. Yeah, again, that's billions of people. So
it's interesting that this is a I think you had
already mentioned that this is a European company, or at
least I know it's a European company it's based. But

(07:57):
that's still so much of their revenue comes from well,
I guess two countries.

Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah, a third of it from the United States and Canada.
And it says something perhaps about the attractiveness of the
kind of products they sell to people who live in
the United States and Canada.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
And you know, we're also diet what's up.

Speaker 3 (08:17):
Yeah, we're snackers. We like our snacks, that's right. We
got to have our oreos and our cookies and our Nibisco,
you know things. And these are probably different companies. I
don't know, right right, Actually, I don't know. Maybe Nobisco
is part of Nestle.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
It could be Brisco is not part of Nesle, Okay,
So that means we can still talk about that another day. Unilver,
as you mentioned, another big competitor. So the net income
for this, you know, they sold, their sales were one
hundred and four billion dollars. Of that, twelve point five
billion was profit was net income. It has a market

(08:50):
capitalization of over two hundred and seventy two billion dollars,
and what market capitalization is is the total value of
the company's stocks, so that's what the companies sort of
worth on paper, so to speak. The highest amount of
revenue comes from powdered and liquid beverages, so that's their
number one category, and the second is pet care.

Speaker 3 (09:12):
That's interesting because I don't know if I engage in
either of those markets for or I would not assume
NESLEI wasn't really engaged in either those markets. One, I
don't know what a powdered beverage is, That's what I guess, Like, yeah,
I don't know. I don't know what that.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
Example that comes to mind that's not a Nesli product is.
You know, you can buy gatorade and powdered form or okay,
you know iced tea and powdered form. I mean es
cafe is instant coffee that's powdered.

Speaker 3 (09:43):
Okay, Yeah, yeah, yeah, coffee coffee coffee, Yeah, okay, I
guess that makes a little more sense. Yeah, Second is
pet care. I did I notice you said Purina before.

Speaker 1 (09:52):
Yeah, but I don't know.

Speaker 3 (09:54):
To me, it's just it's just not it's not. I
don't associate Nestlie with either of those things, I guess
and from we.

Speaker 2 (09:59):
Are okay with that, right like they probably like having. Yeah,
people don't necessarily want to associate their brands with pet food.
Some of the other largest food beverages company and we've
mentioned a few of them. Some of the other largest
ones in the world are PepsiCo, which is in the
United States, Coca Cola, which is in the United States,

(10:21):
Anheuser Busch Imbev, which is a consortium or owned by
Belgian and Brazil companies, Unilever which is British Dutch, Dannin
which is French, General Mills which is from the US,
Mondolez which is from the US, Tyson Foods from the US,
Craft Hinds, which used to be different companies they merge

(10:41):
in twenty fifteen. That's US company, Hershey from the US,
Yealy from China, Bimbo from Mexico, and General General Mills,
which I already said. So anyways, those are depending on
how you rank things and what criteria, those are the
ones that usually come up as some of the biggest companies.
So you know, we're talking about obviously Nestli today, and

(11:03):
the story of Nesli is very much a story of
international mergers and acquisitions. So this is a company that
started kind of small and just got bigger and bigger
and kind of was pretty global from early on. So
one of the things we'll do here is well, we'll
track the origin of the country and we'll talk about
how it's grown over time.

Speaker 3 (11:23):
This will also be I think a little bit. So
we've done a number of companies, right, So we did Ikea,
we did Lego, we did a Nintendo. Yep, you might
have done another one in there. I can't really remember it.
But I when I compared Nestli to those three other
companies that we've done, Nestli feels like it's going to
be different because those other three they haven't really I
don't think they've had the same story of mergers and acquisitions.

(11:46):
Of course, every company buys another smaller company at some point.
It doesn't seem to be like a focal point of
their growth for any three of those, right, it's they
grew they had a popular you know, intellectual property or
popular process that's just sort of how they expanded and grew.
And it seems like Nesli might be sort of the
inverse where they maybe got that big on something and
then merged with another thing, had another product, kept buying

(12:10):
other popular products into themselves.

Speaker 1 (12:12):
I think that's right.

Speaker 2 (12:13):
And the other thing that's different, So Neslei a similarity
it has with the other companies except for Lego is
that it's publicly traded. So Lego is a family company
and this is a publicly traded company that you can
buy stock in. And so to track the where, when
and why about this company, we have to talk about
Switzerland because that's the country that they originated in. It's

(12:34):
a country with the long background in the dairy industry,
which is important for the beginning of the company.

Speaker 1 (12:40):
And there are.

Speaker 2 (12:40):
Actually two companies from Switzerland that merged to form what
was then called the Nestley and Anglo Swiss Company in
nineteen oh five, so the company wouldn't be known as
straight up Nestli until nineteen seventy seven. It had another
name in between there.

Speaker 1 (12:58):
The first of.

Speaker 2 (12:58):
These two companies was the Anglo Swiss Condensed Milk Company,
founded in eighteen sixty six. Now was founded in Switzerland,
but was established by two brothers from the United States
from Lee County, Illinois, Charles and George Page.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
And Charles Page was US.

Speaker 2 (13:13):
Council to Switzerland at the time, so that's sort of
an ambassadorial type rule. And so they took some business
opportunities and started this company back in eighteen sixty six.

Speaker 3 (13:25):
And they're interesting. It's interesting because you know, when I
think of like traditional like European companies, of course there's
there's an aspect of you know, capitalism there right there,
it's a company, right, But when I think of Nesley,
which I know is a European company, it does have
it does smack of the sort of almost like ruthless
American US capitalism that we associate with sort of brands here, right,

(13:50):
And I always thought that was interesting, and now I'm like, oh,
maybe that makes a little more sense because while it's
founded in Switzerland, it's founded by two people who are
are from the United States, right.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
Well, one of the two companies that form Nestley nineteen
oh five or two people from the United States, that's correct.
And their big product was condensed milk. Jeff, what's condensed milk?

Speaker 3 (14:14):
So you take a bag of milk and you just
like really press it hard and then explodes all over
the place, and you have some sort of condensed milk.
I have no idea what Actually there.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
Could be some accuracy to hear description here. More technically speaking,
it's cow's milk from which about sixty percent of the
water has been removed, and sugar is often added. So
it's also different from evaporated milk. So if you make
your pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving, you know, for example, they're
not exactly the same thing because condensed milk is very

(14:44):
sweet and evaporated milk is unsweetened. So why do you
think they would make something like why make condensed milk?

Speaker 3 (14:53):
Well, I don't actually know why. I mean, maybe to
add sugar into I don't know. It probably has to
do with like keeping it longer lasting would be my
gues especially if you're adding sugar, Which was that it did?
I get it right?

Speaker 1 (15:08):
Yeah, it's it's to give it longer life. And so.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
You know milk, fresh milk only lasts so long, and
as you suggested earlier, you know, transporting that all over
the place would be pretty challenging. So if you can
come up with something that is condensed and you can
put in a can. You know, was advertisers being safe
because you know, back in the mid eighteen hundreds, people
weren't used to eating out of cans or drinking out
of cans, right that was Think of how alarming that

(15:35):
must have been for the first generation of people who
went from whole foods and I don't mean the store,
but I mean actual whole foods and going into eating
things out of cans. That's a huge transition and people
had to be convinced that that was safe. But it had,
you know, shelf life, and it was a way to
preserve food.

Speaker 1 (15:53):
Which is really important.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
The second of the two companies began operating the following year,
in eighteen sixty seven. This was founded by somebody named
Already Nestley, and he developed a baby cereal derived from
milk and VeVe Switzerland, which is still the headquarters of
Nestley today. And the baby food combined cow's milk, wheat, flour,

(16:14):
and sugar and it was marketed as a product for
babies who couldn't.

Speaker 1 (16:19):
Breastfeed for whatever reason.

Speaker 2 (16:21):
So that was the idea was to provide nutrition for
infants who couldn't get it otherwise, Are you familiar with
the Nestley logo at all?

Speaker 1 (16:27):
Does that ring a bell?

Speaker 3 (16:30):
I mean, vaguely, I know it's often like has like
a red color to it.

Speaker 2 (16:34):
Yeah, Yeah, that's that's the font colored choice. The actual
logo is a nest with a couple of birds in
a few birds in it. That might not I don't
know if that's ringing a bell. You might have to
look that up and see if you're familiar.

Speaker 3 (16:47):
I'm pulling it up right now. Yeah, I actually don't know. Oh,
you know what. Vaguely I know looking at I'm looking
at a bunch of them, and there is one that's
just red, has like a white logo, sort of like popping,
and then there's an older one with like the three
birds in a nest. That's the I wouldn't say I'm
familiar with that logo at all.

Speaker 2 (17:07):
I think the name is more popular or more well
known than the logo. That logo does come from eighteen
sixty seven, so it comes from wayback. And in the
Swabian dialect of German, Neslei means small birds nest, so
that's what Nesley actually means. So soon thereafter that, Nesley

(17:30):
started operating that independent business. In eighteen sixty seven, the
company started supplying somebody named Daniel Peter of Ave, Switzerland
with condensed milk. Who invented milk chocolate, or at least
he gets historical credit for it. Whether he invented it
or not perhaps a question of debate, but he's the
person that's credited with that. So milk chocolate, you know.

(17:50):
Part of their business goes way back. Eighteen seventy five,
are Nesley, at the age of sixty sold his company
in factory to three individuals who expanded production, but they
decided to keep the Nestle name, and so, in other words,
Ari Nesley was only in the mix for about nine years,
and yet this massive corporation carries his name still today.

Speaker 3 (18:12):
That is interesting. I feel like that would be a.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
Usual mission you want to stick with you. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:18):
So by eighteen seventy eight, both Anglo Swiss and Neslei
were in competition. They were both selling condensed milk and
infant cereal, and they were both expanding production abroad. So
they're in competition.

Speaker 1 (18:29):
With one another.

Speaker 2 (18:30):
And in eighteen eighty two Anglo Swiss entered the US market.
Remember these are two people from the United States who
started the company. Subsequently, George Page, one of the brothers,
died and in nineteen oh two the company sold all
of its US based operations, so it was out of
the United States. Eighteen ninety, Ari Nesley dies. Of course,
he's been out of the mix for a little while.
And then in nineteen oh five, Anglo Swiss and Nestley

(18:53):
merged to form the Anglo Swiss Milk Company. This is
usually considered like if you look at Nesli's own histories,
this is what they considered to be truly the beginning
of their company. When these two original companies merged, It's
got headquarters in VeVe and cham, Switzerland, and opened another
one in London to facilitate some of its international sales.

(19:14):
And at this time the company owned already in nineteen
oh five twenty factories and sold its products in Africa, Asia,
Latin American and Australia. So by nineteen oh five this
is a global company that hasn't quite gotten into the
United States yet.

Speaker 3 (19:29):
Which is interesting because in if I remember correctly, in
eighteen eighty two, the Anglo Swiss Company entered the US market,
But then then it seems like maybe they pulled back out.

Speaker 2 (19:39):
Yeah, they I guess they sold their operations there and
so by the time they merged with Nestley, they were
no longer.

Speaker 1 (19:47):
In ownership of those companies.

Speaker 2 (19:49):
And so, you know, one of the things we can
do is track different periods of time and look at
the geography of the company during those times. And one
era that we want to pay attention to is World
War One, which seems to come up increasingly in our episodes.
We have an entire episode on World War One.

Speaker 1 (20:04):
Check it out.

Speaker 2 (20:05):
And so during World War One, the demand for both
condensed milk and chocolate increased because these are given to
soldiers as emergency rations, right, so these can be preserved,
and they the company Nesle Angoswiss, increased production because they
obtained large government contracts for a number of different countries
for their products. So the demand for certain products increased

(20:31):
during World War One. In nineteen sixteen, Nestley acquired a
Norwegian dairy company that panted it a spray drying process
for making milk powder. I don't know what that means exactly,
spray drying process, but it's just an illustration of out
they're seeking out companies in different countries with different technologies.
This happens to be from Norway. And then in nineteen

(20:53):
nineteen get ready for the Oregon connection. Nesley purchased two
condensed milk plants in Oregon, abandoned and the other in Milwaukee,
which is just south of Portland. The plants were sold
by Gabish and Joplin, a paving company in Portland, Oregon,
primarily involved in laying sidewalks and streets, but somehow they
had this dairy component which ended up getting sold to Nesley.

Speaker 1 (21:17):
So we got it.

Speaker 3 (21:18):
Just how Neslie sort of enters the US market too,
So is it through Oregon, because that'd be kind of cool.
That's a local that's a fun little local fact for us.

Speaker 1 (21:25):
It seems to be the case. It seems to be
the case.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
I don't know if the products were marketed there originally,
but that's one of the earliest things that I could
track in terms of Nestlie's involvement in the United States.
And there's a lot more say about this, but we've
come upon a time for our first ad break.

Speaker 3 (21:41):
Awesome, let's do that. Let's engage in capitalism. Maybe Nestley
has an ad for us. I don't know. We'll see
maybe it's a kick cat ad and I guess I
know by it if you hear it. So we'll be
right back.

Speaker 1 (22:02):
And we're back.

Speaker 2 (22:03):
It's the Geography Is Everything podcast. We're talking about geography
is Nesley, the giant food company, and we just talked
about some of the things that changed during World War
One in terms of increase of production, some acquisitions, and
then we get into the twenties and the thirties. Now,
nineteen twenty nine, which is right around the time of
this global depression, Nesley and Anglo Swiss acquired the Peter

(22:26):
Callier Cohlar Company, which was at the times Switzerland's largest
chocolate company, which dates all the way back to eighteen
nineteen under the brand Calire. And after that, chocolate became
a significant part of Nesli and Anglo Swiss's business. So
they were milk, they were doing baby formula, they they

(22:46):
were sort of involved in the innovation of milk, chocolate
and now chocolate. It's a big part of what's going on.
In nineteen thirty four, the company began making malted chocolate
powder drink Milo, which is sold in Australia and subsequently
in other places, and the company continue to develop infant
and baby foods, including a milk powder for babies, which
becomes an important part of their business and something that

(23:09):
we'll be able to revisit in a little bit. In
nineteen thirty six, Nestlee and Anglo Swiss transformed into a
holding company with the division called Nesshold in VeVe, Switzerland
and another called Unilac and Panama. So we already see
them spreading out their business and the administration of that
business in different places.

Speaker 3 (23:30):
I'm not entirely sure what a holding company is or
die like, I don't know what that means.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
Maybe you can look this up as I'm trying to answer,
but I believe a holding company is a company that
has lots of different investments and lots of different company
or you know, divisions and brands, and they don't necessarily
have to do with one another. But it's these are
investments that a company makes because they think it'll be profitable.

Speaker 3 (23:56):
That was actually a really good based on a very
quick Google search. That was a very good definition. Yes,
because that's exactly what it is.

Speaker 1 (24:03):
So let's let's go with that.

Speaker 2 (24:05):
So, yeah, it's a company that doesn't you know, it's
not like Ikea when they make furniture and meatballs and whatever.
It's a company that buys companies and absorbs them and
has different divisions. So in nineteen thirty eight pretty significant
year for the company because then that's when they launched
launched nescafe. And nest Cafe is a powdered coffee extract

(24:27):
to which one adds hot water. It's something that we
now call instant coffee. And this was done in response.
It's interesting, this was done in response to a request
from the Brazilian government to find new uses for their
huge coffee surplus. So they were overproducing and they approached
apparently Nestli to say, hey, what, We've got a lot

(24:48):
of coffee. What can we do with this? And Nescafe
was looking for to capitalize on the convenience factor and say,
let's turn this into something that will store for a
long time and you know, just a water and it's coffee,
which is what you do with coffee anyways. But you know,
you don't have to like get rid of the grounds
or anything. It dissolves, dissolves, it dissolves.

Speaker 1 (25:10):
Right now.

Speaker 2 (25:11):
This is important because as we approach World War two,
nest Cafe becomes extremely popular, particularly among the US military
personnel used armed forces, so this is something that's easy
to transport. People like coffee, and so this is something
that helps build their business during this time. In nineteen
thirty nine, concerned that the Access Powers might invade and

(25:33):
occupy Switzerland, Nestle and Anglo Swiss moved some of its
managers to a new office in the United States. So
it starts the United States becomes much more prominent in
terms of the administration of the company during World War Two,
and this served as the second headquarters for Nesley during
World War Two. The company was unable to export milk
from Europe during the war, so products for Africa and

(25:55):
Asia were produced in Australia and the United States. Already
in the thirties early forties were looking at being able
to change their you know, global supply, their global network
of food chain or whatever it is, you know, the
sort of how they how they produce things supply chain,
I guess, is what I'm trying to say, And how
that can be flexible enough where you quickly have to

(26:19):
change production someplace else if the situation dictates that. But
you know, the sales of the product decreased originally, but
then increased as the war went on, and then during
the end of the war there's care packages that were
put together in supplies for people in Japan and people
in Europe, and Nees Cafe was included, so est cafes

(26:39):
and armed forces in care packages and people becoming really
familiar with this product during the war, so that after
the war people start looking for this product. So so
after World War Two, nineteen forty seven, Nestley and Anglo
Swiss merged with the Swiss company Alimentama, which produced a
brand called my mod Magi, which is soups and billions

(27:03):
in seasonings, so that sort of aspect of the food industry.
That company it self dated back to eighteen eighty four
when it first innovated an instant soup. So we're seeing
that the sort of instant foods are pretty critical with
this company. And the merge company was called Neslei Alamentana,
but we'll just call it Neslei.

Speaker 1 (27:19):
I think from here on forward because that's a little easier.

Speaker 3 (27:22):
Well it's anyways, it's yeah, it's not his name now, right,
they've dropped Alamentana.

Speaker 2 (27:28):
Right now, it's just Neslei. In the nineteen forties, the
company launched Nesty, which is something you referenced earlier. It's
an instant tea manufactured following the sort of same process
that used to make nes cafe coffee. It can be
used for hot tea, it can be used for iced tea.
And this appears in the US market in nineteen forty eight.

(27:49):
So remember that in the post war era in the
United States in particular, there is an upswing of the economy.
The United States emerges as an economic power. Of course,
that that wealth isn't distributed evenly throughout the country. Not
everybody's experiencing that, but some people are experiencing an increase
in disposable income. And it's also a time when people

(28:11):
are looking for efficiencies in the way that they do everything,
including the way that they eat and this kind of stuff,
the way that they drink. Also that same year and
forty eight, the chocolate powder meant to be mixed with
cold milk called nest Quick. It was called Quick originally
it was launched in the United States. So I remember
growing up with that and with that rabbit that has

(28:34):
sort of like a gold chain with big que on it.
So that's that's kind of etched in my memory for
long from a long time ago.

Speaker 3 (28:42):
Yeah, it's kind of a it's like a I mean,
I kind of remember. I don't know if it's still
like this, but it's kind of like an ovalish tin
sort of box or something like that, and you open
up the side and you dip your in, you drop
it in.

Speaker 1 (28:54):
Very distinctive.

Speaker 2 (28:54):
Yeah, I think it was like a yellow container perhaps
even or something like that. In nineteen fifty four, the
company rebranded its Infant cereal as Sarahlac, so that's one
of their main products for the Infant Cereal line. It
also launched something called Fondor, which is a seasoning powder
package and a shaker, so you know, sort of like

(29:16):
the allspice kind of thing like Missus Dash or something,
which I don't think is one of their products, but anyways,
this sort of you know, you don't have to season
it with lots of different things. It's all in one
shaker and you put it on there. In nineteen fifty seven,
under the Maggie brand, the company launched a canned ravioli
which was extremely populator popular and motivated the company to

(29:37):
merge and develop more canned and prepared food. So again,
this is the era when this is really popular. And
you know, I'm thinking when I think ravioli, can I
think Chef Boyardy.

Speaker 3 (29:49):
Absolutely sure, I don't think it's one of their brands.

Speaker 2 (29:52):
But okay, I was gonna ask, well, I mean this
spurs competitors, right, and I mean it's amazing think that
that transition from fresh ravioli to canned ravioli was so successful.

Speaker 1 (30:07):
But there it is, you know.

Speaker 3 (30:10):
And I mean, so I just looked at us Chef
Boyardy is it's owned by a Canagra Caannagra.

Speaker 2 (30:15):
I'm not sure that's a huge US company, agricultural company.

Speaker 3 (30:19):
Not super familiar with them, but yeah, I don't know,
I think Chef Boardy. I mean, I'm sure it's not
like the most nutritionally impactful for whatever, but it's still
it's really tasty. Still.

Speaker 2 (30:31):
Yeah, I mean as if you're a kid, you're psyched,
you know, that's that's something you're and there's probably some
sugar in it, right, which is.

Speaker 1 (30:39):
That sweetens the deal?

Speaker 2 (30:41):
But yeah, what we're talking about is these trends after
the World War two, and one of the other things,
in addition to sort of people wanting this sort of
easy food that's quick to prepare, is that people have
home freezers in a way that they never had before,
and this is definitely true in the United States. So
Nesslie also respect by providing a lot of more frozen

(31:03):
foods in that kind of thing, because that fits that
sort of lifestyle, that quick, quick to eat lifestyle, and
it's in there responding to shifts in the way that
people store and consume food. So this is part of
their story, is that they're constantly sort of anticipating the
market and creating a or creating a market for this
kind of thing. Also, in the nineteen sixties, Nestley acquired

(31:24):
a British canned food company. It bought a Swedish company
that produced frozen a frozen food brand called Fundus, which
is one of the first frozen foods sold in Europe,
and Nesle subsequently brought that to international markets. So they're
taking things from one country moving at someplace else. And
then in nineteen sixty eight Nestley acquired Chambord c which

(31:45):
is a French which was a French yogurt company, So
they're still dealing in some spoilable foods.

Speaker 1 (31:50):
I guess you could say.

Speaker 2 (31:51):
The following year, Nesli brought the French French mineral water
brand Vitel, and that brings us to the seventies. And
nineteen seventy three Nestli brought the US frozen foods company Stouffer.
So I don't know if you remember that from your youth.
I remember a lot of commercials for that, and that
being a really popular frozen food brand back in like
the seventies. And then it bought Libby, the Can Food

(32:12):
Company in the United States, and so these again, these
felt like staple brands in the United States that Neslei's
beginning to acquire in the seventies. Now for a little
bit of a shift. In nineteen seventy seven, the company
changed its name to nesle and continued to diversify by
purchasing US pharmaceutical company Alcon Laboratories, which incidentally has subsequently

(32:35):
sold a few years ago. So now it's getting into
the whole new market. This is the holding company idea
that they're getting into pharmaceuticals as well. The other thing
that happens that I think is noteworthy for us is
that in the nineteen critics begin to question the marketing
strategy of Nesli and other companies who sell baby formula
and baby food, and the companies are accused of discouraging

(32:58):
breastfeeding by claiming that they're formula was healthier than breastfeeding,
which couldn't possibly be the case. The other part of
the criticism comes from a lot of these formulas they
have to be mixed with water, and they're being sold
in places where people don't have a consistent access to
clean water, so they're mixing it with the water they

(33:19):
have available.

Speaker 1 (33:19):
So this also is a threat to the you know,
the health of infants and babies.

Speaker 2 (33:26):
And then in nineteen seventy seven, activists in the United
States called for a boycott of all Nestley products, and
I will revisit that in a little bit, but you know,
nineteen seventies, consumer advocates are starting to become more vocal.
And this is you know, when you if you target
one of the industry leaders, then the hope is if
you can get them to change their behavior, then that

(33:47):
will be a change that is adopted throughout the entire industry.
So let's talk about some acquisitions from the nineteen eighties.
Stouffer's Lean Cuisine. You've probably heard of lean cuisine. This
is a food category for it's so called diet foods, right,
So they're recognizing that a lot of their food has

(34:07):
a lot of sugar and this kind of thing, and
people are maybe looking for some alternatives, so they want
to get on board with that. In nineteen eighty one,
the World Health Organization adopted a code on breast milk substitute,
which Nestley adopted, so that eventually ends that particular boycott
from the United from the US Organization of Concerned Consumer Advocates.
Nineteen eighty five, Nestley bought Carnation, which is the US

(34:31):
based powdered milk company, for three billion dollars, so that's
the level of business that they can do and at
As part of that acquisition, Nesley entered the pet food
business because one of Carnation's brands was Friskies, which had
sold dog food since the thirties and cat food since

(34:51):
the fifties, and now that's one of Nesley's products. You know,
there's this might be an interesting time to mention a
fantastic scholar whose last name is Nessel, and it's spelled
the same way as Nesley, but without the accent over
the second e. And her name is Marian Nessel, and
she is a professor at New York University. She's a
meta America right now, and she has a food blog

(35:14):
called food Politics. She's written probably a dozen books on
food politics, and one of those books concerns the pet
food industry and how very closely it is related to
the human food industry, and she sort of breaks that
down a little bit and there's some some of startling

(35:34):
revelations there. This book's a few years old, but I
think it still holds up. But if you want to
find out about somebody who's really trying to hold companies
responsible for various advertising and what they put in their products,
marian nessl Food Politics would be a good thing to
check out.

Speaker 3 (35:53):
It seems like her name really lends itself to that
career choice, right.

Speaker 1 (35:57):
It's amazing.

Speaker 3 (35:58):
Yeah, you know, I have heard that pet food has
to be edible by humans in case there's ever in
an emergency type situation, at least in the United States.
And I don't know how true this is. It's just
what I've heard, that your dog food has to still
be edible for like a human consumption. If that the
worst should happen, you need to eat it to survive.

Speaker 2 (36:21):
That's an amazing thing. That book I think goes into
that a little bit. That could be an episode, you know,
the food the pet industry, I think, because people in
the United States and other countries spend a lot of
money on their pets, and I'd be one of them,
because I had to.

Speaker 3 (36:36):
It would be one of them too.

Speaker 1 (36:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:39):
So in nineteen eighty six, Nestley Expand launches an espresso
in Japan, Italy and Switzerland. Initially it comes in these
little pods and a specialized machine, so you put the
pod in the machine.

Speaker 1 (36:51):
Many people know what I'm talking about.

Speaker 2 (36:52):
Other companies make them that too, and you simply dispose
of the little pod and then you have your coffee
and you can get an espresso just sort of like
you would get in a coffee shop, but you can
make that at home, and so this becomes increasingly popular.
Nineteen eighty seven, Nestli bought Arrowhead Waters, which it subsequently sold.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
A few years ago.

Speaker 2 (37:11):
So this is an illustration that Nesli's getting into the
water game pretty heavily. In eighty eight, Nestli acquired the
UK candy company Roundtree Macintosh, whose brands included KitKat, Rollo
and Smarties. So that's where that all comes from. And
then that same year they buy an Italian pasta and candy,

(37:32):
sauce and candy group called Buttoni Perugina. And this is
again Nesli's reaching all over the world and buying lots
of different food categories. Into the nineties, when it founds
a joint venture with General Mills, who we kind of
knows a cereal company. They form something called Cereal Partners
Worldwide with headquartered and Switzerland and distributes to one hundred

(37:55):
and thirty different countries. This is where the cheerios. I
think tie in OK explains our Cherio's thing.

Speaker 3 (38:02):
So I wasn't wrong, right.

Speaker 2 (38:05):
It's this joint venture, and that's another thing that complicates
all of this. Sometimes it's these two major brands that
are in cahoots and they're selling different things under a
name that's not associated with necessarily either of their brands.
In ninety two, Nestlei purchased Perier Group from France and
they formed the Nesli Waters France Group, which owns Vitel

(38:28):
sam Pellogrino contracts a bunch of different mineral waters. And
then in nineteen ninety four Nestley acquired both Alpo, which
was founded in Allentown, Pennsylvania, which Billy Joel has a
song about, just to get a little popular culture in there.
And then the pet food division of Spillers, which is
a British company that sells pet food among other things.

(38:49):
And so you know, we're working our way into the
twenty first century with this company that's getting larger and larger,
and let's talk about that after a short break.

Speaker 3 (39:00):
All right, let's do that. We're going to hit some
ads again, maybe some nestli ads sprinkled in there for
you to really engage in this episode, really you know,
multi layered all that stuff. And I guess we'll be
right back.

Speaker 1 (39:21):
And we're back.

Speaker 2 (39:21):
It's Jeff and Hunter and the Geography Is Everything podcast.
We're talking about geography is NESLEI, and we're talking about
now the two thousands. We're talking about our century and
what's been going on. And Neslei continues to develop in
various ways. I'm responding to consumer interest in more environmentally
friendly products and production. Nestley launches a sustainable agriculture initiative,

(39:44):
and so this is one of several things that comes
up related to the environment and to good health that
happens in the two thousands. In two thousand and one,
Nestley purchased Ralston Parina, which was founded in eighteen ninety
four and headquartered in Saint Louis, Missouri. This become something
called the Nesley Parina PetCare Division. In two thousand and two,

(40:05):
Nestley acquires the licensing rights once again to hogandas for
the US and Canadian markets, which means if you get
Hogan Daz someplace else, apparently Nesle is not involved in that.
And then at this time Nesley tries to acquire Hershey's.
Can you imagine if they had bought Hershey's.

Speaker 3 (40:22):
Yeah, that's I mean one that's that's a staple US company. Yes,
and also like a really big competitor, at least in
the candy division, although I wouldn't be surprised if Hershey
has a bunch of other things that I just don't
even associate them with.

Speaker 1 (40:36):
I'm sure they got lots going.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
It's not as big a company, certainly as Nesle, but
they're in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and they're known for a lot
of their distinctive sort of candies. But Nesli was unsuccessful
in buying them. However, NESLEI was successful in two thousand
and three of buying the Dryers ice cream Company and
then doing so became the world's largest ice cream company.

(41:00):
Dryers incidentally was founded in twenty eight in Oakland, California.

Speaker 3 (41:04):
I can never remember if it's Dryers or Briars.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
That makes I think there's two different brands, right.

Speaker 3 (41:12):
Yeah, they both make ice cream, but one is terrible.
I don't know which ones.

Speaker 2 (41:19):
Well, one of them is a milk like product, like
it doesn't use cream. It doesn't it's something else. It's
like an ice cream product, it's not even involving ice cream.
I think I know which one, but I'll hold back
just because you know, we don't want to step on
any feet until I know for sure. All right, So

(41:40):
going on, Nesley acquires the weight management company Jenny Craig.

Speaker 1 (41:43):
Have you heard of Jenny Craig.

Speaker 3 (41:46):
Yeah, I mean that was like really popular in like
the nineties or something.

Speaker 2 (41:49):
I think they started or that's when they were really popular.
That acquisition happens in two thousand and six. In two
thousand and seven, Nestley acquires the medical nutrition division of
Novartis Pharmaceutical for two point five billion dollars. It also
bought the Baby food company Gerber for five point five
billion dollars. In the same year, they bought another Swiss

(42:09):
mineral water company. So the mergers or the acquisitions, excuse me,
keep going and going. In twenty ten, Nestley acquires the
frozen pizza business of Craft for three point seven billion dollars.
So that's big business. That Craft's frozen pizza business was
valued at three point seven billion dollars and NESTLEI purchased

(42:31):
that and brought that in And at the same time
they developed something called the Nescafe Plan, so an effort
to develop sustainable supply chains and in coffee, because these
are these are sometimes some very troubling products in terms
of the history of how they are created and the
labor that's used for them. And we've talked about coffee before.
We've got a whole episode on coffee and tea check

(42:53):
it out. And chocolate, we've we've promised to do that
and we will get to that at some point because
I think I like chocolate quite a lot, so, but
there's stuff we should know about it.

Speaker 3 (43:05):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (43:06):
Nestley acquired Infant Foods company Why Is Nutrition, which is
finally formally known as Pfizer nutrition for eleven point nine
billion dollars in twenty twelve. In twenty thirteen, Nestley bought
a US medical foods company called pam Lab and they
sold Jenny Craig at this time, so they're no longer
associated with that. In twenty eighteen, they bought tales dot Com,

(43:26):
which is a British dog nutrition company. And then here's
a big one. Then this I didn't know. In twenty eighteen,
Nestley acquired the rights to market, sell, and distribute Starbucks
products globally outside of Starbucks coffee shops. So these are
still just labeled Starbucks. This was a seven point fifteen
billion dollar deal, and so Nesley's really in charge of

(43:48):
the marketing and distributing of that product outside of the
outside of the Starbucks stores themselves.

Speaker 3 (43:55):
So wait, hold on. So you go into your local
grocery store, you wander over into the coffee section. You
see all those bags and bags of Starbucks coffee. You
pick one up. You're like, ooh, I love this Colombian
roast whatever. I don't know Starbucks coffee. I'm not even
a coffee drinker. Anyways, You pull that down, you buy it.
You're buying you're buying Nestlei coffee.

Speaker 2 (44:13):
There you're buying Starbucks coffee, but you are in some
way also supporting the nestle business because they're the ones
who have marketed it and brought it to the store
and all that kind of thing. So what Starbucks is
probably thinking, that's not really our main gig. Our main
gig is the coffee shops. We want to sell our coffee.

(44:34):
But if we can get a major company in the
world to sell that coffee for us, that's worth something.
And so that's that's the basic arrangement there. And twenty
twenty Nestlei expanded its manufacturing capacity in India and planned
to spend over seven hundred million dollars to do so.
So another part of the world that Nesli is heavily
involved in. And twenty twenty one, Nestlei acquired bottled water

(44:57):
company Essentia, which is headquartered in Athel, Washington, and also
a hydration tablet company called Nune based in Seattle, so
again this sort of health sort of food that's marketed
as being healthy or for the health conscious. They also
bought the US vitamin company Bountiful Company, which is formerly
known as Nature's Bounty in twenty twenty one, and then

(45:20):
they get in twenty twenty two, Nestley acquired a majority Steak,
which means they own a lot of it, but they
don't completely control a plant based protein powder nutrition company
called organ. So you can see as we've tracked through
time the kinds of businesses that they're getting involved in,
from the early dairy and the sort of condensed milk
and the baby formula, getting into chocolate, I'm getting into

(45:43):
instant coffee and instant tea and then really expanding to
all these different kinds of projects, lots of different categories
of foods.

Speaker 3 (45:52):
It's sort of like a merry go round of just
like different companies and like they'll spin one out, they'll
buy one, they buy Jenny Craig, and then like years later,
like hey, we don't want Jenny Craig anymore. She can
go play over here now. And then they'll buy another
thing and they'll be like, oh, Starbucks will take a
little bit of your business. It's like this, it's so complicated. Yeah,
Like I'm trying to imagine this like some sort of

(46:12):
flow chart where you have Nestli and the you know,
the center and all of its companies all spread out,
and just how complicated that would be because so much
of what they own they own out well, so much
of what they own they own out right, but they
also have so many different partnerships, and so many things
that they've owned they've since spun out or sold off
to other companies. It's just wild.

Speaker 2 (46:33):
Yeah, so it I mean, when we think of a
food company, that's not necessarily what we might think of,
But in this case, it's a large company involved in
lots of different businesses, some of them not even food
or human food. They're getting, you know, the pharmaceutical burn
side of things, vitamins and all these kinds of things.
And somewhere there's a CEO and a small group of
people who are making these decisions based on the market

(46:57):
research they have available at the time, which is why
some of these which is probably go on now NESSLI
has come in as companies sometimes do, for some critiques,
some criticism. There's some controversies that have been involved. So
I wanted to mention a few of those because I
think that needs to be said. I did mention. In
the nineteen seventies, critics began to question the marketing strategies

(47:18):
of Nesli and other companies making baby food and baby
formula claiming the health benefits or beyond what they probably
could have claimed. And so in nineteen seventy seven a
US based group called Infant Formula Action Coalition called for
a boycott of all Nestli products until they change that.
And after NESLEI implemented those changes of the World Health

(47:40):
Organization regarding how infant formula was, primarily how it was
marketed in poorer countries, the boycott was dropped in nineteen
eighty four. However, in nineteen eighty eight a British group
called for a boycott against Nestle in relation to their
infant formula practices, and that's a boycott that continued. So
that's a sector of the business that still comes into play.

(48:02):
I remember Jeff traveling in Guatemala in the mid nineties
and going I was in some pretty rural areas where
you have these these little shops and bodegas, and they
would have products from some of these large companies like Nesley,
you know, in these small remote places, and I remember
coming across one that was in a big cylindrical tin

(48:26):
called clim which is a baby clim What is clem spelled?
What is clem spell backwards?

Speaker 3 (48:37):
Is it milk?

Speaker 1 (48:38):
Milk?

Speaker 2 (48:38):
Yeah, So I thought that was in itself a bold
kind of situation there. That's a company that I think
Nestley eventually obtained and acquired. And so in two thousand
and eight, the Hong Kong government found industrial chemical melanine
and Chinese made Nestle milk products. Six infant dyed and

(48:59):
over eight hundred more were hospitalized. So this was a
major production problem that caused the death of small people,
young children. And there have been various claims also in
relation to the prodution of cocoa for chocolate that child labor,
child trafficking and slavery is still widespread, and one of

(49:23):
the areas of the world that produces a lot of
cocoa is West Africa, and so in response to this situation,
Nesley developed the Cocoa Plan in two thousand and nine,
which is an effort to eventually source one hundred percent
of their cocoa from sustainable sources and then also to
curb child labor practices in the chocolate industry. Much of

(49:48):
that effort has been focused on the Ivory Coast because
it turns out that the Ivory Coast produces between thirty
three and forty percent of the entire world supply of cocoa,
and in fact, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Cameroon in Nigeria produce
over seventy percent of the world's coco So these and
the economies are a large part of the economies of

(50:08):
these countries are based on this one industry, which is
also a pretty tenuous situation for them. Other major producers
of cocoa, incidentally include Indonesia, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, and the
Dominican Republic. Now NESLI has also come in for criticism
for they're taking control of aquifers and local water supplies
in order to bottle water for profit. And Jeff, I

(50:30):
don't know if you remember a few years ago that
NESLI had a plan to build a water bottling plant
in Cascade Locks, Oregon, which is close to Hood River,
which is not that far from Portland, and that didn't
happen in the case here. But there are many places
throughout different parts of the world, and a bunch of
them in the United States. Some of them were associated

(50:51):
with Arrowhead Poland Springs, which I don't think are brands
associated with Neslei anymore. But the idea is that they
were coming in and they were claiming fair use. Just
like you know, if you move someplace and you have
some land, you can extract water from an aquifer, from
well or something like that. But except in their case
there was you know, millions of gallons of water that

(51:11):
was being pumped and bottled and sold, and you know,
the question is, well, to whom does this water really belong?
Is this actually fair use? And in twenty seventeen, the
California Water Resources Control Board ruled that Nesley did not
have proper rights to about three quarters of the bottling
operations that they were they had in California, that seventy

(51:34):
five percent of that water they really didn't have a
right to use. And so we see that they've I
don't know if they're stepping away from that. In twenty
twenty one, Nestley sold it to US bottling operations to
one Rock Capital Partners, which doesn't sound like a food company,
but another holding company who rebranded the unit as Blue

(51:54):
Triton Brands. And this is based in Stanford, Connecticut. And
I mentioned that because it's geography and because it involves Connecticut.

Speaker 1 (52:02):
Right, I had to get it in.

Speaker 3 (52:04):
You know, it's interesting like the because I remember when
the Cascade Locks bottoming plant was going to go into Oregon,
or when they were trying to get to go into Oregon,
there was a lot of debate. And this was also
happening at a period of time when California's droughts were
particularly acute. And obviously there's always stages of drought going on,
you know somewhere in the Southwest, that's a fairly normal occurrence,

(52:24):
but right, that was during a time when it's like,
you know, those very dramatic images of like the I
think is the Oroville sort of reservoir were like very
low and people were like, well, why are they still
able to pull out millions of gallons of water? And
I think there's a couple of interesting aspects of that.
And the first one is that you know, they're claiming
like this right to like pull this water out, and
you know they're paying for it, right, but they're paying

(52:47):
for it under these industrial licenses where they get you know,
a million gallons for like you know, pennies. Right, It's
like it's it's such a small fee. I think I
remember seeing one aspect where it's like a full years
worth of water being pulled out of someplace in the
United States cost them like thirty thousand dollars to the
local government, which is like an insane amount, and then

(53:08):
they turn around they sell that, right that million gallons
turns into you know, a million bottles of water that
they sell for ninety nine cents each or something like that,
and it's like, Okay, they're making yeah, yeah, or more. Yeah,
they're making like a really big profit off of this.
But I think the other really interesting aspect isn't It
is not just necessarily the profit aspect, but it's the

(53:29):
the idea that you're taking millions of gallons of water
from a single place and it could be a place
that has a drought or not, doesn't really matter. But
then it's being shipped all around the globe. So you're
transporting water around the globe, these millions of gallons of
water to other areas that it was never really intended
to go to unless there was like unless it was

(53:50):
going to be through like the evaporative process. And that's
it's just an interesting sort of geography to think about
of like water moving in unnatural ways.

Speaker 1 (53:59):
That's that's the great point.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
And as you know, water is pretty heavy, so transporting water,
you know, costs, and that's that's a great point about
how water is ending up in places that was never
intended to be. Now, I mean, you know, another controversy
with bottled water is the use of plastics, you know,
small plastic bottles that are then disposed of and end

(54:22):
up a lot of times in the ocean and break
down in microplastics. I suppose one of the uses of
bottled water, which is valued pretty highly, is that in
the case of an emergency, a natural disaster or something
like that, it's a way to transport water to people
who need it. But there are all kinds of problems
with bottled water. And then, as you mentioned, the drought,

(54:42):
like extracting water from parts of the world that are
experiencing drought is suspect, it's not true.

Speaker 3 (54:50):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (54:51):
Well let's round it out. Now, let's talk about a
few things that have happened this year. The year is
twenty twenty four, and Nesle is involved in some stuff.
A few months ago, I think it was in May,
a Swiss investigative organization Public Eye published a report that
Nesley has been adding additional sugars to its baby food
products such as Saralac that are sold in low and
middle income countries. And so you know, once you start

(55:15):
eating sugar, you develop a taste for sugar, and you
want the sugar and you buy more of the product,
and so this is problematic for obvious reasons. In May
two thousand and four, Nestley announced a new frozen food
brand called Vital Pursuit aimed at waste loss drug users.
So specifically, users of medications wigov and ozempic have begun

(55:39):
to change their food buying habits, and this food is
being marketed specifically to people who are on these pharmaceutical drugs.

Speaker 3 (55:48):
That is really weird. I don't know how because I mean,
I've heard of ozempic. I'm not sure if I know
of we we go vy or something whatever you said,
but I've heard of ozempic and sort of the like.
It's not it's not a drug that wasn't never intended
for weight loss, but it seems to have that effect
on people.

Speaker 1 (56:06):
It's like this, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (56:09):
And I don't know. I'm I'm not a doctor. I
don't know the health benefits or cost to that, so
I'm not really going to comment on that, but I've
heard about it, and it's interesting that it's I guess
ozembic has gotten so big or so popular that now Nestle,
this mammoth you know company that does you know, food
stuff all over the world, is having to adapt its

(56:30):
own processes and brands to be appealing to these people.

Speaker 1 (56:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:38):
Just I mean, just say, there was an Atkins diet,
and there's food that was made for that. There's we
talked about line cuisine and you know so called diet
foods that are you know, the companies are capitalizing on
people's desire to have an easy way to get food
that they feel will be obstensibly healthy and will be

(56:59):
conducive to not gaining weight or to losing weight. Nesley
is also looking to increase its sales to older age cohorts,
and this makes sense because the world's graying, right like,
the percentage of people who are over fifty, over sixty,
over seventy is higher than it's ever been before, and
so as the population is aging, NESTLEI and other companies

(57:22):
are trying to pay closer attention to this demographic. A
few days ago, an independent study found that Nesli mineral
water was purified over the past fifteen years using prohibited methods.
So the Europe and this is in Europe, I think specifically,
the European Commission is expected to release support a report

(57:42):
in the next couple of weeks that talks about it.
Nesley has countered that that the water is safe, so
this sort of remains to be seen. So listener, keep
your eyes open for this, and then we'll add I
mentioned the older age cohorts. Of course, the younger age
cohorts are still who most companies are marketing towards. And
in twenty twenty four, Nesley announced it would open espresso boutiques,

(58:05):
which promise an immersive coffee experience. This includes a taste
and discovery area where different coffees can be sampled, a
coffee theater for coffee related programming, a recycling center, and
a coffee bar lounge area. Boutiques are largely targeting gen
Z customers, and the first one opened on July fifth,

(58:27):
just a few weeks ago in Austin, Texas. So we'll
see that sounds.

Speaker 3 (58:32):
So incredibly lame. I mean, I'm not a gen Z person,
I'm a millennial, but I'm like, are you just trying
to reinvent like a coffee place, like because that's just
a coffee place that people go to a coffee place for.

Speaker 2 (58:45):
It sounds like a fancy coffee shop with other aspects.

Speaker 1 (58:48):
But I know.

Speaker 2 (58:51):
This sounds like there's some technological aspects to this, and
you know, the younger the generation, the more technologically savvy
and motivated consumers might be. And so I guess that's
what they're going for with this.

Speaker 3 (59:04):
It's smacks of this meme that I think it's. It's
I can't remember who the actor is, but it's an
actor who's older, but he's playing a role inside something
and he's like dressed up as like, you know, a skateboarder,
like you know, kid, and he's like, how's he going?

Speaker 1 (59:17):
Right?

Speaker 3 (59:17):
Was this Steve Aemi? Yeah, Yeah, that's that's that's who
it was. Yeah, how's it going? Fellow kids or something
like That's like what the meat? It's like, that's what
this The smacks of that. It's like Nestley, this is
I don't think anybody's gonna like necessarily see you as
like the cool it brand. You know, You're not that
es cafe. As far as I know, I have a
lot of friends who drink a lot of coffee. I'm

(59:38):
not a coffee drinker myself, but you know, we're here
in Portland. It's a big coffee town, and I don't
think they have a good reputation as like high quality coffee.

Speaker 2 (59:48):
Like Taster's Choice is one of their brands, just to
I mean, I don't want to malign it too much,
but that's not a lot of It's not my go
to for coffee.

Speaker 1 (59:56):
Others may feel differently. It was interesting.

Speaker 2 (59:59):
I I mentioned that I spent some time in Guatemala
in the mid nineties, and Guatemala is a huge coffee
producing country.

Speaker 1 (01:00:06):
I'm sure you're aware.

Speaker 2 (01:00:07):
Of this, but all I saw people drinking and sometimes
again I was in some rural areas with indigenous people
and everybody was drinking es cafe. So it was amazing
to me that in this country they were producing this
high quality coffee that a lot of citizens of the
country are drinking, this instant coffee made by this Swiss company. Anyways,

(01:00:31):
there's a lot more to say about the food industry
and about Nesli, but we'll have to save that for
another time because this is what we have time for today.

Speaker 3 (01:00:40):
What a fun episode. We haven't done a company in
Attle while, so it's good to revisit sort of this format.
And Nestlie's a fascinating company to explore it because we
also get to talk about the food industry, so you know,
it sort of ties into a lot of different things.
And of course at some point we will do a
chocolate episode because well we've said it so many times.

Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
Yeah, you and I have talked about it a lot,
and and one of the things holding us back is
that it's it's kind of got a grizzly history. But
I think we need to we need to get into that.

Speaker 3 (01:01:07):
Yeah, it does. Yes, well, I guess with that. Hunter,
tell people where they can find you.

Speaker 1 (01:01:13):
I'm Hunter Showby.

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):
I'm a professor of geography at Portland State University with
David Bannis. I'm co author of two books, Cultural Outlas Is.
One is Portland as a Cultural Outless and the other
one is Upper Left Cities, a Cultural Outlass of San Francisco, Portland,
and Seattle. And I'm co host of this podcast Geography
Is Everything.

Speaker 3 (01:01:30):
Yeah, thanks Hunter, this was a really fun episode. I'm
also co host of this podcast Geography is Everything, which
you can find over on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or any
of the other apps out there. If you want to,
please leave a review, a happy, good time and review
it's it's really nice to see those. If you're watching
this on YouTube, please like and subscribe. That's also really
fun for us to see. Come back next week because

(01:01:52):
we're going to have a really fun episode, in a
really interesting episode all about artificial intelligence AI in particular,
we're doing generative AIE, the thing that's blown up around
the world over the last two years, and.

Speaker 2 (01:02:08):
That's going to be that's I think a lot of
people have a lot of interest in this, a lot
of people are using it. Some people are cautious about it,
but there's certainly a lot to talk about to look
forward to that.

Speaker 3 (01:02:19):
There's a lot to talk about. It's gonna be a
different kind of episode. We're just going to record it
right now, right after this episode, so we're going to
launch right into that. But you all are gonna have
to wait, I guess a little while longer to actually
listen to it. But it should be really fun. So
come back next week and listen to that, and I
guess until then, well, we'll see you next time.

Speaker 1 (01:02:36):
Thanks for listening.