The Logisitcs of Chocolate, Snacks, and Popcorn Buckets

Ever wonder why your favorite snacks are getting harder to find? In this episode, we explore the movie theater popcorn buckets hype and the global chocolate crisis that's shaking up your candy aisle. From Dune-inspired containers that went viral to skyrocketing cocoa prices, we discuss the surprising logistics behind your snacks and how they're adapting to a changing market.

LINKS:

• ERP Failure Case Study – Hershey’s

WATCH THE FULL EPISODE HERE

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Chapters

• 0:05 Evolution of Snacks Due to Ozempic
• 3:23 Challenges in Producing Themed Popcorn Buckets
• 11:22 Impact of Themed Merchandise on Movie Theaters
• 11:38 Introduction to the Chocolate Crisis
• 13:01 Global Demand and Market Dynamics of Chocolate
• 24:23 Digital Dispatch: Website Building for the Freight Industry

Transcript

Blythe Brumleve: 0:05

Ozempic is a diabetic drug that has developed an iron fist on our society by helping folks lose weight. It's being billed as a miracle drug, and because of this, it has impacted several other industries, such as the snack industry, think of all the fun chip flavors that you've been seeing in all the stores and gas stations all over the country, even online. Ozempic has had a dramatic impact on those types of snacks and the growth of those types of snacks. Welcome into another episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers and freight, we are proudly presented by SPI logistics, and I am your host. Blythe Brumleve Now snacks, especially American snacks, have had to evolve with new flavors and specialties to keep people well snacking. So in this episode, Grace Sharkey is back with me to talk about how some of your favorite snacks, such as chips and popcorn, even those fancy popcorn buckets are evolving to get you spending and snacking, even in the face of miracle weight loss drugs. Let's get into it another aspect of this that the evolution of snacks is sort of the same product, but different packaging, and that's popcorn buckets. I don't know if you've been to the movies recently and seen the massive adoption, or just, I guess, introduction of popcorn buckets to the movie going experience. Have you heard of this?

Grace Sharkey: 1:34

Are you talking about like, the, like, specialty ones for special, yeah, like, like, the Beyonce one that I have, yes, well, you are

Blythe Brumleve: 1:45

a product of movie theater marketing. You all know what happened to movie theaters in 2020 where they, you know, obviously had all of their revenue gutted. You know, a lot of theaters did not survive. So when people started coming back to the theaters, they had to really start thinking about what are some additional ways that we can make revenue. Because not the movie going, experience has just evolved so rapidly. The dune one is a perfect example that one got sold out. Yeah, I'm sure it did. So it's so when people come to the movies, they're typically coming for a franchise that they're really passionate about, yeah, and so when they're there, they're thinking of these ways that they can upsell them. So it kind of started with the different themed drinks. Like some theaters sell alcohol now, I think a lot of them actually do, but they'll have, like, a themed drink based on the, you know, the big movie that is in theaters right now. I went to the theaters. I think this trend really started within the last two years, because I can vividly remember going to the theater and seeing, like one bucket that you could buy. And it was like, you know, the Indiana Jones release, or like a spider man, or something like that. Like one really big movie, one of the the Mario movie, for example, they were selling the, you know, the blocks that you did, the power up locks. That was a brilliant popcorn bucket. Actually have flowers sitting in it on my porch right now. And so that was just, you know, kind of one or two. We didn't go to, we go to the movies pretty regularly. And the last movie we saw was in December. We didn't go see another movie until whenever dune came out. Oh, okay, so just recently. So when dune came out, so a few months had passed in that time frame, we now have popcorn buckets for damn near every single movie, because AMC had to build a separate section of the concession area where they just have these shelves that hold about 12 popcorn buckets. Now it's absolutely, I mean, it's just insane how much that it's blowing up.

Grace Sharkey: 3:43

So why the Taylor Swift ones in mine too?

Blythe Brumleve: 3:45

Oh, you can't, oh, that. Well, that's interesting because they it's, there's actually a lot of production hiccups that happen with the popcorn buckets, because you have to secure the licensing deals a lot of times the you you secure the licensing deal, but you don't necessarily secure the product design itself. So there's, like, different approval levels that you have to go through. And with the movies kind of being, you know, a little bit of a toss up, like Dune, Barbie, like these types of movies, Mario, you know, they're going to be smashing successes. So it makes sense for a theater to order a shit ton of these popcorn buckets. But for some of these other movies, they have no idea what the product the production can take months at a time. But then you combine that with the fact that a movie only stays in the theater for about two months, so if you have like an unexpected hit where somebody wants the damn popcorn bucket and they can't get access to it, it makes no sense to order more, because the movie is only going to stay in the theaters for a couple of months anyways, and that production lead time you need about, you know, at least a couple months for the design to be improved, and then six months, from a production standpoint, from a manufacturing standpoint, deliver. Be all that stuff. So there's a lot of really just, I mean, these popcorn buckets 25 to $50 the selling price that they range in. We went to see Indiana Jones, the Indiana Indiana five, and the we went on release night, and that popcorn bucket was already sold out. And so certain movies that you're, you're, they're kind of just guessing on if this is actually going to be something that, you know, oh, well, hold on. Let me share that screen again, if this is going to be something that's actually going to be worthwhile for the theater to invest in. And so there was this whole breakdown a few months ago, so I figured that this was a really good sort of tie in with this snack movement. And if you're looking on the screen, this dune popcorn bucket, that's the one that, like everybody just clamored for. And this is a type of popcorn bucket that ends up, you know, on eBay immediately after. There's r2 d2 there's Barbie there's Ghostbusters, and they're all really cool ways to think about, like putting popcorn in these different devices. I personally don't put the popcorn in it. I just buy it and keep them separate so you don't have all that, like popcorn residue on it. But this is leading to a massive we also, there's a poor hammer here. It's really cool. We have one of those too. That was actually a really,

Grace Sharkey: 6:17

I'm surprised you don't get the Disney ones.

Blythe Brumleve: 6:21

There haven't actually been many Disney ones that I've seen, not, not the park one, you

Grace Sharkey: 6:27

know what I'm talking about, the park one. Oh,

Blythe Brumleve: 6:29

I have, yeah, the Disney popcorn buckets, yes, um, those. I have been guilty of getting those in the past, and then they sit in a corner and I don't do anything with them. So I told myself, I'm not buying popcorn buckets from Disney anymore. I've now shifted that purchasing habit to

Grace Sharkey: 6:46

that stole the idea, though, from that right? It's like they're cool.

Blythe Brumleve: 6:51

And a couple, a couple notes from from the Hollywood Reporter article, because it said, minutes after the first trailer of his superhero pick, Deadpool and Wolverine dropped during the Super Bowl. Ryan Reynolds tweeted about popcorn, of all things, and he said, wait until you see the Deadpool popcorn bucket. No doubt he was responding to the social media frenzy over a new dune in theater, sandworm popcorn container that's been rifled and looks looks like sex toy. It even got a Saturday Night Live skit, but it's it adds up to dollars. So because let's talk about last summer, AMC chief Adam Aaron predicted that 25,000 Special Edition Barbie Corvettes would sell out by the end of opening weekend at $35 a pop, he was right. That means nearly 1 million in revenue, or about$875,000 so that is just, it's just outstanding that, or, I don't know, outstanding or outrageous, that you know these different things, yeah, both that are now being involved with Movie theater experience. I

Grace Sharkey: 7:59

think that'll be, like, our generational thing is, like, just merch. Like, we just, like, buy things that no one really needs, but just, like, sits, sit somewhere. It looks cool, right? It's like, it's the Happy Meals. You know, we just, we gotta have some little toy with it. And I think it's cool though. Like, imagine, I don't see any fun the Civil War. They didn't have a popcorn bucket for that one, but I need to go see some more fun movies. I wanted the Barbie one, and they sold out of that. I had a finagle to get the Beyonce ones, aka buy it out of state. So it's the Taylor Swift one, and I think the Beyonce one, though I noticed I don't have an AMC near me, but they're finally shown. What

Blythe Brumleve: 8:41

was it? What was the Beyonce one?

Grace Sharkey: 8:42

So when the movie came out for the concert, it was like, it's like a silver statue. It's like a silver black bucket, just like, kind of cool 3d with the horse on it. The Taylor one is kind of the same thing, like, you seem like the it looks like, kind of some of the merch that she had as well. It's like, but the cup is, like, strong just, I mean, we talk about that all the time, just so I need another freaking cup in my house. No, I saw I really wanted the Barbie one, and especially because I have to say $35 I mean, I don't, I go to the movies pretty much, like every other weekend, to be honest with you. And it's my money that you spend on popcorn and stuff. Anyways, it's like, might as well throw that in there. So especially

Blythe Brumleve: 9:24

if it's one of these movies that they go quick and you could just flip them over on Ebay. I mean, I you know that we've definitely thought about doing that. We haven't done it yet because there's no plants in them. It sounds like, Well, yeah, well, definitely within the Mario one. So we have a plant in that one. And I specifically picked a plant that kind of looked like the fireball, the plant the fireball in Mario game. So you know what I'm talking about. So it's like a cactus that's green, and then it has the red top, and so that it looks cool in that bucket.

Grace Sharkey: 9:56

That is cool.

Blythe Brumleve: 9:57

I don't know what I would do with the rest of them. I know we still have the. One, but it kind of just sits off to the side as like decoration. That one was really well made. And I'm trying to think of like, well, the Indiana Jones one just comes to mind because it was the hat. And I really wanted to get that one, but it, like I said, it was sold out. Another aspect of it, and there these different movies also have different merch deals depending on the theater that they work with. So AMC might have one type. Cinemark might have another type. I've noticed the last time I was at a Cinemark, like they have the cups to to your point, in addition to the popcorn buckets. So it's we're probably going to be seeing a lot more of, you know, drinks and cups and popcorn buckets for a variety of movies, but there is some production issues that happen with it. Like I said, the reordering of these buckets is damn near impossible because of the lead time that you need, and they're having to make these decisions 18 months ahead of a film's release. And so that's a lot of time to be thinking about all of these different sort of marketing efforts that you can make. But if it's getting people to the theaters, and it's getting them to spend, you know, more money for their capitalizing on on fandom, and I think that's pretty smart,

Grace Sharkey: 11:09

it is. It's funny when I kind of think about the fact that you're working on a movie, but also considering the popcorn bucket that goes with it as like, production goes by, that's awesome. I love that.

Blythe Brumleve: 11:22

Are you in freight sales with a book of business looking for a new home, or perhaps you're a freight agent in need of a better partnership? These are the kinds of conversations we're exploring in our podcast interview series called The freight agent trenches, sponsored by SPI logistics. Now I can tell you all day that SPI is one of the most successful logistics firms in North America, who helps their agents with back office operations such as admin, finance, it and sales. But I would much rather you hear it directly from SPI freight agents themselves. And what better way to do that than by listening to the experienced freight agents tell their stories behind the how and the why they joined SPI hit the freight agent link in our show notes to listen to these conversations, or if you're ready to make the jump, visit SPI threepl.com, so that was on popcorn buckets and chips. But what about another favorite snack and chocolate? Where and how is it sourced? Are we ever really in a chocolate shortage like what happened earlier this year? Grace and I are going to cover it all the next segment on the logistics of snacks and chocolate,

Grace Sharkey: 12:31

my source to porch was Hershey's failure to to get the Hershey's to your porch.

Blythe Brumleve: 12:38

Well, I'm, I'm glad that you brought that up, because my story is on the chocolate crisis. I don't know if you have been watching this, but it is really fascinating, and I did a deep dive on it last night and this morning. So I'm going to have you ever seen how chocolate is made, like, where it comes from?

Grace Sharkey: 12:57

Yes, yes. Okay, it's if you go back like two or three episodes of the stock out we touch on this a little bit because, yeah, it's the prices are insane right now. Yes,

Blythe Brumleve: 13:09

the the most out of it's chocolate prices. Or cacao prices are or cacao trees. So I guess the cocoa that comes from them is trading higher right now than copper, and it's very there's a lot of there's a lot of backstory with it. So if you've never seen where chocolate comes from, I'm going to be playing a video. Sorry for the folks who are, you know, listening to the podcast version. I'm going to play this video as I talk over it, of just giving some context into of course, I can't talk about, you know, a source of poor story without talking about some kind of, like, historical backstory to it, so and then talk over it, hopefully there's no volume. Okay, good. Okay, so it's showing, like, where chocolate comes from, but basically, a little bit of the backstory is that it's a crop native to Central and South America. Like many things, it was very difficult to harvest, so it became a drink for the rich. It also became a form of currency, and that's going to be important here in a second. So the pods are essentially grown on the offshoots of branches of a cacao tree. They look like giant gourds, in case you've never seen them, like it looks very like Alien, like the the cacao trees. So they look like a gourd. It's kind of like a pumpkin. So they have like the very like hard shell outside, and then you break it open, and inside is like the pulp and like the seeds. So inside it's like the white pulp that surrounds the bean itself, which is removed, fermented and dried in the sun for a few days, where, like, the outer crust kind of flakes off and you're left with the actual bean brokering success demands a battle ready strategy. Thai TMS equips freight brokers with the ultimate battle station for conquering a tough market. With Thai brokers gain access to a comprehensive platform where rate intelligence and quote history converge. On a single screen. It's not just a page, it's a strategic command center designed to help brokers win. Thai equips your team with all of the data they need to negotiate with confidence and allows them to communicate directly with carriers and customers from a simple control base, revolutionize the way your brokers perform by giving them a competitive advantage with Ty TMS. For more info, go to Tai software.com, backslash battle stations. And we also have a link for you in the show notes to sign up for a demo. This bean, from a historical perspective, was super easy to transport, especially compared to other commodities, so it was an ideal crop during colonization, when Spain would first start taking the beans back home and sharing it with other wealthy people within Spain. But because it was also seen as currency, it was used by a lot of groups throughout Central and South America and so the span Spain, you know that all of their fleets, they would just go up and down the coast, trying to meet new tribes, trying to meet new groups, new people throughout Mesoamerica. And when they were doing that, they were using the beans as sort of a way to kind of, you know, break bread with them, and, you know, buy things from them, because they were using it as a form of currency. This was also during the time that they're scouting for natural resources, and they're trying to find out, you know, more gold and silver, and, you know, just trying to use the cocoa bean as a way to get them to do that, or to get them to trade with them, or to, you know, just, I guess, steal it from them. This was also during the slave trade era, where Spain was obviously, you know, other countries, obviously the English, France, the US, of course, but they were, you know, shipping these beans, or the plants itself, to African countries, specifically Western Africa, African countries like Ghana, the Ivory Coast, and they were forcing them to grow this crop, because with the the cacao trees, it's very, very scent they have. It's very, very sensitive plant. It takes four to five years in order for that plant to start fruiting. Where you get these gourds, like what you're seeing here, and that's it takes that long. They're also really susceptible to pests, and so it makes it really challenging to grow, but and it's also like, you have to be like, within 20 degrees of like the equator. That's the optimal places where it's going to grow really well. So fast forward to present day. This crop has a global demand with total sales around 116 billion. That's doubled since 2009 and this $116 billion number is expected to still grow about 3.4% year over year, mostly fueled by the growth of dark chocolate, especially among you know, healthy folks that want to eat chocolate, but they want to do it in a healthier way. Most of the big companies like Cadbury, Hershey, Nestle, they use what's called a bean to bar model, while others use a buy the bar and mix it into their own proprietary blends. So they're just buying like a Hershey bar, they're buying like a Nestle bar, and then they just blend that into their own proprietary blends and then sell that West Africa, the Ivory Coast, Ghana in particular, is responsible for around 73% of the total chocolate sales. But they outsource the processing. And apparently, where a lot of the money is made is in the processing. So of course, you have a situation where, you know, 73% of the market comes out of Western African countries. And so when one thing affects them, it affects a lot of the just global market of having, you know, just having this commodity that you're going to be able to buy. So what happened in last year is that Ghana and the Ivory Coast experienced an El Nino effect, where they had a lot of rain, and that rain caused a lot of the trees to just not be suitable for future fruiting conditions. There's also a pest that is, when you have a lot of rains, it's more susceptible to get that pest. And when you have that pest, the the entire farm is just ruined. You have to uproot the trees and then burn the fields and then start over and again. It takes four to five years for those crops to become fruity again. So what's happening is a lot of like illegal gold miners are now coming into those farmlands and saying, hey, you know, we'll, we'll give you a regular money to let us dig on your property. And then, if you let us dig on your property, then, then you don't have to, you're going to get regular income. You don't have to worry about being a farmer anymore, because farmers are making the least out of everyone. A lot of child labor is also involved in farming cocoa and so keeping those, I guess, extenuating circumstances in mind, like these people. Like they they're they're already not making a lot of money by farming this commodity. And then you have some other, you know, nefarious actors that are coming in and taking advantage of the other natural resources that they have on their land by taking gold. And that's just an easy fix for them, and it's a guaranteed source of revenue. So it's really like a particular situation that they have found themselves in, where these farmers, they're only getting out of that, what 116 billion, they currently only get about 20 to 30% of that total market. And then it's just all of these extenuating circumstances where now we have entered into the chocolate crisis, because of those different weather patterns, because of all the sort of geopolitical issues that are going on. So we have this astronomical increase in pricing for chocolate. And I mean, if you're looking at the screen like it's it hit $10,000 which, you know, I was listening to odd lots podcast, and they said, typically, uh, commodities trade around the $5,000 mark. A record was actually set in 1977 for chocolate prices that hit the$5,000 mark. But now we are double. So now it's finally at the $10,000 mark. And just to keep things kind of in perspective, you know, this is a lot of the farmers aren't incentivized to grow. They also Ghana Ivory Coast. They want to take more control of the processing of it, because that's where they make more money. And so a lot of these bigger conglomerates, like the Hershey's of the world, Nestle's Cadbury, a lot of these big conglomerates are buying up the chocolate reserves, but then also under investing in the farms themselves. So it's like all this perfect storm of bad events that are coming through that are causing cocoa prices to surge more than 250% over the last year, surging to 10,000 per metric ton. That's$10,000 per metric ton, nearly double the record high set 4060, years ago. It's more money right now for chocolate than it is copper. So it's really, that's my that's my source to porch story where you know, this year we're going to be facing with shrinkflation, and then also the higher prices for some of your favorite chocolate goods. Apparently, there's also, like, just this insane market of people who buy, like, super high end chocolate, where it's like the tiniest piece, odd lots episode costs, like, $35 because it has to go through so much different processing and shipping. But the actual growers, the actual farmers of that product, don't really see a lot of the the benefits for that. Like I said, they're making around 20 to 30% of that,$116 billion number, and a lot of that funnels through the government. So the government, you know, some of these countries don't exactly, I mean, not to say that the US does either. But some of these countries don't exactly operate on the up and up. And so they make their own personal side deals with the bigger conglomerates, like the bigger chocolate companies. And so they get their kickbacks, and then the farmers who are actually doing the majority of the work suffer the ramifications of that. And then when the market prices dramatically increase like this, they're not seeing those profits, because it's a controlled market for countries like Ghana and the Ivory Coast, where it works well, when the price is low, because farmers get a certain amount of money, but when the price goes sky high, like it is now, they're not getting any extra money. And you have a situation where you have these big companies that are hoarding the cocoa beans for their own benefit. So, yeah, that is the chocolate crisis that's going on. So if you see cheap chocolate out there, I guess beware, but then also, just know that it's probably not the best. I heard that Cadbury, like, changed their chocolate source from Ghana to somebody else, and just the Cadbury chocolate fans just had an uprising. Like, went to social media, like, complained about it, and got Cadbury to change back to Ghana as their their chocolate supplier.

Grace Sharkey: 24:10

Yeah, it's a big issue. We talked about, like you said a couple weeks ago, in stock out, and it's not going anywhere anytime soon. So like you said, Watch for the shrinkflation, or prices are just going to stay high on that for a period of time. So it's, yeah, I mean, that's what struggle is, when it's a food source, right? That you technically Can't you get year round. But unfortunately, what year round?

Blythe Brumleve: 24:36

I hope you enjoyed this episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight, telling the stories behind how your favorite stuff and people get from point A to B. Subscribe to the show. Sign up for our newsletter and follow our socials over at everything is logistics.com and in addition to the podcast, I also wanted to let you all know about another company I operate, and that's digital dispatch, where we help you build a. Our Website. Now, a lot of the times, we hand this task of building a new website or refreshing a current one off to a co worker's child, a neighbor down the street or stranger around the world, where you probably spend more time explaining the freight industry than it takes to actually build the dang website. Well, that doesn't happen at Digital dispatch. We've been building online since 2009 but we're also early adopters of AI automation and other website tactics that help your company to be a central place, to pull in all of your social media posts, recruit new employees and give potential customers a glimpse into how you operate your business. Our new website builds start as low as$1,500 along with ongoing website management, maintenance and updates starting at $90 a month, plus some bonus freight marketing and sales content similar to what you hear on the podcast, you can watch a quick explainer video over on digitaldispatch.io, just check out the pricing page once you arrive, and you can see How we can build your digital ecosystem on a strong foundation. Until then, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I'll see you all real soon and go yay.