Are Mom and Pop Going Corporate?

According to Yahoo Finance, one of the top 10 trends in goumet food is the Mom and Pop shops going corporate, being purchased by large corporations. The reason being that the gourmet food business has been so lucritive the big corporations can't stand sitting back and watching. One example of this is Campbell Soup purchasing Ecce Panis, and Mom and Pop gourmet bread company.

According to Joseph Doria, Jr., owner of Grace's Marketplace on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, "Corporate food chains feel they can do gourmet food as well as independent stores. The problem is most corporate stores are commissary kitchens and cook food days in advance. Another problem I see is that corporations are more worried about ascetics and food cost, not about taste and quality."

So, this begs the question - once a large corporation takes the food production out of the local establishment and mass produced in huge kitchens, is it really gourmet food any longer? Maybe the ingredients are a little more on the high end, but does it still qualify as gourmet?

I am seeing this trend happen in dog treats as well - large corporations are producing and selling dog treats to mass merchandisers under the guise that they are gourmet. One thing that I have noticed after inspecting the ingredient statements on these treats is that the all primarily use sugar as the main flavor ingredient. While dogs love sugar, this is not always the healthiest route they should go, and a lifetime of sugar treats can lead to liver failure and diabetes - but sugar is cheap, especially corn syrup or it's many variations, or by products of beets (whats left over after they extract the usable sugar).

In order to sell these "gourmet dog treats" at the price point that is most attractive to the mass merchandiser customer, they have got to skimp on some if not all ingredients. You cannot have a "gourmet dog treat" when you use the same ingredients that you used in the rest of your "regular" treats, but you instead make them into pretty colors (artificial coloring is cheap) in cute shapes (do I really think that because it's steak shaped it's made of steak?) that we will pay more for them then the bland sugar treats you are selling for several dollars cheaper?

Plus, how long has it been in a warehouse? Here's a hint - you cannot use real cheese and have it last for a year and have the cheese contribute any more taste than cardboard. How many dog treats do you see out there with real cheese listed as an ingredient? Think about Joseph's statement above - most corporations do not worry about taste or quality. I really don't think a corporation that centralizes production can hold a candle to anything made locally in a kitchen, and I think there are enough dogs out there in NWA that will now refuse to eat (insert your 5 lbs for $3 favorite treat here) treats that have my back here.

There should probably be a formula that states if anything has traveled over X miles from the point of purchase, and spent Y hours in a warehouse, using Z low-grade ingredients it should not legally be qualified for the claim as "gourmet". How about X*Y*Z > 0 ?