Friday, January 02, 2009

Eat my food, yuppie

Mr. Tangerine recently observed that if you're starting a food business and you want crunchy affluent folks—the sort who shop at Whole Foods—to flock to your product, you want to have a brand name that's a first name. To wit:

Stacy's All Natural Pita Chips. I love the cinnamon sugar ones.

Amy's vegetarian frozen foods.

Annie's all-natural Mac n'Cheese.

The entire Trader Joe's store.

Robert's American Gourmet, the Pirate's Booty people.

Ben & Jerry's ice cream. Two first names are better than one!

Burt's Bees sells cosmetic/skin care stuff and not food, but still—Burt.

Barbara's Bakery breakfast cereal.

Diana's Banana Babies dipped in chocolate, all natural.

There's even an Yves...If You Please! brand of vegan hot dogs. Oscar Mayer has a second name, but the brand with veggie healthnut cred? First name only, of course.

I must be forgetting a bunch of first-named brands that epitomize the worst in American processed foods, but all the biggies that come to mind now have last names—Kraft, Kelloggs, Totino, Betty Crocker.

Can you think of any crappy brands of junky food with a first-name-only brand?

6 comments:

jp 吉平 said...

i love the title of this post.

Don't forget the initials + last name chain restaurants!

Narya said...

Aunt Jemima! and Cap'n Crunch.

Glad you're back! We must Do Lunch soon (and plan the coconut cake).

Laura said...

Little Debbie!

Mignon said...

Carl's Jr.
Famous Daves
Mike and Ike
Maker's Mark (I prefer to think of this one as the son of Maker...)
Stew?

Anonymous said...

For some reason your mention of Oscar Meyer has erased everything from my brain but the memory of David Sedaris's monolog about singing commercials in the voice of Billie Holiday: "My baloney has a first name, it's O-S-C-A-R..."

Jessie

My word verification is sessibl, which sounds to me like "sensible" with a cold...

Anonymous said...

Oops --- I guess technically it has to be "bologna" or else the song won't rhyme...

Jessie