I have written before about businesses predicting how lazy we want to be, or how increasingly we perceive ourselves too busy to perform pretty basic tasks. Well, once again the envelope has been pushed.
“No one ever went broke underestimating the American public” – that’s a pretty famous H.L. Mencken quote.
And comedian Jim Gaffigan is well known for his observations about bacon, including the point that bacon is so good, that people wrap certain foods in bacon to make them taste better. Good point.
This past weekend, my friend Tracy and I were at the grocery story picking up a couple of items when we saw a large display in the middle of the aisle and it was a product from Oscar Mayer (Gaffigan also has some thoughts on a product for which they are known – bologna).
There it was. Far from refrigeration. In a box. Fully Cooked Bacon, ready to eat. . . .Or leave on a shelf unrefrigerated for the next year.
Scary.
Then we saw that this craziness wasn’t limited to Oscar Mayer. We also saw similar products from Hormel and the Safeway (where we were shopping) generic brand. The actual product weighed 2.1 ounces and cost about $5, which means they are selling it for about forty dollars per pound, which is about twice the price of Copper River Salmon (which is an item that evokes a more P.T. Barnum quote – “there’s a sucker born every minute”).
Initially we were horrified.
But then, with three separate brands pushing the same item for about the same price, we realized that they can’t all be awful or there woudln’t be a market for this extreme expression of laziness. And we had some fresh maple bacon waiting for us in the refrigerator (because that’s where meat items belong, right?). So we decided to do a taste test of Hormel, Oscar Mayer, and fresh. Tracy heated up the two “fully cooked” products and then cooked some of the fresh bacon, all using a microwave. The results were very surprising. Yes, the maple bacon beat the competition more decisively than Usain Bolt would beat me in a 100 yard dash. We agreed that the Hormel product was awful, too thin, bad texture, and almost no flavor. What was shocking was that the Oscar Mayer product was good. Good texture, good flavor, good crispiness. I don’t plan to buy fully cooked unrefrigerated bacon again (partially on principle, partially because bason is too salty to be a regular part of my diet, and partially because the amount of packaging from 2 ounces of bacon that will end up in a landfill is shocking).
So in the spirit of rethinking, I do tip my hat to these companies for staying in touch with what their customers want, and bravo to Oscar Mayer for making it yummy.
-Ric
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