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The Gastronaut brings real Genovese to the home pantry: when the retailer innovates before the industry


There is a sauce that everyone in Naples knows, that perfumes homes for hours on end, that requires almost monastic patience and dedication. A sauce that, paradoxically, has only the name of Genoa and, what is simple, only the ingredients. It is the Genovese, one of the pillars of Neapolitan cuisine, celebrated on TV and social media, but still largely unknown outside the borders of Campania. Until now, those who wanted to taste a real Genovese had to either go to Naples or resign themselves to spending an entire day at the cooker amidst onion tears and endless waiting. Then came the intuition of Gasbarrino and Nicotra, the creative duo who, for the Decò chain , develop both the private label line and the top of the range, Il Gastronauta...read the whole story here

LocalismPrivate Label
 

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Amazon: share price plummets after company announces $200 billion investment in AI (60% by 2025)


The share price fell 8%, bucking the market trend , sources : Bloomberg and Reuters below. But also Financial Times : Big Tech's 'staggering' $660bn spending reignites fears about artificial intelligence bubble. Stocks tumble despite solid earnings reports from most SiliconValley heavyweights On Friday, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index recovered 2.2%, narrowing its weekly loss to 1.8%. Amazon still holds 30% of the cloud market, its 'golden goose' (Le Monde) but is closing all its experimental tech food shops (Amazon Fresh, Amazon Go etc.). Only the Whole Foods chain, acquired in 2017, will remain).

AIAmazonWhole Foods
 

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Clothing down, food flat. Confimprese and Circana certify a mini-ice in consumption by 2025


Last year, consumption fell, in value terms, by -1.4%. This was confirmed by the customary Confimprese-Jakala observatory, relating to the months of January-December 2025, according to which the downturn was accentuated in the latter part of the year, with the period September-December showing a fall of -2.9%. This figure is heavy, especially considering that it is calculated 'in value'. So it means that not even the inflation effect (which according to preliminary ISTAT data will be at 1.5%) helped to straighten out the final balance or keep it at least on par. LCC: Time-wise, market growth remained strong until the end of August From September onwards, a more cautious and resigned attitude among consumers emerged. October represented a moment of temporary recovery, but was followed by a new weakening in November and a negative close in December, with a value figure of just 0.4% and a contraction in volumes. Consumer packaged goods ended the year in negative territory (-0.9% in December in volumes).

InflationNon-food
 

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USA: a judge against Trump’s climate denialism


A federal judge on Friday ruled that the Department of Energy violated the law when Secretary Chris Wright selected five researchers who reject the scientific consensus on climate change to work in secret on a large government report on global warming. The Department of Energy released the report, which downplayed the dangers of warming, in late July without having held any public meetings or made the records available to the public. Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, later cited the report to justify a plan to repeal the endangerment finding, a landmark scientific determination that serves as the legal basis for regulating climate pollution. But the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972 does not allow agencies to recruit or rely on secret groups for decision-making purposes. Judge William Young of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts affirmed that the Department of Energy did not deny that it did not hold open meetings or assemble a balance of viewpoints, as the law requires, when it created the panel, known as the Climate Working Group... Excerpt from the New York Times Below: an article from The Wall Street Journal correlating food prices and climate extremes

Climate change
 

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EU import of cheap parcels rises by 26%


The number of low-cost e-commerce parcels received from outside the EU rose sharply again last year, increasing by 26 per cent. In total, 5.8 billion parcels with a value of up to EUR 150 were imported. This equates to approximately one parcel per EU citizen per month. On this subject read also : The failure of Italian tariffs on small parcels that also penalises cargo flights (and other 'Financial Times' snippets) Many companies have diverted deliveries to other EU countries to circumvent the tax. The result: the number of low-value parcels arriving directly in Italy from non-EU countries between 1 and 20 January dropped by 36%. We have already reported on this here.

E-Commerce