I’ve been reporting for a long time. Decades. But this is a first. “The phones don’t work,” (and apparently, neither do their emails). What?!
A large, billion-dollar wholesale food supplier to the restaurant industry–you’d know the names of the restaurants they serve–told us on Friday that a certain individual at their company has been having problems with the company telephone system–the landline service. “That’s why they’ve been having trouble calling you back,” was what the receptionist said.
“For four weeks?” I asked. “That seems like an awfully long time to be without phone service. And you’re a billion-dollar company, and your phones don’t work? For almost a month?” I asked.
“Um, yes, I guess that sounds right. About four weeks,” was the reply.
“Can I have their cell number?” That was a hard ‘no’.
I gave my information once again to the receptionist, as I have multiple times over the past month, and added this caveat at the end: “Tell them if I don’t hear from them, I’m running our story, and I will use the “repeated requests for information from CompanyX were not returned,” default statement reporters are known to use, including a ‘I will print it and it won’t look good for your company’ line, especially the story we’re telling.
This is one of the biggest companies in restaurant food service in the entire country. I won’t divulge a source prematurely (it’s not Taco Bell, despite the ‘Yo Quiero’ bit…but let’s just say they’re aligned Taco Bell), and it was at a similar restaurant where we have been told the reason for their continued raising of their food costs was “because of gas prices.”
At the same time, we have to ask, is this what business in this country is boiling down to? It’s always hard to verify information, even in this Hyper-Uber technology blanket, but this is insulting: “Our phones don’t work.” Nice try.
We’re fair at SF. We are. In this case, I’m trying to deal with this company properly, by giving them attribution and empowering them to use their own words, in their own fashion, using their own data and statistics (hopefully, honestly)…and yet you expect me to believe a company that shipped $25 million in orders that very day is going to run the risk of one, single order getting missed/delayed/mis-shipped on account of their phone systems being on the fritz? Any technician from B———- Telephone would be over there in a hot-damn-tick (yeah, that is a clue).
Four weeks? Here’s my response: I’m calling you one last time on Monday.
In the meantime, why don’t the rest of you gobble up this fresh slice from the BLS’ Producer Price Index (PPI), which monitors the data from wholesale and institutional food suppliers. We compared it to diesel prices from the EIA, just like in the original Graph with a capital ‘G’ from Sal Notaro’s inaugural WalletGate article here on SF.
Someone is making a boatload of money. When diesel dips–when gas prices go down–why haven’t food costs? And before anyone says anything else, every other imaginable excuse has been answered. Q: Minimum wage increases? A: Those only account for a possible 1/2 of 1 percent of anything, a negligible amount. Q: What about tariffs? A: The 2nd Trump Administration began the tariff discussion after the inauguration–there was 2-3 years of constant food increases before that.
And on and on and on. There’s no answer, yet. Only speculation. That’s why we’re giving the distributors of your food an opportunity to tell us where BILLIONS of dollars in food revenues have been going and explain why food costs have risen over two times the price diesel costs have risen in the same timeframe. We want these supply chain companies to talk to us.
The problem is the weak link in the chain is this: The phones don’t work.
More to come. – MK