"Edwin Pawlowski" wrote in message
...

"Doug Kanter" wrote in message


Evil? What's the alternative? Slowly go out of business??? And, what's
so evil about a company like Breyers shrinking their package a bit, when
there's a world full of rocky road/marshmallow addicts who are happy to
pay twice as much (unit price) for those little Ben & Jerry's containers?

So you are saying that since others are being deceptive it is OK for all
to be deceptive?

B&J isn't being deceptive. Those small containers have always been
overpriced (at least from my point of view, but apparently, not everyone's).
Haagen Dasz is the same. Both have created an image which the public has
bought into.


You are saying since people are willing to pay a lot of money per ounce
for B & J is is OK for Breyers to go to a smaller container? It has been
a half gallon for 50+ years that I know of and all of a sudden we find
that 1.75 quarts is a better size? For who? Certainly not the every day
consumer that may not have even notices for a few months

Were you equally bothered when canned vegetables went from 16 oz to 14.5 oz?

I keep coming back to two things: First, how much did a half gallon of milk
increase in price over the past 5 years? Do you remember? Forget for the
moment that many stores price it as a loss leader much of the time. Or,
consider the corresponding hike in the prices of other dairy basics like
yogurt and cream cheese. There is simply NO WAY this doesn't affect ice
cream manufacturers.

Second: If this discussion continues for one more day, then it's ridiculous.
Wanna flip a coin and decide who gets to write a letter to Breyers, and see
what they say? Somebody's gotta do it. Or, I'll handle Breyers, you handle
Sherwin Williams. :-)



The "owner of the month" of Breyers is whoring the name and reducing
quality also. Most of the new proudcts have all sorts of unneeded crap in
them that they never needed. Guar gum is cheaper than cream so they came
out with a new vanilla. Now it is a crappy as the competition.

They've still got the basic no-guar flavors alongside the adulterated ones.
I suspect they've introduced the newer crap because what the hell...why not?
It enables them to grab some of the B&J crowd who insists on 118 different
tastes in the same container. (Cherry Garcia, however, is nothing to shake a
stick at). :-)


Breyers used to be a very good independent in the Philadelphia area but
then they were sold to Sealtest, then Kraft, Good Humor, now Unilever.
They also had better flavors years ago, like raspberry ice and bananna.

Here's a scary thought: They almost dumped strawberry about 5 years ago, not
because customers weren't buying it, but because so many stores were not
stocking it. You'd be shocked at how many stupid policies can be kept in
place by just one buyer at a chain's headquarters. Here, for instance, we
have a local brand called Perry's. And, the otherwise excellent chain,
Wegman's, also has their store brand. Both strawberry offerings are sad
imitations. Artificially colored bright pink, guar gum, "other flavors". Our
other major store, Tops, carried Breyer's strawberry occasionally, if you
believed the shelf tag. Out of stock most of the time.

My company was dealing with Wegman's, so I had access to the buyers. I
called the frozen buyer and asked about Breyer's. His response: "First of
all, we don't need it. We carry two other strawberry products. And, nobody
buys it anyway. The movement numbers were real low last time we had it".
Turns out "last time" was 8 or 10 years earlier. I reminded him that nobody
buys it because it's not there. That didn't make much impact, although it
seems logical to me. Anyway, I guess enough people bitched and now they
carry it. (That buyer retired, too.)

I found out later (from a company rep) that local and private label brands
had impacted certain flavors to the point where they were almost
discontinued. Strawberry was one of them. It took some reeducation by the
reps to change this.

Back to the subject: I don't know about how other families shop, but I don't
have ice cream around all the time. When I do, I tend to forget it's there
and go for fruit instead. I'm sure some people consider it a staple item
like milk & eggs. There's always going to be a segment of this group who
will compare the price of Breyer's to the private label or local brands
every time they buy, even though they KNOW the last two are usually cheaper
and are of lower quality. The cheaper brands will consistently snag some of
those customers, SOME of the time. Nobody knows why. But, when these brands
are selling for $0.99 to $2.00 per half gallon, the national brand has to do
SOMETHING. You may recall that not long ago, Breyer's (not on sale) sold for
$3.50 to $4.25, depending on the market. Like me, many people never bought
it at that price, waiting for a sale instead.

That was simply not working for Breyer's. First of all, it's obvious that
they weren't moving enough product. And, it meant that if they offered deals
to the stores, it sometimes did not generate larger orders because nobody
wanted to be stuck with aging product. They don't want to store it, and you
& I don't want to buy it. This generated quite a scam a few years back when
someone in the NYC area altered the freshness dates on a few truckloads of
Breyer's ice cream.

Faced with this, and the drastic increase in the price of raw milk, I think
they had no choice but to change something. It worked. They're moving more
ice cream. Go figure.