The government department with a £3.66m wine cellar
Lawsuits and pizza make for a great read this bank holiday weekend.
Hi there,
After several years in the wilderness thanks to boring trends like paleo and fasting, pastry is back. People have been interfering with various grains for millenia so it was deeply saddening to see bread becoming public enemy number one. In our darkest hour, sourdough rose from the ashes of store-bought bread to usher in a new age of gluten. Now we are all free to eat half a loaf of San Franciscan and tell ourselves it’s probably good for us.
Analysis in The Bakery Market Report released this week, showed that bakeries have been bucking the trend of low growth in the eating out market, growing 16.7% compared to 0.2%. This is thought to be down to the cost of living crisis which is leading people to look for more inexpensive ways of treating themselves than having a full meal out.
My brother Kit has been at the centre of the storm, turning blizzards of flour into gentle streams of croissants and other baked goods, like some sort of elemental druid. I spoke to him about it on the brand new episode of Work Drinks, which is out now.
Bake it till you make it,
Hugo
Chief Croissant Consumption Officer*
The Business of Stuff
*A role recently given to Melissa Myrteza at Three Mills Bakery in Canberra
The Stuff
Larry Ellison to invest $1B in the UK 🔬 - the founder of Oracle who has money coming out of ears is building a massive new research institute with his name on it in Oxford to try and solve some of those pesky problems like clean energy and food security which are likely to blight the world over the coming decades.
The entire supercharger team at Tesla have been fired 👋 - over 500 people were let go leaving the future of the supercharger network in question. Demand for Teslas has been falling so it is likely that until there is increased uptake or new economic incentives it doesn’t make a huge amount of sense to continue building out the network.
Vaulted Deep is putting lots of human waste in the ground 💩 - several big names including Meta, Alphabet and McKinsey have invested $58.3m in a company that pumps poo deep underground in order to combat climate change. The company has agreed to sequester 152,480 tons of carbon dioxide by 2027. No doubt all the companies investing will make sure this is well known in their sustainability reporting to demonstrate they are offsetting all that CO2.
FT struggle to get anything out of the FCDO about their wine cellar 🍷 - in true Foreign Office style they have a £3.66m wine cellar for getting foreign dignitaries waved but are reluctant to tell us any of the details. Despite a Freedom of Information request from the Financial Times the FCDO were pretty cagey, citing the protection of the commercial interests of us taxpayers. Hmmmmmmm.
Sales of iphones are falling in most countries - Apple’s quarterly figures were actually better than expected but demand is falling as people decide maybe there isn’t actually that much difference between a 14 and 15. This triggered Apple’s biggest share buyback in its history.
Coutts are moving £2bn of client money out of the UK 💸 - Britain’s go-to fancy bank is reallocating a load of capital abroad. It says this is to rebalance what is a fairly anachronistic approach to a more global portfolio but is no doubt a little bit embarrassing for HM Treasury which owns 28% of Coutt’s parent company, Natwest.
Yard Sale have reaped the rewards of swerving Deliveroo 🍕 - you’ve gotta have brass enchiladas to avoid the main delivery platforms and its worked out well for the pizza company who will do £11m in sales this year. They employ 250 people with 100 of those being on proper contracts, enabling them to deliver those massive 18 inch numbers.
Frasers group drop their €50m lawsuit against Morgan Stanley 👩⚖️ - Mike Ashley’s group has withdrawn the suit over a margin call made by the bank which they claimed was down to snobbery. If not wanting anything to with Mike Ashley is snobbery then I’m sure there are quite a lot of snobs out there.
Social media goes to town on the botched opening of Co-op Live Arena 🐦 - after several more gigs have been postponed and cancelled the Twittersphere has been laying into the whole debacle, with Liz Truss being absolutely front and centre.
Owner of L’Occitane offers to buy group for €6.5m 🍦 - the skincare company is currently listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange but Reinold Geiger who already has a controlling stake has decided actually he wants it back. Trading has been suspended as the offer is considered by the board.
Quote of the week
“Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana” - Terry Wogan