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See's Candies is Warren Buffett’s ‘dream’ investment

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Re: See's Candies is Warren Buffett’s ‘dream’ investment

#171

Post by teruakohatu »

daniel-cussen wrote: post #136
teruakohatu wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share a link to the product. Googling it only came up with commercial announcements. Is it granular or liquid/syrup?

Right. Yes. Dextrorotative glucose. Grape sugar, blood sugar, corn sugar, glucose, dextrose. Dex. Dextrose monohydrate, powder. It tried the syrup from the commodity seller I bought from, but it was too thick, too glassy and I couldn't mix it. Food production facilities get it in that form, however. But the powder is great, you can get a little 1 pound bag from a brewer to try it, it looks...well it looks like powder…

Thanks for sharing. Have you considered skipping the "middle man" and just using xylitol to sweeten your drink and skipping the mouthwash?

A brief browse of academic literature makes me wonder if you have a specific blend of gut bacteria which leads to suppressed appetite after consuming dextrose.

Re: See's Candies is Warren Buffett’s ‘dream’ investment

#172

Post by chaostheory »

diego_moita wrote: post #71

> Buffett cautioned Huggins to never sacrifice quality for profit. Funny how that's the complete opposite of another celebrated investor: Jorge Paulo Leman from Brazil's 3G Capital Partners (Heinz, Popeye's, Anheuser-Busch, Tim Horton's, Bugger King, etc). Their game is to buy brands with very strong customer loyalty and slash costs (and quality). In the long run they'll destroy the brand but until then will make eno…

> Buffett cautioned Huggins to never sacrifice quality for profit.

It might be a good investment, but from my experience See's Candies is only good at packaging their mediocre products made with corn syrup. Before someone cites their FAQ: No, most of their candies do not have "cherry ingredients including glacé whole, glacé halves, and whole dipping cherries" sourced from a 3rd party supplier.

Re: See's Candies is Warren Buffett’s ‘dream’ investment

#173

Post by PragmaticPulp »

Barrin92 wrote: post #18
Animats wrote: post #12

It's the slow and steady increase in prices that made it so profitable. About 5x over inflation during Buffett ownership. This has happened to far too many items over the last few decades. Most of the things drugstores sell are cheap to make, but have steadily increased in price in the US over the last few decades. Vitamins used to be priced according to manufacturing cost. Slowly, the low-cost vitamins have been up-…

is there branding to this? Because if Vitamin C is 10 bucks in bulk and 100 bucks in drug stores I'm about to open a 50 bucks vitamin C store in the US. Competition generally eliminates these kinds of margins. Quick check here on the German Amazon you can get Vitamin C ranging from 13€/kilogram to 117€/kilogram, they show that ratio explicitly. If people want to pay 10x for the fancy bottle and name they can but I do…

The branded products (EmergenC and such) come with more of a markup

But Vitamin C in general is an extremely cheap compound. The costs are going to be in things like packaging, shipping, warehousing, shelf space, accounting for lost shipments and returns, and similar overhead. For simple products that overhead can be orders of magnitude more than the core product.

Re: See's Candies is Warren Buffett’s ‘dream’ investment

#174

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

jdlshore wrote: post #112
shrubble wrote: post #41

I know I am "supposed" to like Warren Buffett, but frankly I don't; and this does show why I don't. Buffett buys a discretionary, almost a luxury item, store, and jacks up the prices well above the rate of inflation. The owner of LVMH does the same. This is not the same as a company that is advancing technology or building the same item, but for less money. I value the guy who runs the sriracha sauce company higher t…

A key quote from the article supports what you're saying: "Warren and I raised the prices of See’s Candies a little faster than others might have. There are actually people out there who don’t price everything as high as the market will easily stand. And once you figure that out, it’s like finding money in the street.” Whether that's a reason to admire Buffet, or dislike him, I'll leave to the reader. The impression…

I’m still trying to understand this quote so pardon me for being thick. Is he saying they raised the price as high as the market would allow or that they waited for a while to do that?

Re: See's Candies is Warren Buffett’s ‘dream’ investment

#175

Post by ryan_lane »

noduerme wrote: post #77
diego_moita wrote: post #71

> Buffett cautioned Huggins to never sacrifice quality for profit. Funny how that's the complete opposite of another celebrated investor: Jorge Paulo Leman from Brazil's 3G Capital Partners (Heinz, Popeye's, Anheuser-Busch, Tim Horton's, Bugger King, etc). Their game is to buy brands with very strong customer loyalty and slash costs (and quality). In the long run they'll destroy the brand but until then will make eno…

When were Popeye's or BK "quality" brands? I don't remember them getting any worse since RBI bought them.

When it was run by Al Copeland, Popeyes was actually very good. He tried to purchase another large fried chicken chain, went bankrupt, and was forced to give up Popeyes, but kept a number of dishes and ingredients. Copeland's restaurants still serve the original biscuits, which are incredible.

Apparently Popeyes reacquired most of the ingredients and dishes in 2014, but they unfortunately didn't bring back the original biscuits.

Re: See's Candies is Warren Buffett’s ‘dream’ investment

#176

Post by littleweep »

chaostheory wrote: post #172
diego_moita wrote: post #71

> Buffett cautioned Huggins to never sacrifice quality for profit. Funny how that's the complete opposite of another celebrated investor: Jorge Paulo Leman from Brazil's 3G Capital Partners (Heinz, Popeye's, Anheuser-Busch, Tim Horton's, Bugger King, etc). Their game is to buy brands with very strong customer loyalty and slash costs (and quality). In the long run they'll destroy the brand but until then will make eno…

> Buffett cautioned Huggins to never sacrifice quality for profit. It might be a good investment, but from my experience See's Candies is only good at packaging their mediocre products made with corn syrup. Before someone cites their FAQ: No, most of their candies do not have "cherry ingredients including glacé whole, glacé halves, and whole dipping cherries" sourced from a 3rd party supplier.

As a big Coca Cola fan WB has no problem with corn syrup.

Re: See's Candies is Warren Buffett’s ‘dream’ investment

#177

Post by kriro »

ggm wrote: post #168
fma wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thought the article points out Berkshire Hathaway owns 5.6% of Apple, Apple represents almost a 50% of Berkshire's holdings. If you ask me, quite a concentrated portfolio risk for a fund that is perceived to be stable. But anyways - in regards to products & inflation... "...our research shows that Apple have risen iPhone prices 26% higher than local inflation rates. " https://www.self.inc/info/iphone-price-index/

This surprised me because I think I remember reading Buffett says re-insurance is the backstay of his profit, and investment.

From what I understand, insurance companies were/are his cash cows so to speak. The simplified business model of an insurance company is to take the money customers pay for the insurance and invest it safely enough that you can cover the sum of payouts required and make an extra profit. Now in theory this is profitable without high returns from that investment because the sum of payouts is less than the sum of money collected if your risk models are correct. But if you assume that you are above average in investing (which Buffet assumes) then it becomes even better to buy these companies because you are the one who gets to invest said money.

Re: See's Candies is Warren Buffett’s ‘dream’ investment

#178

Post by BoorishBears »

themitigating wrote: post #164
catgary wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What that company did to Tim Horton’s was basically an act of war against Canada.

I'm from NY so I consider myself a bagel snob. The bagels at Tim Hortons in Ontario are worse quality than anything I've ever had in the states. They are similar to packaged bagels from the supermarket

Fun fact: there's a few Tim Hortons locations in NYC

Re: See's Candies is Warren Buffett’s ‘dream’ investment

#180

Post by refurb »

Vladimof wrote: post #37
lotsofpulp wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Vitamins used to be priced according to manufacturing cost. Slowly, the low-cost vitamins have been up-priced to match the expensive ones. Vitamin C is about $10/Kg in bulk, but about $100/Kg at a US drugstore. How does one even know if the Vitamin C is Vitamin C? There is no government agency that confirms supplements and vitamins are what they say they are, nor are there penalties. The only thing I have heard of i…

The US is very bad at ensuring our food supply is what it claims to be.... you have to trust companies, basically.

Are you suggesting other countries independently test each food product that is sold to consumers?
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