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What Happened to Talenti?

nytimes.com

21–30 of 46 posts

Re: What Happened to Talenti?

#21
Heh, my wife was the maintenance supervisor for the Missouri Unilever plant that makes Talenti (well, not Unilever anymore). The same plant also makes Breyer's, Magnum bars, Choco Tacos, Popsicles, and various other novelties.

She frequently complained about the Talenti line having issues. When it was acquired they had contractual responsibilities to produce the gelato a certain way. One thing I remember is it used sugar in granular/powdered form, whereas all the other ice creams used a syrup. So they had giant hoppers of sugar, which of course are a big explosion hazard so there was a lot of equipment around that to keep it from blowing up.

I do remember the tight lids thing, heh. They were well aware...

Ben & Jerry's is also a Unilever brand but manufactured in Vermont (but largely not the one that everyone tours). I think that one is even more complicated because of all the little mix-in ingredients and stuff. And I remember at one point they had these "pint slices" which were packaged as rectangular prisms and had to be cut by enormous, very sharp knives, which caused a fair number of worker injury events.

Since then she's moved on to manufacturing other things. As a purely digital guy, I'm always fascinated by the "real world" things that physical goods have to deal with.

Re: What Happened to Talenti?

#22
They mention Jeni's. Now that is premium ice cream. Their "darkest chocolate" and "milkiest chocolate" flavors are the only chocolate ice creams I like, because they actually taste liko eating chocolate.

Re: What Happened to Talenti?

#23
post #5

A premium brand that got significantly worse but didn't drop the price? Seems obvious that this is going to be a story about private equity or a similar acquisition, and indeed it is. https://www.worseonpurpose.com/ has a giant list of these, with a tracker that breaks down hundreds of once-premium brands and the exact changes that the companies that acquire the brands make to make the things cheaper and worse, capit…

- Launch amazing brand with tight/negative margins to drive heavy consumer adoption - Sell brand to megacorp/PE for hundreds of millions or billions. - Brand gets "optimized for cost" so buyer gets an ROI. - By the time the public has soured on the brand, the buyout has paid for itself plus profit. The solution would be to launch these products with high margin built in, but then everybody scoffs at the cost and you…

a lot of these products have been around for too long for it to fit the model you're proposing

Re: What Happened to Talenti?

#24
post #19
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best solution for everyone is to come up with a quality product that people like, price it fairly, and then don't enshittify it. Win-win!

Not "everyone" -- if you're the owner of a successful ice cream brand who spent a decade grinding in the ice cream game, cashing out the brand equity and getting to live on a yacht might feel better.

[deleted]

Re: What Happened to Talenti?

#25

A premium brand that got significantly worse but didn't drop the price? Seems obvious that this is going to be a story about private equity or a similar acquisition, and indeed it is. https://www.worseonpurpose.com/ has a giant list of these, with a tracker that breaks down hundreds of once-premium brands and the exact changes that the companies that acquire the brands make to make the things cheaper and worse, capit…

And you must ask yourself, is the ability to sell your company to another company a benefit or should there be considerably stronger hurdles for this kind of thing?

why would ask myself that, i have nothing to do with the owners or buyers.

Re: What Happened to Talenti?

#26

A premium brand that got significantly worse but didn't drop the price? Seems obvious that this is going to be a story about private equity or a similar acquisition, and indeed it is. https://www.worseonpurpose.com/ has a giant list of these, with a tracker that breaks down hundreds of once-premium brands and the exact changes that the companies that acquire the brands make to make the things cheaper and worse, capit…

> worseonpurpose

A lot of irony in that name with all the written AI slop.

Re: What Happened to Talenti?

#27
post #16
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Launch amazing brand with tight/negative margins to drive heavy consumer adoption - Sell brand to megacorp/PE for hundreds of millions or billions. - Brand gets "optimized for cost" so buyer gets an ROI. - By the time the public has soured on the brand, the buyout has paid for itself plus profit. The solution would be to launch these products with high margin built in, but then everybody scoffs at the cost and you…

The best solution for everyone is to come up with a quality product that people like, price it fairly, and then don't enshittify it. Win-win!

I'm not sure if you are kidding or not, it would be a funny sarcastic remark in the right circles, but if serious, this exact line of thinking is exactly why things like indie-go-go and kick starter are just absolute meat grinders of starry-eyed individuals.

Re: What Happened to Talenti?

#28
post #5

A premium brand that got significantly worse but didn't drop the price? Seems obvious that this is going to be a story about private equity or a similar acquisition, and indeed it is. https://www.worseonpurpose.com/ has a giant list of these, with a tracker that breaks down hundreds of once-premium brands and the exact changes that the companies that acquire the brands make to make the things cheaper and worse, capit…

- Launch amazing brand with tight/negative margins to drive heavy consumer adoption - Sell brand to megacorp/PE for hundreds of millions or billions. - Brand gets "optimized for cost" so buyer gets an ROI. - By the time the public has soured on the brand, the buyout has paid for itself plus profit. The solution would be to launch these products with high margin built in, but then everybody scoffs at the cost and you…

[deleted]

Re: What Happened to Talenti?

#29

Heh, my wife was the maintenance supervisor for the Missouri Unilever plant that makes Talenti (well, not Unilever anymore). The same plant also makes Breyer's, Magnum bars, Choco Tacos, Popsicles, and various other novelties. She frequently complained about the Talenti line having issues. When it was acquired they had contractual responsibilities to produce the gelato a certain way. One thing I remember is it used s…

> The same plant also makes ... Choco Tacos

Made. RIP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choco_Taco

Re: What Happened to Talenti?

#30

Looks like classic enshittification to me. It doesn't only apply to software and services.

A farmer was complaining to me that the quality of manure he gets to spray on his fields has declined as it now goes through some process which extracts certain apparently valuable chemicals from it first. So even bullshit is getting enshittified.

unshittified manure
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