As a non-member of the MySpace and FaceBook generation, blogging terrifies me. What can I say that would interest a visitor to our website? Maybe I will just write this for myself but if something here does spark your interest, reply back with your comments, questions or even criticisms. Let’s see how this blog evolves and where it takes us.

For the last few weeks I have been troubled by the frequent and conflicting challenges facing the foodservice industry. Our economy is on the verge of a recession and consumer spending is down. Technomics has already reduced their projection for foodservice industry growth in January by 29% for 2008 and customers are spending less. While higher costs are hitting all of us. Forget the cost of oil, the costs of food and supplies are skyrocketing as are labor, electricity and other costs.

In previous downturns, we looked to cut costs. Restaurants & grocers started sourcing fish and shrimp from Vietnam while we established operations in Asia. Today those cost savings are gone and with freight costs, they are usually cheaper in the U.S. Then we have last Christmas’s toy recalls to remind us of the quality and product safety concerns from Asia.

While we are fighting these battles, there are also regulatory & public policy concerns. Restaurants have trans-fat bans while all of us are striving to be environmentally conscious.On this front there are no easy answers. By all studies, plastic bags with proper recycling programs are the best environmental option vs. paper. But on the other hand paper bags don’t “blow in the wind” creating an eyesore on our streets. Then where does the impact of a larger carbon footprint fit in our evaluation. A study Ireland found that 4 truckloads of paper bags are needed to replace 1 truckload of plastic bags creating a 4-fold larger carbon footprint just from freight.

Maybe corn or plant based bio-bags are the best option. Costs should go down as volume increases – right? But I read a recent study that a significant portion of our spike in food prices was due to allocation of corn to bio-products like flex-fuel and bio-plastics. It seems like a no-win scenario.

I am sure that we will work these issues as we have worked through others in the past with creativity and initiative. We are in for a turbulent 2008. What are we at Pak-Sher going to do?

We are going to work hard to take care of our customers. If we take care of our customers, everything will work out.