WEEKEND EDITION- America’s Love of the Jeep, Hot Sauce Wars

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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to the Daily Dive Weekend Edition. I'm Oscar Ramirez,
and every week I explore the top stories making waves
in the news and some that are just playing interesting.
I'll connect you with the journalists and the people who
know the story and bring you news without the noise
so you can make an informed decision. You can catch
a new episode of The Daily Dive every Monday through Friday,
and it's ready where you wake up. On the weekend edition,

(00:27):
I'll be bringing you some of the best stories from
the week. The military has long had a special relationship
with the jeep, specifically the World War Two jeep in
the Army was taking bits for a new military vehicle
and settled on a design by the Willie's Overland Company
that would be produced by Ford. How it got its name,
The common belief is that it comes from the abbreviation

(00:48):
of g P, which was a common term for any
military vehicle. For more on how the g became America's
favorite military vehicle will speak to Miranda's Summer's Low Contributor
to task in per Well. First of all, it really
is amazing how much the jeep is just beloved iconic,
right for a piece of equipment. Um, the jeep has

(01:10):
really remained just something that not just military personnel, but
all Americans know about and and have this affection for. Definitely,
they have their own special jeep wave when they when
jeep owners driven by each other well, and you know
it's sort of something that that people stick with, right,
like once you become a jeep person. UM, just kind

(01:35):
of incredible in that UM. In researching this, you know,
to find out how many different possibilities there could have
been for the cheap um kind of starting in World
War One when cars and vehicles first come on the market,
and you know, of course there are different groups of
people that want different things. You know, do you want

(01:57):
a big trucks that can carry a lot of things? Um,
you know, do you want a small car that you
know is fast, or do you want something that is
kind of um, you know, all terrain and can move
through a lot of things. So there's like a lot
of contentions sort of going through as this gets developed,
including some of my personal favorites. Like you know, there

(02:19):
were so many cards that were being pulled by horses
at that point, so you know, why not just make
a cart that moves on its own and kind of
looks like a lawnmower or you know, when you you
go to shoot or you know, a lot of these operations,
you lie down on your belly, so you know, sort
of one rejected concept was nicknamed the belly flopper, and

(02:39):
it was sort of like a motorized palette that you'd
lie down on and then you know, as the soldier
moved from position to position, but the whole vehicle will
just move with it exactly and you know, along the way, right.
So it took all these little inspirations from those things,
like you said in the article, tractors and lawnmowers. This
belly flopper thing, it took all of those inspirations and

(02:59):
it kind of becoming you know, the jeep. But you know,
it meant all the requirements the criteria that then the
military needed at the time. Let's talk a little bit
about the name jeep too, because that's a pretty fun part.
As you mentioned, it almost was called the belly flopper.
There's all sorts of different things to it. Uh, they
called it, let's see, blitz, buggy, puddle jumper, midget, peep,

(03:21):
and probably where it really came from, I guess you
mentioned World War One, grease monkeys had a term from
military vehicles g P, and that's probably where it came from. Yeah,
so GP, you know, general purpose, uh kind of runs
together like jeep, and that nickname seems to be around
before the particular truck we talked about. UM. But one

(03:44):
thing I learned researching this story is that term got
used for a lot of other things, like aircraft, which
I had I realized deepen through World War Two, some
members of the Army Air Corps refused to call the
jeep a jeep because they had a point that they
called jeep, so they called them peeps, like the little
marshmallow snack. That's pretty good. Yeah. And then in inside

(04:07):
the military, I guess they were going back and forth
on you know, which one was the right one, which
with what they would call it. When they finally the
military said, okay, we want to manufacture these things. I
guess they said, uh, you know, we're going to give
out this contract whoever can do it. There was a
hundred and thirty five auto makers at that time, only
two agreed to submit proposals, so right away that limited

(04:29):
right there, and I guess they wanted seventy vehicles to
be produced in just seventy five days, so that's really tough,
probably why a lot of them backed out, But tell
us who came through with the final design here, sure,
So yeah, you gotta appreciate how quickly this came to
gather that when they finally decided it was worth kind
of doing. You know, a small truck that we kind

(04:52):
of think of as being a jeep. Now, UM, two
different companies put in proposal, so the Bantam Company and
Lee's Overland. And at that point Willie's UM was well
known to the army because they made a lot of
artillery carts and carriages, but you know, wouldn't necessarily be
who you would think UM would make this vehicle. But UM,

(05:15):
once there were two prototypes, the Bantam and and the Willies,
it kind of became clear that UM, even though the
Willies came in proposal, came in late and uh overweight
because they had put an oversized engine in it, and
feel testing the oversized engine did fantastic UM and everyone

(05:35):
was loving it. But the problem with that is Willie
didn't actually have the capacity to make the number of
trucks that the army was hoping for. So you know,
in one of those great moments of history. There's a
chance meeting in Washington, d C. Where one of the
under secretaries who was working on the Under Secretaries of
the Army saw edzel Ford himself and asked if he would,

(05:58):
you know, agree to special deal where board would you know,
agree to help Willie's produce this. So a lot of
the original jeep have that Willie's label on it, but
we're actually um made by four. Yeah, that's amazing and
it carries on to this day. Right, there's still certain
model trims of the jeep that go by the Willie's name.
You can see them, you know, sometimes you'll see it.

(06:20):
I'll say rubicon on the front, on the hood, but
sometimes they'll say say Willie's on them too. So they're
all there, and and then from then on, you know,
it just kind of how do you get it funded?
Part of this whole thing is there's a lot of
great classic pictures that you have on the article on
the website showing the jeep from you know, when it
started in World War two and beyond, and the jeep
driving on the Capitol steps. You know, how it plays

(06:42):
into pop culture. There was a bunch of songs about it.
Four jills and a jeep in movies. You know, it
really took off after that, absolutely, And one of the
funnest things I found, um when I went to you know,
I saw that picture of um, you know, the army
camp that actually put jeep out in front of the
Capitol building and they gave members of Congress the chance

(07:03):
to drive it up and down the Capital steps. But
it was hard to pick which picture because it was
just there was so many. It was obvious that even
at that point before it was in mass production. Every
you know, senator and congressman who got to drive this um,
well he just happen to blast and got their picture takes. Yeah,
I think the picture you end up putting in there

(07:23):
was Senator Meat of New York and he's just like
waving back the camera with his hand up, big smile
on his face, and wed us a few service members
in the back seat, and that definitely definitely looks like
fun and you know, just kind of this whole trajectory,
right it just uh really was being used I guess,
you know, for military purposes too, but just like the
service members coming back home, so did the jeep and

(07:45):
you know, obviously has its big history now in the
in the States and all, but it came back and
went back to its tractor roots pulling threshers and plows
and was used to be converted for like many firefighting trucks,
so that you know, it got a ton of use.
It's incredible to see what they were used for over time.
Everything from two jeeps hooked up could pull a tank

(08:07):
like when it was still in military youth. But then
you see them showing up as you mentioned um as
firefighting equipment, um in loggiate and farming. Um just really
kind of incredible how versatile it is. Yeah, really fun. Look,
I'm a fan of the jeep itself, but you know,
just to know how the roots started and all, this
is pretty fun. Miranda Summer's low contributor to Task and Purpose.

(08:30):
Thank you very much for joining us. Thanks so much.
A condiment business is hyper competitive, and one of the
major players in the spice game. McCormick has been making
acquisitions to take over the world of hot sauce. They
bought Frank's Red Hot and Cholula Hot Sauce in deals
worth millions of dollars each. The past few years had

(08:53):
proved to be beneficial for McCormick as many people stayed
in and cooked at home more, but they were not
immune to supply chain issues that affected the industry. For
more on the fight for hot sauce supremacy, will speak
to Austin Carr, features writer at Bloomberg business Week. McCormick
known for all its seasonings and spices and those red
caps that you see in your your grandparents pantry, But

(09:13):
in recent years they've really going after the sauce market
and Yeah Frenches. They also owned Stubbs Barbecue, they owned
Old Bay, and they also develop a lot of products
for other companies. If you've ever had Cool Ranch to
Rito's or bud Light Line, they were the company behind
that that flavor to development. But with hot sauce, specifically
in their purchase of of Frank's Red Hot and Cholula

(09:35):
Hot sauce, that's really going after the big, huge growth
in the global hot sauce market. In the last six
or seven years, we've seen global hot sauce sales rise
about to about five billion dollars around the planet. In
the U S specifically, it's actually the hot sauce market
is roughly on par as of the as of last year,

(09:55):
with Ketchup, which is pretty shocky. One one thing Hines
ketch Up those sort of major sales bigger than Hot Sauce.
But hot sauce is a huge growth industry right now,
and that explains why McCormick's really going deep on this,
this love for for low calorie heat that that's really
taken off, especially among millennial consumers. Yeah, and as you
mentioned in the in the article, right, I mean, this
is all the very hyper competitive business, just the sauce

(10:18):
market in general. And uh I just like the wording
right to become big hot sauce, you need to fight
big catch up first, you know, referring to Hines, just
because they have such a huge control over the market
with Ketchup specifically. But let's talk about these acquisitions that
they made because they're very interesting. I want to throw
the dollar amounts out there. They first started off with
Frank's Red Hot and Frenches Mustard that was kind of

(10:42):
a combo deal, and then after that they went after Cholula.
So let's start start with Frank's Red Hot, then let's
get into Cholula. Yeah, the the deal with French is
and and Frank's that was actually for four point two
billion dollars. So in the food world, those are gigantic prices.
You might hear about that, that's sort of invest been
when it comes to the tech world. And so when

(11:02):
when I when I talked about these purchases with analysts,
they really can compare these things to the equivalent of
you know, when Facebook bought Instagram. It's it's sort of
that level of scale that we're talking in terms of
the risk the bet that they're making on these brands.
Then fast forward November, they decided to go after Cholula
Hot Sauce for and they they spent about eight hundred
million dollars and according to our sources, they outbid Hines

(11:25):
for that. Hines, of course, you might not realize that
they're known for ketchup uh and a ton you know,
the Hinds sort of fifty seven brand, but they also
own Gray Poupon, a one miracle whip if you like
Leon Perren's Worcesters sauce. You know, they're sort of this
arsenal portfolio player in the sauce market. And we're interested
in hot sauce just as much as McCormick. But the

(11:46):
McCormick's put up more money. They bought Cholula and now
they control about a third of the U. S Hout
sauce market between Frank's which is number one, in Cholula
which is now number two, ahead of Tabasco. It's just nuts, really,
and you know, the the people that were in mccormicks
that we're trying to get this deal going, they say, hey,
you know, we want to go big, we want to
do this. They got approval for everybody. They said, go

(12:07):
for it. And what was the deal is eight hundred
million dollars was the bid that they put down. Eight
million cash cash offer. So this was really a deal
that was designed to stop a bidding war from happen.
In other words, you don't want Hines counter offering, you know,
and so by by throwing out this big offer, you're
not going to see another one countering at a billion

(12:28):
or two billion. You know, Cholula sells about a hundred
million dollars of hots off a year, so already the
multiple there is pretty big, at least in the food world. Um,
so this was really a big deal and since then
they have seen a lot of growth. McCormick has huge
distribution channels with restaurants around the country with retailers like Walmarten, Amazon,
and so for them to sort of go from take

(12:50):
this Cholula, which is was owned by a private equity
firm and you know it wasn't a portfolio play beforehand,
and now throw it into all these restaurants, whether that's
in bottles or in what called satchets. Those are those
little squeeze packs you see when you tear them open,
important on your your your chicken wings or fries. And
you're going to see that a lot more in the
coming years, especially in grocery stores. That's why I love

(13:10):
these stories. Right, you kind of grow to love certain
brands and then yeah, you start seeing it in certain
restaurants and you're seeing it everywhere and you kind of
don't know the history behind it and in some cases
who makes who owns these properties? Right, Because for Cholula specifically,
mccormicks doesn't put any of their branding on it, which
is I mean, it's probably smart on their side, right,

(13:32):
They just want to keep it in the minds of
the consumers. This has always been Cholula, It comes from Mexico,
all this stuff, so they don't even put their branding
on there that's correct and and and that's actually it's
a pretty smart branding opportunity. I mean, when you think
about it, you go to the grocery store, you look
at that huge shelf of condiments and sauces and dressings,
and you're really choosing not just the taste but also

(13:53):
sort of the memory of that brand. That the sort
of dispensing mechanism is very important, how the bottle looks,
the cap. That's why with with Chula, a lot of
people know it as much for the flavor that's sort
of spicy sauce that sort of goes with anything flavor,
but they also know it for that distinctive wooden caps,
the sort of slender glass bottle. And if you look
at a lot of the other big companies, you know,
we think of Hellman's Mayo, you know that blue and

(14:16):
white jar, but you might not know it's owned by
Uni Lever. You know, Sir Kensington, which is sort of
fancy Mayo own Ketchup, also owned by Uni Lever. And
with you know, you could think of Hunt's Ketchup, Golden's
Mustard wishbone dressing for Ranch. Those are all owned by ConAgra,
another big food giant, So a lot of these companies
out there, they realize the benefit of making these products
almost seem like independent, family run bespoke brands, when there

(14:39):
are actually these sort of giant food conglomerates. They're sort
of partnering up. So when you go to a ski
resort or a buffet line, you see their brands altogether
at the end of the food aisle, rather than Craft
or Unilever and McCormick or Nagra. They're all going after
each other for those mix of flavors that they want
consumers to lust after. And as you mentioned earlier, right,
McCormick's had its hand in making developing other things bud

(15:01):
Lightline and cool Ranch. Dorito's one of my favorite ones too.
I had no no, no clue they had a hand
in that. I did want to talk about the pandemic
supply chains and COVID all that, because that's an interesting
thing too. They were seeing a lot of increase in
sales at US stores. Obviously, people were cooking at home,
needed to stock up their pantries. They did have all
these deals with restaurants and some of that dried up,

(15:23):
but the sales for grocery stores was increasing so much,
and then they ran into the supply chain issues for
a lot of their stuff, tumeric which they need for
the mustard. Just a ton of different things on the
different angles on this front. So to tell us about that,
it was a really fascinating thing. I mean, I think
at the beginning of the pandemic, rewind the clock. I know,
it's it's been so many years at this point, but

(15:43):
back to that February March period when no one quite
knew how big of a threat the COVID nineteen situation
would be. And for McCormick, they were seeing restaurants closed,
they're seeing factories closed, and this could be a really
disruptive force in their industry. But then the opposite happened
all of a sudden, as you know, did sales of tumeric,
which a lot of people use for for health reasons

(16:03):
or because it's what gives the yellow color to to
spicy yellow mustard, and frenches broths, because people were cooking
soup at home, baked goods like vanilla, all these things
taking off so at at this real whiplash moment from McCormick,
where they have to keep up with the demand at
the same time as all these factories are closing. It
was a real crazy few months going onto a year,

(16:25):
and specifically with tumeric, the US almost ran out of
mustard for a time. They were running low on their
reserves for some of the ingredients like tumeric that goes
into french Is, partly because ocean freight. All those ocean
freighters were either not running or closed down or over capacity.
So they actually had to rush an emergency air cargo
shipment of tumeric and it landed inadvertently in Baltimore instead

(16:48):
of at a French's factory in Missouri, so they had
to hire all these truckers overnight to drive it a
thousand miles to the french Is factory in time for
a production run. Otherwise, who knows, we might not have
mustard on our our hot dog. Sounds small, but for
a lot of people, these are comfort foods and that
was a big deal during the pandemic, especially if you're
your parents with kids at home and you've got to
keep them entertained with food. Yeah, I mean that sucks

(17:10):
for you know, McCormick's, the parent company at this point
for all of this, sucks for them to have to
go through that. But man, I kind of love hearing that,
you know, the scramble right for consumers. We don't really
know what's going on. You might hear there's a shortage
of this or that, but this was the scramble to
get people the products that they know and love and want.
So what's next for McCormick's. At least with this growth

(17:32):
potential into hot sauces and other sauces and all these acquisitions,
they're looking for what's next for them? You know, I
think what's next is now that they have this massive
build up of brands that are all owned by the
same company but seemingly run independently. At least when it
comes to grocery sales, you're going to see a lot
more mash ups. You know, um Hines for example, they're doing.

(17:54):
They're doing a lot of mash up products and it's
not just catch up anymore, but they mix it with
know all types of I think they have catch eli
so you know, hinz ketchup, may that mayo chop, honey racha,
tarch up cranch, so sort of blends of ketchup and
ranch dressing and saracha and and so forth. Buff A

(18:15):
ranch another one part of what Hinz calls their innovation agenda,
And so what you might see in the coming years
are perhaps some mashups between Cholula and Frenches, so you
have a sort of spicier mustard or you know Old Bay,
which is that popular Baltimore seafood seasoning that's mixed with
hot sauce these days, very popular, and so maybe there's
going to be more of that. And so the question

(18:37):
is how far do you take that before it's sort
of ruined some of the brand cach a. Do you
want Cholula showing up on taco bell menus at McDonald's
and so forth. On the other hand, I think a
lot of people might like that stuff because you know,
everyone's hungry and and these types of products they can
really go on anything. Yeah, I mean those sauce mashups
really can be intriguing and you know, pleasant surprise when

(18:57):
it really works with you know, whatever you're dipping in
chicken wings, whatever it can be. So, yeah, it's just
a fun story. There's a lot of details about mccormicks
and some of their history we couldn't get into for this,
but I suggest everybody read Austin's piece on all of it.
Austin Carr, Features writer at Bloomberg business Week, thank you
very much for joining us. Thank you, and if your
listeners have a chance, I know one product that McCormick

(19:19):
was really proud of in terms of a mash up
with French is flavored craft beer and French is flavored
ice cream. And they're they're convinced it's a big flavor
out there. So go try it if you're curious. All right,
Thanks so much, Austin. Thank you. Don't forget to join
us on social media at Daily Dive Pod on Twitter
and Daily Dive Podcast on Facebook. Leave us a comment,

(19:42):
give us a rating, and tell us the stories that
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subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Oscar Ramirez and
this is the Daily Dive Weekend edition