In the interest of culinary diversity, I would not only love a nearby taco truck, but also a gyro truck, a pastrami on rye truck (complete with egg cream, of course), an empanadas truck, and a cubano sandwich truck.
Clemson U. is apologizing over its Mexican food day. I propose a Puerto Rican food day instead. You may even promote it as “Puerto Rican food: Half the gas with all the calories!”
Read my suggestions for menu, music (dare I ask for Japanese salsa?), and the national Puerto Rican hat right here.
Banking on better times ahead, U.S. companies are taking advantage of the down market to woo new franchisees, snag bargain leases and expand while many local operators are pulling back. The draw: a Brazilian middle class estimated at more than 100 million people, many of whom love to eat out and have an affinity for U.S. brands.
No Chipotle?
Yes Chipotle!
“A churrasco in a burrito at a price you can afford!”
During the first half of 2015, the Venezuelan Observatory for Social Conflict (OVCS) registered no fewer than 132 incidents of looting or attempted looting at various stores throughout the country. In addition, Venezuelan consumers staged over 500 protests that condemned the lack of available products at state-run grocery stores, markets, and pharmacies
Food riots and looting in Venezuela Friday left one person dead and exposed the combustible nature of the country’s imploding economy. Bloomberg News
Venezuelan soldiers seized a food distribution center in Caracas, Venezuela, July 30 rented by global companies including Nestle, PepsiCo and Empresas Polar.
. . . the two most significant factors are the rate at which prices are moving up (previous post) and the ease with which angry mobs (above) have decided to loot and riot at the smallest excuse. Yes, the problem is the Government controls the media and few people see what is going on, but the looting is taking place in traditional Chavista strongholds. And they don’t occur because people are fed up of lining up to get something, they take place because people are fed up of standing in line and getting nothing: Neither bread, nor Harina Pan, nor diapers, nor contraceptives. It used to be a moment of triumph to find something, now the moments of victory are few and far between.
And every day, there is a new item that can´t be found, last week, as I was visiting, it was bread and toothpaste. Great for my diet, no sandwiches for the Devil! Nor Cachitos, nor bombas, nor palmeras.
We are talking serious scarcity here!
Like there are also no Bills to pay things for. Despite an 80% increase in monetary liquidity (M2), the largest Bill is still Bs. 100, US$ 15.9 at the official rate, 50 cents at the Simadi official rate, but a scant 14 cents at the parallel rate.
Venezuela should have been rich what with being the “12th largest oil producer in the world … and a beneficiary of the most sustained oil price boom in history”. Instead it is flat broke. It’s currency, the Bolivar is worth 1% of its official rate on the black market and 1/1000th of what it was before Hugo Chavez assumed power.
. . .the government doesn’t just decide who gets cheap dollars, but also how much they and everyone else can charge. Companies that don’t get dollars at the official exchange rate would lose money selling at the official prices, so they don’t—they leave their stores empty. But even ones that do get low-cost dollars would make more money selling them in the black market than using them to sell goods at the official prices, so they don’t as well—their stores stay just as barren. In other words, it’s not profitable for unsubsidized companies to stock their shelves, but not profitable enough for subsidized ones to do so, either. That’s why Venezuela’s supermarkets don’t have enough food, its breweries don’t have enough hops to keep making beer, and its factories don’t have enough pulp to produce toilet paper. That’s left Venezuela well-supplied with only one thing: lines.
