Who is advising the C-suites in corporate America? Do they have friends? Friends that would tell them, “You know, maybe you should rethink how that’s going to play in Peoria,” or Manhattan, or Colby, Kan.

At this point, I’d settle for a cartoon cricket that visits them in their sleep.

So, I do a lot of sifting through headlines each morning to see what’s going on in the world. I pay attention to farming and agricultural topics, of course. But I’m also looking at the food industry, retail and wholesale sectors, and trends in the economy that may impact who’s able to buy the food, fiber and fuel you produce.

Fast-food pricing

Now, I know there’s plenty of you out there who turn your nose up at fast food. But the sheer fact is it accounts for a hefty part of the American diet. According to Drive Research:

We know from the pandemic that that’s the market for a lot of our beef, chicken, pork, dairy and grains, right? So when something disrupts that market, we feel it on the farm.

Enter Wendy’s CEO Kirk Tanner, who told an investor conference call in February that “beginning as early as 2025, we will begin testing more enhanced features like dynamic pricing and daypart offerings, along with AI-enabled menu changes and suggestive selling.”

It went over with Americans just about as well as you can imagine. The social media sphere was wild.

I honestly thought briefly about shorting Wendy’s breakfast sandwiches and going long on Biggie Bags the closer to noon. Talk about a retirement plan.

Within a day or so, the company backtracked and clarified, telling the Associated Press, “Wendy’s will not implement surge pricing, which is the practice of raising prices when demand is highest. We didn’t use that phrase, nor do we plan to implement that practice.”

Still, Wendy’s Co. will invest $20 million in digital menu boards by the end of 2025. Which, according to the company, will allow it to change the menu offerings at different times of the day and offer discounts and value offers to customers at slower times.

So, the headlines cancel each other out, right? Yet, the whole episode left a bad taste in consumer mouths. In a time when Americans are spending 11% of their disposable income on food, this just felt like one more kick to the American diner.

Let them eat cereal

But then, the CEO of WK Kellogg Gary Pilnick decided to tell the Wendy’s CEO, “Hold my cereal bowl.”

In a Feb. 21 interview with CNBC, he proposed that families struggling with high food prices should make cereal a meal. “In general, the cereal category is a place that a lot of folks might come to because the price of a bowl of cereal with milk and with fruit is less than a dollar,” he said. “So, you can imagine why a consumer under pressure might find that to be a good place to go.”

To be clear, between 2020 and 2022, corporate profits rose by 75%, five times as fast as inflation, according to CBS. NBC reports that Pilnick’s annual salary, according to SEC filings, is $1 million, plus up to $4.4 million more in bonuses as of September. And the company reported $651 million in net sales as of Dec. 30. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported that the price per unit of Kellogg’s products was up year-over-year by 17.1% in October.

The comment did not go over well with consumers. A TikTok from one creator calling for a three-month boycott of Kellogg’s has nearly 3.3 million views in one week. And as of March 6, there are hundreds of photos circulating online of yellow-tagged discounted Kellogg’s products in big box stores.

Consumer sentiment

Now I know that there are a lot of you reading this who may think boycotts and social media outrage is hooey. I get it, I do.

However, whether we like it or not, consumer sentiment toward the products that are made from your grains and livestock affect your bottom lines. Today, the ire is pointed at the C-suites of those food companies that are raking in massive profits without reducing consumer prices. Tomorrow, it could very well spill into ire over how the grains and livestock were produced for those products.

That social license to farm that we’ve been talking about for the past 20 years? Sound familiar?

It’s important as the producers of the food, fiber  and fuel of this nation that we understand the American consumer and their motivation for buying products. We need to track the trends that affect their purchasing patterns. And have a little compassion for people just trying to feed their families.

The good news is farmers and ranchers are still some of the most respected voices according to consumer polling.

Maybe it’s time farmers and ranchers share some of their credibility insights with the C-suites of the food sector to help them connect with their consumers.