Word: schwan
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...want to understand the disconnect between watching cooking shows and wanting to cook, get this: Schwan's Home Service is offering Top Chef--branded frozen meals. The idea that hard-core fans who study contestants' knife skills every week would choose to order from a giant company that's been delivering frozen food to rural America for 57 years doesn't surprise Harry Balzer, who tracks food trends for the market-research firm NPD Group. "You're going to eat four to five times today, and the one thing I know you're going...
Still, the brand extension surprised Lee Anne Wong, who, as a contestant in Season 1, created the chicken in red curry sauce that Schwan's is now eager to pack in dry ice and leave on people's doorsteps. "We're going to film with [French culinary legend] Joël Robuchon and then put out some frozen dinners?" asks Wong, who has just finished her fifth season as a culinary producer on the show. Her honesty about Bravo's branding deal may have something to do with the fact that neither she nor the five other Top Chef contestants whose...
...ordered all five of Schwan's Top Chef meals--which cost $10 to $12 each--and invited my friend Jonathan Karsh, a reality-show producer and an excellent home cook, to try them. The first thing we noticed was how right Balzer was about the way we embrace prepared meals. Several times I said I had better "start cooking" when I meant "start microwaving." I was able to open the boxes with a knife from the Top Chef cutlery set the show sent me and pair the food with a Top Chef--branded Quickfire cabernet sauvignon (which was surprisingly good...
...Karsh isn't the audience. Yes, he's both the hard-core fan Bravo wants to give a fuller experience to and the urban consumer Schwan's is trying to expand to. But he cooks. The Top Chef deal is targeting people who don't have time to cook but do have time to watch TV. It's going to make a fortune...
...diagnostic. Herceptin has helped thousands of women combat breast cancer. But there's no doubt it has also helped Roche's bottom line: at $40,000 a year per patient, Herceptin grew globally in sales nearly 25%, to $4.1 billion, last year. "You need self-confidence to take risks," Schwan says. But, he adds, "if you are successful, you must be even more thoughtful about the future rather than dwelling on the past." And that prescription may be just what Big Pharma needs...