San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
DAILY BRIEFING
If you missed it ...
In a week when Bumble’s
Whitney Wolfe Herd became a billionaire and the youngest woman to take a company public, this also happened:
Aunt Jemima is making her last batch of pancakes. Quaker Oats said Tuesday that its Aunt Jemima brand pancake mix and syrup will be renamed Pearl Milling Company, after the company founded in 1988 that originated the self-rising pancake mix. Aunt Jemima products will continue to be sold until June. Quaker Oats, a division of PepsiCo, said in June that it would retire the Aunt Jemima brand, saying the character’s origins are “based on a racial stereotype.” The smiling Aunt Jemima logo was inspired by the 19th century “mammy” minstrel character, a Black woman content to serve her white masters.
In more breakfast-food news, after a months-long, nationwide shortage of its polarizing cereal, the maker of GrapeNuts is trying to reassure customers that the familiar wheatand-barley breakfast will soon be back, still with no grapes or nuts. Post Consumer Brands, announced Thursday that it would be shipping the cereal at full capacity by mid-March, after supply-chain constraints and higher demand during the pandemic caused a shortage in late 2020. The shortage put loyal customers on edge and led to an outcry on social media, where fans expressed their frustration and told of the challenges they faced searching for the cereal.
The Learjet, which became synonymous with lifestyles of the rich and famous, is about to fade into aviation history. Canada’s Bombardier said that it will stop production of the Learjet this year to focus on more profitable planes. The famous jet was among the first private luxury planes. William
Lear based his design in part on military jets. The first Learjet flew in 1963, and more than 3,000 had been built since. Along with being a line in Carly Simon’s 1971 hit “You’re So Vain,” the jet showed up elsewhere in pop culture, including the hit TV show “Mad Men.” Frank Sinatra let Elvis Presley borrow his Learjet to elope with Priscilla Beaulieu in 1967.