Is phone food too slow?

July 23, 2002

Marketers Push Single Servings And Families Hungrily Dig In

A frozen, individually wrapped peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Surely no one would want that, thought executives at jam maker J.M. Smucker Co. After all, there's nothing easier for someone to slap together than PB&J.

But after testing a hockey puck shaped, plastic-wrapped sandwich in several midwestern states, and generating $20 million in sales, Smucker's now is shipping frozen PB&J almost everywhere except the coasts.

"People were saying putting cereal into a bowl, adding milk to it and eating it is not convenient. Ten years ago, cereal was the simplest thing you could eat," he says. Now, he says, people ask, "Can I do something else while I'm eating it?"

I thought I was lazy when slapping some peanut butter and jelly on two slices of bread or pouring a bowl of cereal. How long will it be before Americans have no connection with the natural state of foods? "You mean, you can eat an apple right off a tree?"