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New research on food from Harvard Business School faculty on issues including the economics of food production, food safety, and business efforts to reduce hunger.
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India’s Food Supply Chain During the Pandemic

by Matt Lowe, G V Nadhanael, and Benjamin N. Roth

Policy makers in the developing world face important tradeoffs in reacting to a pandemic. The quick and complete recovery of India’s food supply chain suggests that strict lockdown measures at the onset of pandemics need not cause long-term economic damage.

Food Security and Human Mobility During the Covid-19 Lockdown

by Prithwiraj Choudhury, Wesley W. Koo, Xina Li, Nishant Kishore, Satchit Balsari, and Tarun Khanna

COVID-19 represents not only a health crisis but a crisis of food insecurity and starvation for migrants. Central governments should ensure that food security policies are implemented effectively and engage with local governments and local stakeholders to distribute food to migrants in the immediate term.

How Leaders Are Fighting Food Insecurity on Three Continents

by Howard Stevenson and Shirley Spence

The pandemic could almost double the number of people facing food crises in lower-income populations by the end of 2020. Howard Stevenson and Shirley Spence show how organizations are responding. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

How Wegmans Became a Leader in Improving Food Safety

Ray Goldberg discusses how the CEO of the Wegmans grocery chain faced a food safety issue and then helped the industry become more proactive. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Can the Global Food Industry Overcome Public Distrust?

by Sean Silverthorne

The public is losing trust in many institutions involved in putting food on our table, says Ray A. Goldberg, author of the new book Food Citizenship. Here's what needs to be done. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Targeted Price Controls on Supermarket Products

by Alberto Cavallo and Diego Aparicio

Governments sometimes consider targeted price controls when popular goods become less affordable. Looking at price controls in Argentina between 2007 and 2015, this study’s findings suggest that new technologies like mobile phones are allowing governments to better enforce targeted price control programs, but the impact of these policies on aggregate inflation is small and short-lived.

How Cellophane Changed the Way We Shop for Food

by Carmen Nobel

Research by Ai Hisano exposes cellophane's key role in developing self-service merchandising in American grocery stores, and how its manufacturers tried to control the narrative of how women buy food. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

10 Harvard Business School Research Stories That Will Make Your Mouth Water

by Sean Silverthorne

The food industry is under intense study at Harvard Business School. This story sampler looks at issues including restaurant marketing, chefs as CEOs, and the business of food science. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Standardized Color in the Food Industry: The Co-Creation of the Food Coloring Business in the United States, 1870–1940

by Ai Hisano

Beginning in the late 19th century, US food manufacturers tried to create the “right” color of foods that many consumers would recognize and in time take for granted. The United States became a leading country in the food coloring business with the rise of extensive mass marketing. By 1938, when Congress enacted the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, the food coloring business had become a central and permanent component of food marketing strategies. This paper shows how food manufacturers, dye makers, and regulators co-created the food coloring business. Food-coloring practices became integrated into an entire strategy of manufacturing and marketing in the food industry.

Food Safety Economics: The Cost of a Sick Customer

by Dina Gerdeman

When restaurants source from local growers, it can be more difficult to assess product safety—just another wrinkle in high-stakes efforts to keep our food from harming us. Just ask Chipotle. John A. Quelch discusses a recent case study on food testing. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

I’ll Have the Ice Cream Soon and the Vegetables Later: Decreasing Impatience over Time in Online Grocery Orders

by Todd Rogers, Katherine L. Milkman & Max H. Bazerman

How do people’s preferences differ when they make choices for the near term versus the more distant future? Providing evidence from a field study of an online grocer, this research shows that people act as if they will be increasingly virtuous the further into the future they project. Researchers examined how the length of delay between when an online grocery order is completed and when it is delivered affects what consumers order. They find that consumers purchase more "should" (healthy) groceries such as vegetables and less "want" (unhealthy) groceries such as ice cream the greater the delay between order completion and order delivery. The results have implications for public policy, supply chain managers, and models of time discounting. Key concepts include: Consumers spend less and order a higher percentage of "should" items and a lower percentage of "want" items the further in advance of delivery they place a grocery order. Encouraging people to order their groceries up to 5 days in advance of consumption could influence the healthfulness of the foods that people consume. Similarly, asking students in schools to select their lunches up to a week in advance could considerably increase the healthfulness of the foods they elect to eat. Online and catalog retailers that offer a range of goods as well as different delivery options might be able to improve their demand forecasting by understanding these findings. Closed for comment; 0 Comments.