9/30 - The Wild Rainiers
And Taco Bell tries recycling, again.
Restaurants
-Farra Wine Bar serves wine by the glass and ravioli by the foot. This cozy Tribeca hang is the more accessible, less pretentious sister restaurant of two Michelin Star Atera. Eat here when you want to try, but forgot you were supposed to.
-Cake Boss guy, Buddy Valastro, will be opening a second Carlo’s Bake Shop in Times Square. Let this be a reminder: in food, generational talent always wins.
Taco Bell Tries Recycling, Again
Taco Bell would like you to collect your used sauce packets in a cardboard box and then ship them to a recycling facility. Here’s the graphic from its website:
Nothing quite says “committing to sustainability” like asking your customers to download an app (annoying), collect trash in a cardboard box (strange), find a printer (impossible), use a printer (challenging), then drop off a ‘Diablo’ crusted package at UPS (criminal).
But, let’s not make fun. The Bell of Freedom is, in fact, trying. This is a welcomed improvement from its initial packet recycling program, in which customers were asked to collect spent sauces so that one day they could be turned into a picnic table. Here’s the actual graphic used for that campaign:
#RecycleYourSauce, folks.
The Wild Rainiers: A Lesson In Silliness
We call these things Wild Rainiers, and in the 1970’s they rescued Seattle’s Rainier Brewing Company from an ominous spiral of decreasing sales.
By all accounts, Rainier Beer is and always has been a middling, uninspired, forgettable lager. Since that sort of nondescript, beer-that’s-a-beer flavor defined American brewing up until the 21st century, Rainier wasn’t struggling because of flavor– they fell behind from inadequate advertising.
In the early 1970’s, Rainier Brewing Company had contracted three different ad agencies in five years and was sixth in sales within their home state of Washington. The brewery needed a spark, badly.
In their search for advertising talent, Rainier found Heckler-Bowker, a small Seattle agency that, at the time, was mainly working with the upstart coffee company, Starbucks.
Heckler-Bowker pitched Rainier a slew of unorthodox concepts and was hired on a probationary basis. Among those concepts was the idea to strap 40-pound, 8-foot fiberglass Rainier Bottles to men in black tights, treat the bottle-men like a herd of wild animals, and name said herd the “Wild Rainiers.”
The Wild Rainiers were a hit. By the 1980’s, Rainier Brewing Company became the top selling beer in Washington, surpassing Budweiser, which had a reportedly 8X larger advertising budget. Here are some of my favorite Wild Rainier spots:
Rainier did so well that in 1987 they were bought by Australian beer conglomerate Bond Brewing. Upon purchase, Bond terminated Rainier’s relationship with Heckler-Bowker, resumed generic advertising, and, in turn, anihilated the Wild Rainiers.
Unless you’ve lived in the Northwest United States, you’ve likely never heard of Rainier Brewing Company. I have a hard time believing that would be the case if Bond Brewing had done more to protect the obviously endangered Wild Rainier species (there were only eight Wild Rainiers - that’s as endangered as it gets).
A few Seattle filmmakers are chasing this story further. Their documentary “Rainier: A Beer Odyssey” will be released in 2024. Let’s hope they hold Bond accountable for its crimes against brewing, fictional animals, and the world at large.
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