SNAP restrictions are spreading. States are banning junk food purchases. Major food companies are watching their customer base get legislated away. Coca-Cola executives are learning that poverty comes with terms and conditions now.
The restrictions target soda, candy, and processed foods. You know, the entire business model of every company that advertises during daytime television. Frito-Lay spent decades engineering the perfect balance of salt, fat, and addictive crunch for people using government assistance, and now seventeen state legislatures are saying "not anymore." Turns out when you're spending taxpayer money, taxpayers get opinions about your Cheetos.
The beverage industry is particularly f*cked. SNAP recipients spend billions on soda annually. That revenue stream is now drying up because some policy intern ran the diabetes numbers and had a panic attack. PepsiCo's growth strategy just became "hope people with actual money still want Mountain Dew."
Food companies are monitoring this closely. That's corporate speak for "our lobbyists are working overtime." They built entire product lines around the fact that processed garbage is cheap and EBT cards don't discriminate. Now they have to pivot to selling $6 organic quinoa bowls to people who think grain bowls are a conspiracy. Good luck with that.
The real comedy is watching Wall Street analysts try to quantify this. They're modeling out SNAP purchasing patterns like they're predicting Fed policy. Some Goldman desk jockey is building a Monte Carlo simulation to forecast how many fewer Doritos get sold when poor people are forced to buy vegetables. His model has a 47-slide deck. It will be wrong.
Retail traders saw this headline and immediately started shorting snack food ETFs. They think they cracked the code. They didn't notice that SNAP represents 1.3% of total food sales and that Kroger will just put the Takis on a different shelf. But sure, load up on those puts. I'm confident this is the trade that finally makes you solvent.
Photo by on Unsplash
Leave a Comment