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Goya CEO’s Praise of Trump Sparks Calls for Boycott

Plus, Frontline Foods is joining World Central Kitchen, and more news to start your day

Cans of Goya beans stacked in a grocery aisle Flickr/Mike Mozart
Jaya Saxena is a Correspondent at Eater.com, and the series editor of Best American Food and Travel Writing. She explores wide ranging topics like labor, identity, and food culture.

Of course this happens while canned bean consumption is at an all-time high

Robert Unanue, Goya CEO since 2004, has come under fire for remarks he made about President Trump at a roundtable for Hispanic business leaders and the announcement of the Hispanic Prosperity Initiative executive order. “We’re all truly blessed at the same time to have a leader like President Donald Trump, who is a builder,” Unanue said. “We have an incredible builder. And we pray. We pray for our leadership, our president, and we pray for our country — that we will continue to prosper and to grow.”

In response, Latinx people, Goya customers, and basically anyone who remembers how Trump talks about immigrants and brown people criticized Unanue for his praise, and are calling for a boycott. As Goya is a brand that’s ubiquitous in many Latinx and immigrant households, as well as the home of anyone who knows adobo is good on everything, there was also a fair share of heartbreak. What are those of us whose quarantine diet is 90 percent lentils going to do?

In a statement, NPR reports that Unanue doubled down on his support for Trump’s Hispanic Prosperity Initiative, saying, “Our country faces a time of historic challenge but we will meet that challenge together and continue to work towards greatness, focus on a strong recovery, and hold onto the hope for a healthier future for all.” A good, if frustrating, reminder that, no matter the brand, a CEO is a CEO. Anyway, please drop those adobo recipes.

And in other news...

  • Frontline Foods, an organization that provides food from local restaurants to essential workers, is officially joining World Central Kitchen. [Medium]
  • Atlanta vegan restaurant Slutty Vegan was hit with a slew of bad Yelp reviews after they said they would no longer give free food to cops. But fans and celebrities have come to the rescue. [Insider]
  • If you’ve ever gotten confusingly stoned after eating a CBD gummy, it could be because many of them contain THC, or more CBD than labeled. [FoodDive]
  • Burger King is making nonalcoholic beer in Denmark and Sweden. [BI]
  • We have a spike in house fires because nobody learned to use their stove before the pandemic. [The Takeout]
  • Full-service restaurants have been hit the hardest, as it’s basically impossible to do full-service that isn’t high-touch. [NRN]
  • Cameron Diaz is launching a line of “clean wines,” whatever that means. [Instagram]