Butter Sales Are Booming as We Anxiety-Bake Our Way Through the Nine Circles of Hell

Land O’ Lakes says sales are up even compared to a “normal” year

The dairy industry has been facing numerous challenges recently. Americans are increasingly turning to alternative, plant-based milks, and with the pandemic, restaurants aren’t buying cheese like they used to. But butter producers seem to be doing fine, thanks to everyone who is channeling their anxiety into baking. Land O’ Lakes said in a statement that net earnings were way up this year, and that it “expects butter sales to reach 275 million to 300 million pounds in 2020, an increase of more than 20% from a normal year.”

Land O’ Lakes typically stores butter made over the summer, the slowest baking season, for the holidays, but this year Americans have baked right on through the heat, because literally what else were we doing? Butter does have an edge though. As Fooddive writes, “The ingredient has benefited from clean-label trends as well as fad diets like keto, which require high fat intake. Butter also has gained ground as shoppers avoid processed alternatives like margarine.” So if it helps thinking that baking that extra snacking cake is saving the American dairy industry, all the more reason to go for it.

And in other news...

• Starbucks’ red holiday cups are returning on Friday, and the chain is also giving away reusable versions. You can’t actually use the reusable cups at a Starbucks location right now, but if you show up with one, they’ll give you a 10-cent discount on your paper cup drink. [BI]
• Some Panera locations are testing out beer, wine, and hard seltzer. [RB]
• Chipotle is closing some locations, and limiting hours at others, because so many of its employees are contracting COVID-19. [BQ]
• A crate of satsuma mandarin oranges sold for $9,600 in Japan to an as-yet unidentified bidder. Some inspirational pandemic shopping right there. [CNN]
• Did we need an official report to tell us Americans were mainlining ice cream and alcohol while watching election results? [CNN]
• Even though fast food breakfast has been disrupted because fewer people are commuting to work, Wendy’s breakfast menu remains popular. [NBC]
• Marks & Spencer is making a flaky pastry donut called a Yumnut. Yumnut! [Twitter]
• Pizza to the Polls raised $1.4 million to give out over 66,000 pizzas at poll lines across the country. [Insider]
• Waiting for Nevada like:

• All AM Intel Coverage [E]