Spice up your life!
Spice up your life!
Why Penzeys Spices spends thousands on pro-impeachment ads.
It’s been years, maybe even decades, but people still talk about the time Julia Child visited Milwaukee. In the course of her exploration, Child was presented with a thick log of Vietnamese cinnamon – the spicy, robust kind that flavors Big Red gum.
“We were really excited to show her this bark, and then give her a taste in powder form,” the shop’s owner, Patty Erd, recalls. “She took the bark out of my hand and took a giant bite out of it.”
Erd and her staff watched, equally horrified and mesmerized, as Child chewed on the hot, spicy cinnamon. After ten minutes, she swallowed. “‘Oh my dear, you're absolutely right, this is a delightful cinnamon, thank you for sharing this with me!’” Erd recalls her saying.
In another universe, Erd and Spice House (the spice shop she inherited from her father) might be a household name. But her brother, Bill Penzeys, seems to have stolen her spotlight. The pair’s differences run deeper than sibling rivalry or business competition; in fact, these days, the very future of America’s democracy is driving a wedge between them. Penzey has spent more money on impeachment ads than anyone in America (except for Trump himself).
Long before Trump took the White House, people shopped at Spice House. The family business started in 1957, when William Penzey (Erd and Penzey’s father) opened his own spice business after years of supplying coffee, tea and spices to local restaurants in Milwaukee.
Erd took over the business in 1992 with an eye for expansion. By 2009, Spice House had five locations – but Bill Penzey had been hard at work, too. He’d started his own spice company, Penzeys Spices, and racked up more than 30 locations. Today, Penzeys has nearly 70 brick and mortar locations, plus online sales.
After the 2016 election, Penzey and Erd’s political differences were thrown into the spotlight. It started with a post-election edition of Bill’s famously direct email newsletters, which provide a direct, real-time look into his thoughts and feelings. As always, Penzey was blunt. “The open embrace of racism by the Republican Party in this election is now unleashing a wave of ugliness unseen in this country for decades,” he wrote, launching a flurry of media coverage and calls for boycotts.
Erd disagreed with her brother’s caustic stance. She provided a “NOPOLITICS” coupon code that opposed her brother’s activism, and promptly scored angry comments on Facebook from customers who vehemently disagreed.
Three years have passed, but Penzey’s anti-Trump stance is still going strong. Newly released data shows that the Trump campaign has spent more than $700,000 on anti-impeachment Facebook ads – the most impeachment-related ad spending out of any group.
Next in line? Penzeys Spices, with $92,000 on pro-impeachment ads, per Axios – though Penzey told New York Magazine he’s spent closer to $128,000. (For context, Elizabeth Warren has spent just $20,000 on pro-impeachment ads.) When I visited Penzeys’ website in search of a picture on Monday night, I discovered that they’re still at it:
It’s a lot of money, but apparently only a fraction of what Penzeys once spent on physical catalogues. Over at New York Magazine, Bryan Feldman observes that it’s actually a clever business strategy. Political ads cut straight through Facebook’s increasingly opaque algorithm, yielding solid returns in an increasingly nebulous digital advertising landscape. They’re a perfect Trojan horse for disguising ads in the Trump era.
Yet it takes only a brief search to determine that Penzey’s activism probably predates Facebook itself. In a 2006 article about food media, the New York Times mentioned familiar properties like Food Network and Taste of Home – but also dedicated several paragraphs are dedicated to Penzeys One.
Though it’s now defunct, Penzeys One was a branded magazine that was ahead of its time. The publication rambled across an eclectic range of topics that free associated their way back to spices and recipes. “We’re not afraid to be a little goofy,” Penzey said at the time. “Then again, we aren’t afraid to be a little serious.”
The magazine’s 60,000 (!) subscribers also got an in-depth look at Penzey’s politics. He covered immigration policy, prison reform, even international adoption – serious issues, some of which are undeniably entangled with the spice trade’s troubled history, but ones that most retailers probably wouldn’t want to touch in a branded magazine. The magazine also pushed conservative readers’ comfort zones; one cover story about a gay couple and their surrogate prompted canceled subscriptions. Penzey shrugged and let them go.
It’s certainly possible that Penzey is a genius for leveraging politics in advertising. By aligning himself with progressive sentiments and advertising heavily on social media, he’s won a new, younger customer base who vastly outweigh the losses driven by conservative boycotts.
But Penzey’s history, and his current behavior, suggest his political views run deeper than the popular currents of the day. When the New Yorker’s Helen Rosner reached out for an interview, he “responded with one of the great rejection letters of my career,” she wrote, “a long e-mail in which he assailed the food media, critiqued my past reporting, and suggested that I skip this story altogether and instead focus on the food industry’s sexual-harassment problem.”
It seems like the truth is closest to the simplest explanation: That Penzey, in a strange refraction of the current president, is simply unfiltered. But unlike Trump, Penzey’s effect isn’t bullying. “The understanding that to best do our jobs we must embrace humanity as well as quality has set all sorts of good things in motion for us,” he wrote, “including ever better spices.”
Something else
Did you read the New Republic article by Elena Botella, an ex-Capital One staffer a few weeks back? Here’s a snippet from the very good full piece:
It was common to hear analysts say things like, “I just love to solve problems.” But what they were really doing was solving something closer to puzzles. It’s clear to me, for example, that the janitor at my middle school solved problems when she cleaned up trash. It’s far less clear whether analysts at Capital One are solving problems or creating them. In either event, the work culture at this well-appointed lender of dwindling resort is pretty much designed to encourage former students of engineering or math to let their minds drift for a few years and forget whether the equations in front of them represent the laws of thermodynamics or single moms who want to pay for their kids’ Christmas gifts without having to default on their rent or utilities payments.
Oof. Read the rest here.