Guinness Gate ad

Guinness Gate ad

Its quiet out there in media land as we get closer to Christmas and surprisingly there has been no further coverage this morning of the supermarkets continued tit-for-tat price cutting on festive vegetables.

There is however more interest in the great Guinness shortage. Writing in the Financial Times columnist John Gapper looks at the potential lessons for owner Diageo. He warns against neglecting historically successful brands at the expensive of the latest celebrity backed start-up.

The shortage is also picked up by the Sky News Money blog which looks at how Gen Z influencers and the social media trend of ‘Splitting the G’ has boosted sales of the black stuff.

The Sky blog also spots the story that The Grocer broke yesterday in which Sainsbury’s has resolved the friction issues it had been suffering at its self-service checkouts which were created by its attempts to crackdown on fraud and dodgy vouchers. Sainsbury’s has added new anti-fraud measures which mean staff are no longer needed to verify a purchase every time a customer tries to scan an item with a reduced to clear yellow sticker.

Everyone loves a company boss mega pay deal story and today it comes in The Times which is flagging up the more than £9m earnings being trousered by Imperial Brands CEO Stefan Bomhard. He was paid £9.1m for the year to the end of September which was up from £8.9m the previous year and £3.4m in 2021 which was his first full year in charge of the tobacco giant.

Finally, this morning The Standard takes a look at how two UK strawberry growers have massively ramped up their yields ahead of Christmas. It reports that two West Sussex producers have delivered 38 tonnes of the fruit for the Christmas period which is 40% higher than last year. The vertical farming systems have been deployed by Wicks Farm, based in Ford, near Arundel and The Summer Berry Company (TSBC) based in Colworth, near Chichester. They are being supported by Tesco and the project requires 50% less water and yields 3.5 times more fruit per square metre to enable a constant supply of strawberries all year round.