Upping the loyalty game this week are Pick n Pay, who will give you 20 Smart Shopper points for every litre of petrol you buy from over 500 BPs across SA until the end of March, and ten points per litre after that. There will also be as yet unspecified “additional benefits at the pump”. The points may only be used at Pick n Pays right now, but BPs will apparently be added in the fullness of time. In the meantime, Pick n Pay’s 119 franchise BP Express Stores will rejoice in the upside. The deal has been over three years in the making, or over forty if you count the efforts made by Chairman Ackerman the Elder in the 1970s to sell discounted fuel. In other news from the Big Blue, online travel agency Travelstart now allows punters to pay for flights at Pick n Pay stores nationwide, having launched a similar initiative with Pep in June.

Comment: Good work on the petrol points front, and on the online/offline hybrid approach to air tickets, a model which South African punters seem most comfortable with.

So Black Friday then, how it went? Some dispatches from the darkness. Marketing maven Chris Moerdyk got all Jeremiac on us, if that’s a word. “Only a few retailers are offering genuine discounts” he thundered, “and most retailers raised prices in October only to bring them down ahead of Black Friday(!)." Takelot scored big, with sales of over R196m – a 125% year-on-year growth in Gross Merchandise Value (GMV). Makro’s site went down for a couple of hours, indicative of the sheer volume of traffic hitting theirs and other online shops. Punters (perhaps understandably) went in search of cheap bandwidth more than any other commodity, with Telkom Black Friday the most popular Google search of the day, followed by Pick n Pay. Telkom offered punters 60GB or 120GB of free data with their Black Friday purchases.

Comment: Patchy and chaotic by the sound of things. Perhaps it really would be better to leave it on the other side of the Atlantic where it belongs. But who’s going to take that bold step first?

There was a time not so long ago when any headline about chicken producers here in the Beloved Country began with the words “Embattled” or “Troubled”. It was practically a rule. Not so much, these days: Astral has just posted a handsome set of results, with revenue for the Group up +15% to R6.7bn for the year through September, with prices and volumes up Group-wide, and Group operating profit up a whacking +78.7% to R1.9bn. The main driver was the lower cost of feed, which accounts for 67% of the wholesale cost of a broiler: prices dropped significantly in the 2017 financial year, and continued into 2018. This against a backdrop of last year’s bird flu epidemic, during which period Astral was able to continue sending out 5 million birds a week thanks to contingencies, and despite the ongoing import of cheap chicken from place like Brazil and the US.

Comment: Sales up, efficiencies up, costs down. Piece of cake.

Some worrying results from the recently-listed Rhodes Food Group, which remains on the acquisition trail in its quest to become a Player. Granted, turnover grew +11.2% to R5.1bn for the year through September, with sales in SA and sub-Saharan Africa up +11.9%, and international sales up +8.4% on improved export volumes, but that’s where the good news dries up. The aforementioned international division suffered a R5m loss on the decline of the industrial fruit puree market and higher canned-fruit costs, and at home things weren’t any better, with Group after-tax profit down -34.3% to R154.3m, mainly on costs associated with last year’s acquisition of Ma Baker, whose turnaround has been slower than expected. Undeterred it seems, Rhodes are still looking to buy businesses, most recently eyeing an unnamed RCL division which specialises in protein snacks.

Comment: Timing has not been on Rhodes’ side, although it’s establishing a nice little portfolio of iconic food brands.

A bit of good news this week to temper the interest rate hike: S&P have affirmed our long-term foreign and local currency debt ratings at BB and BB+ respectively, and maintained their stable outlook – this despite our weak economic growth and the high contingent liabilities which press upon our fiscal prospects. This outlook, say S&P, is based on their belief that “the South African government will pursue a range of economic, social, and fiscal reforms, albeit over an extended period of time.” In the meantime, the prospect of a return to growth in the third quarter remains likely, as indicated by a range of factors – the end of the drought in the farmlands of the Cape, a favourable ratio between the long-term and short-term interest rates, and expected improvements in a range of sectors, including manufacturing, electricity production and – especially – wholesale and retail trade.

Comment: Our political miracle, while precipitous in the end, was decades in the making. If an economic miracle is to come, it is going to take time.

Three new food trends, as identified and packaged by Mintel: Evergreen Consumption, which extends sustainability to the trash and ideally beyond, and will demand greater collaboration across the supply chain, and with governments, retailers, NGOs and consumers; Through the Ages (oh come on…) which takes a leaf from the beauty book and markets food products for healthy aging; and Elevated Convenience, which takes the whole cook-at-home movement to ridiculous new foodie lengths.

Nice one Pioneer Foods, which recorded a +26%?increase in operating profit to R1.6bn for the year through September, on revenue growth of +3% to R20.2bn. Pioneer is on something of an acquisition trail, having snaffled up The Good Carb Food Company, a granola maker of old England, a year ago and the remaining 50.1% in Heinz Foods SA for R50m. And with its low levels of debt, and those results under its belt, it may have an appetite for more, its predictions of muted growth in the current economy notwithstanding.