A week ago, Goya Foods CEO Robert Unanue would have spoken at the Republican National Convention. It seems the embattled executive was going to rant against “cancel culture,” and maybe also the Goya boycott.
Unanue must have known this was a bad idea, because he didn’t tell his family about it. They found out through Breitbart. Josh Kosman reports for the New York Post:
Members of the family that owns Goya Foods went ballistic this week when they discovered CEO Bob Unanue was going to speak at the Republican National Convention, saying he never ran his plan to stump for Trump past the board of directors, The Post has learned.
Third-generation owners of the Spanish-foods empire say they learned about the CEO’s plan to take center stage at the high-profile political confab only after Breitbart reported on it Tuesday [of last week].
“He was flying solo,” one Goya source told The Post.
Good to know.
A majority of Unanue’s 15 cousins, who control 98 percent of the company’s stock, were opposed to the CEO’s convention plan, including family members who supported him in a sticky internal battle The Post covered just last month, sources said.
On Wednesday — the day Unanue was set to speak — he was no longer on the schedule due to a “logistical problem,” according to reports.
My guess is that the “logistical problem” was his family and his public relations firm (e.g., Michael Estevez of Burson Cohn & Wolfe) having a long talk with him.
As you might recall, Unanue was invited to the White House back in July as part of Trump’s efforts to court Latino voters. Efforts that don’t really compensate for putting kids in cages. So… credit for trying?
Refusing the July invitation wasn’t an option for Unanue. It would have been rude. Okay, fair enough. But Unanue could have limited his remarks to boilerplate platitudes.
Instead, he felt the need to praise Trump in hyperbolic terms, saying that Americans “are truly blessed ... to have a leader like ... Trump, who is a builder.” More like a demolition man.
That same day Unanue spoke in the White House, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) and others called for a Goya boycott. Unanue remained unapologetic.
The Unanue family forgave Robert for this blunder. A sane man would have been grateful for the forgiveness and made no more public statements on the issue. But not Robert Unanue, deciding he needed to make matters worse by speaking at the RNC.
“No one wants our company to be political,” one source said. “Most of the family believes this company is not supposed to be divisive or political,” the source added.
And there’s no more divisive figure in American politics today than Donald Trump.
In an e-mail, Unanue declined to talk about his convention plans or his family’s response to news of it, pointing instead to his humanitarian work.
“What I was doing these last few days was answering calls for help from organizations and food banks in Louisiana and states in the path of [Hurricane] Laura,” he wrote. “I answered the call by offering food and prayers for those affected. I am also in contact with FEMA through contact with ... Trump’s office to coordinate aid.”
Hey, Robert, I’ve got an idea for you: go on a humanitarian fact-finding mission to an ICE detention center. But, for your own safety, give them plenty of advance notice. And if you don’t know why you need to give them plenty of advance notice, Robert, then you haven’t been paying attention.
Does Goya make anything Donald Trump would actually eat? This is probably how most of us found out that Goya makes chocolate wafers.
So, is the boycott working? It’s hard to tell. Due to Trump’s failure to prevent the coronavirus epidemic from becoming a pandemic, a lot of panicked people stocked up on items like Goya canned beans. This gave Goya a sales boost that might make up for a small drop in sales these days. I seriously doubt the right-wing “buy-cott” is having much effect.
One thing experts say about boycotts is that they can be effective even if the people who say they’re boycotting are actually still buying the boycotted products. The company notices a slight change to their bottomline, up or down, but their bean counters can’t really attribute the change to the boycott or a counter to the boycott.
It also happens that people who say they support a boycott were never regular customers to begin with. For example, if there was boycott against White Castle, I would agree to not eat at White Castle nor order carry out. But that wouldn’t affect White Castle’s sales figures, because I’ve eaten, at most, four White Castle sliders in my whole life.
Still, the experts say that companies fear bad publicity could sour business relationships and cause problems for job recruitment and retention. For that reason, a company facing a boycott might make concessions even if they see no clear downward change in sales trends.
However, in the case of the Goya Foods boycott, I saw a trend in a store that suggests Goya executives should be worried about the company’s profitability.
In a supermarket in Detroit, you can probably guess which one, I noticed a couple of days ago that while they still have a lot of Goya canned beans in stock, they’re not reordering Goya products that run out. In the snack aisle, there were no Goya plantain chips (I’m not counting tostones as plantain chips) and no yucca chips either.
The supermarket did have a few bags of Goya garlic tostones. I like garlic, but not on my tostones. Maybe other people have the same dislike of garlic tostones. The supermarket might be forced to mark those down to get rid of them.
As for beverages, the supermarket still has the little bottles of Malta Goya, but no 12-ounce bottles. Instead, they had a few 6-packs of Maltín, made by the Florida Brewery, based in Florida (Goya is based in New Jersey, but that doesn’t rule out a relationship between the two companies).
Maltín is made with sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup, but it doesn’t taste as good as Goya’s “throwback” malta. If it weren’t for the boycott, I would buy more of Goya’s malta made with sugar. And for now, I couldn’t buy it even if I wanted to.
The supermarket owners probably figure that products like plantain chips and malta are too much of a short-term risks. But this whole boycott thing might blow over long before the beans go bad.
On Monday I also went to another supermarket, which I believe is also family-owned. That other supermarket also has a wide selection of Goya canned legumes. But I’m not familiar enough with that other supermarket’s stocking practices to determine if they’re restocking shorter-lived Goya products.
And I also went to CVS, which lists no Goya products on its website. However, individual store managers can stock products that are not sold online. Even so, I have never noticed a Goya product at CVS.
What would it take for the boycott to end? Speaking only for myself, I would be satisfied with either Robert Unanue apologizing and admitting that Trump’s extreme racism against Mexicans has had a ruinous effect on America, or Robert Unanue stepping down from his position as CEO of Goya Foods.
Something else that Robert Unanue needs to understand is that it is only because of his wealth that he has Trump’s support, for whatever that’s worth. Without his money, Unanue is not white enough for Trump to care about. Not that Trump cares too much more about working class whites.
Thursday, Sep 3, 2020 · 9:35:55 PM +00:00
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Alonso del Arte
I think today was the first time I saw the Goya chocolate wafers with my own eyes, though it’s possible that I had seen them before the infamous Trump Goya photo but didn’t specifically focus on them.
My mother wanted some Maria cookies, preferably both regular and chocolate. Guess who makes those? Goya. It’s not like Goya has a patent or a trademark on Maria cookies, but it is perhaps the only brand my mother has bought in the past.
Fortunately Gamesa also makes plain Maria cookies. I don’t know if Gamesa also makes chocolate Maria cookies. It could be that they do but the store has run out and hasn’t been able to reorder yet.
