Springfield, Illinois is launching a holiday "buy local" shopping campaign called the "Capital Shopping Spree". The $35,000 marketing campaign will reach out to consumers via web, television, radio, and newspaper advertising. "Captiol Shopping Spree" will also include a $1,000 shopping spree which consumers can register for in local stores. They hope this shopping spree, and cmapaign, will get shoppers to spend their holiday present budget in local stores instead of big box stores. This move will keep money local in these hard economic times.

Good luck Springfield! Hopefully other cities will follow suit!

-Jess 

Hershey's is under attack. Mars Chocolate Company is making a big move on Hershey's American turf. Mars has built a $70 million "Dove Chocolate Center of Excellence" in south-central Pennsylvania, just 10 MILES from Hershey's flagship factory in Hershey. All this while Hershey's is struggling to cut costs closing American plants,outsourcing production, and blending cocoa butter substitutes in some of their candies. But Mars is showing no pity for Hershey, and using its shortcomings to make gains in the market.

Mars is changing its publiclity messages to convey Hershey's cost cutting techniques of moving produce out of the US. Mars' premium brand Dove is "Made in the USA" and Mars can be trusted "to provide pure, rich chocolate," it says.

Mars is also making ground by surpassing Hershey as America's largest candymaker after purchasing Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company for $23 billion. Take that Hershey!

I have to say I don't pity Hershey's at all-they've closed 6 North American plants-3 in Canada and one in California, one in Connecticut, and in Pennsylvania. AND they've outsourced production of American chocolate to Mexico, Brazil, India and China!

Shame, shame Hershey's! You go, Dove! 

-Jess

This past Thursday, the new tv show, "From Farm to Table ", premiered on upstate New York's public television station WMHT ch. 17. The show, which will be a series of 13 half-hour episodes, will be hosted by Kim Sopczyk, a nutrition community educator for Cornell University Cooperative Extension of Warren County, and educate viewers on local foods and how to use them in cooking.

Through the cooking demonstrations and educational segments featuring local farms, the Cornell Cooperative Extension and WMHT hopes to show families of all backgrounds how accessible local foods ares, and how easy it is to use them everyday.

To continue with the local theme and to show how family friendly the recipes are, Kim will have a local child assist her in preparing her recipes. Cute! 

The show will air for twelve more Thursdays at 7:30, and will reair on Saturday afternoons at 2:30. If you can't watch it in your area, check out WMHT's page for "From Farm to Table" to watch the show (coming soon) and find recipes from the show.

-Jess 

It makes me so sad when I have to do this, but today I had to remove two Locallectual companies from our database after discovering they were outsourcing the manufacturing of some of their products.

I picked up a Paulina Quintana shirt today to see that the shirt was made India. This is a children's apparel company that had previously answered an email from me saying that manufactured all their wares in Los Angeles!

I also had to remove women's clothing manufacturer Geren Ford after finding some of their clothing on shopbop.com that was labeled as imported! 

Shame, shame!

-Jess