Eat This Newsletter

Subscribe
Archives
September 5, 2023

Apologies

Hello

Apologies for cluttering your inbox twice in as many days.

Apologies too for being an idiot. In yesterday’s email I said that fresh milk was always a seller’s market. This is categorically wrong. It is, of course, a buyer’s market, as Anne Mendelson explained. My fault entirely.

While I’m here, though, let me share something I cut from the interview because it didn’t really fit. I wondered about the origin of the phrase “cash cow,” seeing as it didn’t obviously apply to the dairy farmer. Anne Mendelson said that it was coined by a business consultant, and I went digging further.

The earliest evidence in the Oxford English Dictionary is from Forbes in 1975. All the definitions have in common the idea the phrase is based on a dairy cow that offers a steady stream of income with little maintenance. What that tells me is that business strategists and their ilk have never actually understood the effort in getting either a steady stream of milk or a steady stream of income from that milk.

Toodle pip

Image of my signature

p.s. For those of you that are into that kind of thing, I am now on Mastodon.

Don't miss what's next. Subscribe to Eat This Newsletter:
Start the conversation:
Instagram
Powered by Buttondown, the easiest way to start and grow your newsletter.