In case you missed it, Patagonia makes wine now.

Actually, the outdoor clothing and gear company has been in the food biz since 2012, when it introduced Patagonia Provisions. Since then, the division has ventured into anchovies, beer, chili, hot sauce, jerky, and more. So, why wine? And food, in general?

Retail Brew spoke to Birgit Cameron, who heads up Patagonia Provisions, to learn more about how it makes sense for the company.

This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

What got Patagonia into food in the first place?

So, the task given to me in 2012 was what would a food company look like for Patagonia? Basically Yvon [Chouinard, Patagonia’s founder] and I were talking about, what could we do? Let’s take the best of Patagonia, and build a food company that could really bring to light what we need to do around agriculture. Because if agriculture is one of the biggest contributors to the climate issues we’re facing today, we couldn’t stay away.

Patagonia, as a company, has been touching on cotton, wool, hemp, all these agricultural products for many years. Because of what we learned about food as part of this, we just felt like it was time to build out this new path forward in food.

How do you determine which products and categories to get into?

We work from a problem–solution product model, meaning identifying the problems we’re facing and finding the solutions to those problems, like regenerative agriculture or better ways of harvesting from the ocean. Then: What products can we make that really showcase that? So, for us, getting into all sorts of categories made so much sense.

So, why natural wine?

We started with beer, in 2016, to talk about regenerative perennial practices, bringing polycultures into agriculture and working with The Land Institute to create a beer. And then it felt natural to go into wine because I think it’s also a very relatable topic for people.

There are a lot of conscious consumers out there who are looking for alternatives.

How do you pick partners to work with?

The common theme is that they really are producing their wines using restorative farming practices and ancient low-intervention fermentation techniques. They’re good examples of people that are helping to rebuild damaged topsoil and restore the vitals habitats in their areas and draw down carbon, but also then incorporating these low-intervention techniques to make something interesting.

We go in with like-minded thinkers—people that are very conscious about their footprint, how they make things, how they grow things.

We also wanted it to showcase that this is a global movement. We have people from Chile, some from Europe and New York. Japan soon...Ultimately for us, that’s collective action.

What do the demographics for Patagonia Provisions look like? Are they similar to apparel?

We have a little bit of a younger demographic with the food. So we’re seeing new people come into the movement, through our food, and that’s interesting. There’s definitely a following from Patagonia, the apparel side. And then there’s that food touches everyone, right? We all have to eat three times a day.

Click here to read more from our interview with Birgit Cameron, head of Patagonia Provisions, about what’s next.—JS

Oh, is Black Friday this week? Who could forget. It’s been on our minds since October (probably even earlier, tbh), when we wrote about what retailers need to know about this year’s sales craze—and why this Black Friday is different from all other Black Fridays.

For a quick refresher...The 2020 holiday season was, to use a buzzword, “unprecedented”: Big-box retailers opted for curbside pickup and e-comm pushes to slow the spread of Covid. Now, it’s 2021. Things have somewhat returned to normal (sort of?), but Black Friday will never be the same.

• Retail giants like Walmart and Best Buy are keeping their doors closed this Thanksgiving once more. Target said this week that its stores won’t be open for Thanksgiving ever again.

“Black Friday has traditionally been the single big splash event that defines the holiday season. And I think we’re moving to a world where Black Friday becomes less and less relevant...a world where there is no single big splash shopping event, but rather a rolling season of deals,” Mike Black, CMO at e-comm insights firm Profitero, told Retail Brew at the time.

Early-bird special: Black Friday is changing shape for a few reasons. For one, consumers are shopping earlier. Back-to-school buying began “at least a month earlier than ever before,” Black said. And last year, Profitero saw more sales happening on Amazon before the Cyber 5 period than after.

That’s “magnified this year,” due to shipping delays and supply issues, Black explained.

• By early October, 45% of people had already started their holiday shopping, per McKinsey.

Add general confusion to the mix, and consumers are thinking of easy outs—like gift cards.

“What’s particularly striking already is that we’ve started to see gift cards increase in their rate of purchase versus October,” Taylor Schreiner, director at Adobe Digital Insights, told us this week. “It means that either consumers are not finding what they want to give, or they don’t know what they want to give, because they haven't seen people in person in a long time.”

+1: We’ll be breaking down Black Friday by the numbers next week.—JG, JS

Today’s top retail reads.

See no more: Images of boarded-up storefronts and empty shopping centers are the new normal in Friendship Heights, a one-time destination for high fashion in Washington, DC. (Retail Dive)

Just a minute: Five reasons why rental fashion could be a huge opportunity for luxury in China. (Jing Daily)

Where we are: Cami Téllez has big plans to turn Parade into the next “It” brand. “The world was changing, and underwear wasn’t keeping up,” the CEO said. (Bloomberg)

On Wednesdays, we wear pink spotlight Retail Brew’s readers. Want to be featured in an upcoming edition? Click here to introduce yourself.

Life as a copywriter at Macy’s isn’t just writing cute and punny lines, Allie Pinchi tells us—though that is a fun part of the job. (And one reason why she’s happy she made the jump from healthcare to retail a year ago.) Working closely with the marketing team to spot trends also plays a big role. We’ll let her spell things out.

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in retail? I work on a team that really ties the emotional element to buying anything. See an ad for a pair of pants that just speaks to your soul? Yeah, that’s us.

One thing we can’t guess about your job from your LinkedIn: We actually have a big pull when it comes to content. We watch for trends in shopping to really get to know our customers. So, not only do I get to come up with super cool copy, but we also influence some of the things you actually see from Macy’s.

What’s your favorite project you’ve worked on? We did a 2020 summer campaign where we just highlighted key summer memories from tons of people on our staff and had those products come to life in the catalog and in our digital campaigns.

Your favorite retail accounts to follow are...Madewell, Target, and Anthropologie.

One emerging retail trend you’re watching: Virtual try-on tech makes life so much easier. I’m excited to see how we can take this to the next level, even for customers that love coming into brick-and-mortar stores.

Catch up on the Retail Brew stories you may have missed.

• This company is serving up “regenerative turkey” this Thanksgiving
• How retailers like Foot Locker and PetSmart key into training to deliver on customer experience
• Walmart pushes ahead with DroneUp on more flying home deliveries