What Happened to Talenti?

A premium brand that got significantly worse but didn't drop the price? Seems obvious that this is going to be a story about private equity or a similar acquisition, and indeed it is.

https://www.worseonpurpose.com/ has a giant list of these, with a tracker that breaks down hundreds of once-premium brands and the exact changes that the companies that acquire the brands make to make the things cheaper and worse, capitalizing on the good name of the company until they wear it down completely.

Agreed that this happens to a lot of specialty products, but for some reason Ice Cream (or in this case gelato) always seems to go through this cycle. Its like a 10 year cycle from introduction to popularity to selling out and going with cheaper ingredients and before you know it the brand is tarnished and some other brand has taken the mantle.

The best arbitrage was that purchasing a jar like that (empty, a la carte) would cost $3. So you were basically getting amazing ice-cream for $2. Half my pantry became reused Talenti jars.

Oh yeah, my partner and I noticed this when our local grocery store had a sale on Talenti. It just... wasn't very good. Like it was just OK. For that grocery store, Nancy's Fancy is next to Talenti and - for a couple bucks more - you get something that is absolutely delicious.

I'm not associated with Nancy's Fancy but I will absolutely shill for it. Wonderful stuff.

Putting 2 servings of ice cream in a thick plastic jar was always a dumb gimmick.

Looks like classic enshittification to me. It doesn't only apply to software and services.

Same thing that happened to every other brand on earth: product quality was sacrificed to serve profit. Even the seemingly well-meaning Ben and Jerry's fell.