Wegmans Ranked No. 1 For Company Reputation

People love Wegmans.

The Rochester, New York-based grocer has unseated Amazon as the firm with the best corporate reputation among a list of 100 highly visible companies, according to an annual Nielsen poll released this week.

“To be recognized in this way is just incredible,” Danny Wegman, the company’s chief executive, said in a statement. “It always starts with our people, who thrill our customers every day and extend a family feeling in our stores across six states.”

In an age where social media anthropomorphizes products -- from toilet paper to body wash -- branding matters. And although Wegmans has only 85 stores, the company has built a cult following online. Fans applaud the supermarket's decent wages, wide selection of prepared foods and reasonable prices.

Amazon ranked second in the Nielsen poll, followed by Samsung, Costco, Johnson & Johnson and Kraft Foods. The company with the worst reputation on the list was Goldman Sachs.

To determine the rankings in the Harris Poll Reputation Quotient study, evaluated annually for the last 16 years, Nielsen conducted an online survey in English of 27,278 U.S. respondents between Oct. 20 and Dec. 18.

Whiskey-Swilling Women Are Killing Vodka Sales

Move over, vodka. Whiskey is having better luck with the ladies these days.

Sales of vodka have dropped in the last two years after a decade of dominance, according to a Wednesday report in The Wall Street Journal. Women, long the target consumer for such brands as Smirnoff and Absolut, are abandoning vodka in favor of the brown stuff.

“We’re realizing women don’t have to be ghettoized into these female cocktail options like cosmos and appletinis,” Meghan O’Dea, a 28-year-old essayist and member of a drinking club called The Whiskey Women, told The Huffington Post. “We’re seeing a move toward gender-neutral drinking.”

These women -- from left, Jamie Estes, Peggy Noe Stevens and Cynthia Norp -- are members of the whiskey club Bourbon Women, based in Louisville, Kentucky. (Image credit: AP)

That means more whiskey. According to the firm International Wine & Spirit Research, Americans drank 24 million cases of domestically produced whiskey in 2013 -- a 30 percent spike from a decade ago.

Meanwhile, vodka is losing ground. Total U.S. sales of vodka grew by just 3.7 percent last year, compared with the 4 percent growth of the U.S. liquor industry overall, according to data from the trade group Distilled Spirits Council. This marks the second year in a row that vodka underperformed compared to the industry average, which it had bested for much of the last two decades.

Part of the problem is the glut of sweet-flavored vodkas available to consumers. These 600 flavored brands -- some of which include options that taste like whipped cream, cake or berries -- failed to draw in new drinkers and instead are cannibalizing the traditional vodka market. Now, after years of explosive growth, sales are starting to flatten.

“All of these flavored products try to target the new drinker -- between 21 and 30 -- and especially women,” Fred Minnick, author of the book Whiskey Women: The Untold Story of How Women Saved Bourbon, Scotch, and Irish Whiskey, told HuffPost. “But today’s woman doesn’t have the same parameters set on them as with their mothers and grandmothers -- they drink what they want.”

Whiskey has a traditionally masculine identity rooted in the temperance movement that ushered in the 13-year era of alcohol prohibition nearly a century ago. Even after the booze ban was lifted in 1933, distilleries were fearful of targeting women because pamphlets from anti-alcohol campaigners had associated whiskey-drinking women with prostitution, Minnick said. Some states passed laws making it illegal to feature women in liquor advertisements. It wasn't until 1987 that the Distilled Spirits Council of the United Stated lifted a ban on advertising directly to women.

A lithograph from the late 1800s depicts women in the temperance movement crusading to ban alcohol. (Image credit: Library of Congress)

But the gender bias remains a part of pop culture. Certain drinks, such as the fruity, vodka-based cosmopolitan cocktail, are perceived to be "girl drinks," a term which Slate columnist Troy Patterson explains as being meant for “persons eager to know the fun of catching a buzz while staying ignorant of the bliss of tasting liquor.” A scene from the recent Seth Rogen comedy “The Interview” depicts North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un feeling self-conscious that his love of margaritas is “too feminine.”

“Women are tired of this coded language used about drinks that’s limited their personal expression and what they can enjoy,” said O’Dea, the Whiskey Women club member. “There’s an idea that women can’t handle the burn or don’t like the flavor of anything that doesn’t taste like a 5-year-old mixed it.”

Those attitudes are changing. O'Dea points to Olivia Pope, the leading character on ABC’s hit drama "Scandal,” as a sign of the shift. Pope, a strong female protagonist, is also an opinionated wine connoisseur, a trait that O'Dea says may empower other women to take more pride in their poison.

“Real-life women are consciously realizing that the beverages you enjoy have a lot to say about who you are as a woman,” O'Dea said. “Women are shying away from drinks that infantilize them.”

5 Totally Obscure Facts About Monopoly

It's the 80th anniversary of the iconic board game Monopoly. Yes, the "world's favorite family gaming brand" is older than some of our grandparents.

It seems Monopoly was always a hit -- even in its early days. Parker Brothers released the game in the U.S. in 1935, and within a year 35,000 copies were being made each week.

Even if you've been playing Monopoly for eight decades, we bet you still don't know these five things about it:

1. The first version of Monopoly was invented by a woman.

While Charles Darrow is credited with inventing the famous Parker Brothers board game, a woman should actually be given credit for creating the concept the game is based on.

In a story for Smithsonian Magazine, Mary Pilon, author of a book on the history of Monopoly, says that in 1904 a woman named Lizzie Magie received a patent for a Monopoly-like game she had invented. Her Landlord's Game consisted of a "square board with nine rectangular spaces on each side," according to Pilon's story. The players had to circle around the board, buying properties and railroads and paying rent. There were even two corners with instructions to "Go to Jail" or go to the "Public Park." Magie intended Landlord's Game to teach people about "the evils of accruing vast sums of wealth at the expense of others," writes Pilon.

Though Magie's game was distributed officially for a while, homemade versions eventually were passed around without lending any credit to her. Darrow presented one of these unofficial versions to the Parker Brothers and, according to Pilon, lied about inventing it.

2. The Monopoly Man may have been modeled after J.P. Morgan.

The image of the Monopoly Man, also known as Rich Uncle Pennybags, is rumored to have been drawn to resemble the famous businessman J.P. Morgan. According to Jetset Magazine, this is entirely possible. In the decades before the game's wide distribution, Morgan had been one of the most influential men in the country. Among his many exploits, he helped found the massive United States Steel Corporation, which many considered a monopoly.

3. The highest-rent property is different in each international version of the game.

In the United States, the property with the highest rent is Boardwalk, which is named for a street in Atlantic City. But if you're playing the Spanish version of the game, the highest-rent property is Paseo de Prado, named for a street in Madrid. And in France, the most expensive place to rent is the Rue de la Paix, a Parisian street.

4. During World War II, British secret service officials used Monopoly boxes to smuggle escape maps to prisoners of war in Germany.

The story of how this happened is partly due to coincidence. According to ABC, the British secret service wanted to find a way to smuggle maps to British POWS in German camps but didn't want to use paper maps, which made too much noise when handled and could be damaged by rainwater. In 1941 the British enlisted silk manufacturing company John Waddington Ltd. to print maps that would be sturdier and easier to hide than paper ones. As it turned out, that company was also responsible for licensing Monopoly games outside the U.S.

Because the Nazis were having trouble getting supplies and goods to their own soldiers, they would often accept humanitarian aid packages for prisoners. The secret service took advantage of this opening and slipped special versions of Monopoly into POW camps. These Monopoly boxes contained regular games pieces and a number of escape supplies, including a metal file, compass, silk escape map and even some real money mixed in with the play money.

5. For Monopoly's 80th anniversary, Hasbro put real money into 80 game sets distributed in France.

Hasbro, which owns Parker Brothers, put real-world currency in 80 of the 30,000 anniversary editions printed in France. That means 80 lucky people will purchase a Monopoly game containing 20,580 Euros ($23,348). The special boxes will weigh the same as a regular version, but they'll be a little bit thicker than normal.

BONUS: If you absolutely cannot get enough of the game, you can enter a Monopoly tournament for a chance to win $20,580.

Every four to five years, Hasbro hosts a U.S. Championship and a World Championship for Monopoly, according to Harpers. Winners can earn up to $20,580, equal to the total amount of play money that comes in each version of the game.

And here's a tip on how to win the game, courtesy of 2009 U.S. national champ Richard Marinaccio:

Monopoly players around the kitchen table think the game is all about accumulation. You know, making a lot of money. But the real object is to bankrupt your opponents as quickly as possible. To have just enough so that everybody else has nothing.

Here's What The People Delivering Your Instacart Groceries Really Think

In today's app economy, part-time work just isn't what it used to be.

Once upon a time, a part-time job at a supermarket would have meant spending hours behind a cash register. These days, a part-time grocery job could mean spending hours in your car waiting for an order to come in -- and not necessarily getting paid for that time.

As Instacart, a grocery delivery app that pairs customers with personal shoppers, continues to increase in popularity, some employees at the much-hyped startup are speaking out about what it's really like to do their jobs. Their experiences raise a number of questions about what the future holds for increasingly popular apps that offer on-demand services, from car rides to vacation rentals to home cleaning.

Instacart contracts with 4,000 independent personal shoppers, who work in 15 cities around the country. Shoppers receive a digital shopping list from customers and then pick out those items at a local grocery store, before showing up at the customer's door with the goods. In return, the shoppers are "compensated based on a formula that factors in the number of orders per shift and the number of items per order," according to a company spokeswoman. "During busy shifts, shoppers can earn $20 or more an hour depending on tips.” The company's website says shoppers "make up to $25 an hour."

When shifts aren't busy, several employees said their minimum hourly base pay was $10, and that their typical hourly pay usually hovered around that figure. Instacart declined to confirm whether it offers base pay, and some Instacart workers told HuffPost they are not offered an hourly guaranteed wage.

“It’s a really strange job, and there are many weeks where you’re just sitting in the car waiting for orders and hoping something comes in, not being paid to be there,” one of Instacart’s personal shoppers, a 24-year-old college dropout based in Chicago, told The Huffington Post in an interview. “But it’s keeping gas in my car. I’m working a job that requires gas that is essentially just paying for my car. It feels like selling my hair to buy a hairbrush.”

The employee, who did not wish to be identified for fear of losing his job with the company, said that during his first week with Instacart, he made about $350 working just three days. At the end of the week, however, he made a mistake on an order and received a negative customer rating, which led to fewer and smaller orders to fill. Because he’d only been working for a few shifts, it took some time for his "shopper score" -- and his pay -- to bounce back. Meanwhile, his better-rated colleagues were getting more lucrative opportunities.

He would have quit months ago, he said, but he needs the money to keep his car, which he uses to get to his other two part-time jobs.

“It feels like I’m playing a video game, except in real life for real money," he said.

Another shopper who worked with the company in Philadelphia for six months last year said the amount of driving required by the gig sometimes meant spending more money on gas than she earned over a five-hour shift making deliveries to neighborhoods and suburbs located more than a half-hour’s drive from her home near Center City. The 31-year-old entrepreneur is no longer with the company.

“For a part-time gig to earn some extra cash, sure, [the pay was fair],” the former shopper, who also did not want to be identified by name, told HuffPost. “Not really for a main source of income because it's minimum wage and very physically and mentally taxing.”

Not all Instacart workers are disenchanted, of course. Another employee in Chicago, a 27-year-old film student and musician who started shopping for Instacart two months ago, told HuffPost he is “overall pretty grateful” for the work. He praised the experience as “kind of fun” -- like being a contestant on the defunct game show “Supermarket Sweep.” He plans to stick around.

“There are days when I’m on point and can see the order, and it’ll be like ‘A Beautiful Mind’ and I can just map out the whole store in my head and know where everything will be,” he said. “Other days, I’m just staring [down an aisle] like, ‘Where is the molasses?’ Those moments to me are the worst because in my mind I feel the clock moving.”

Lace, a 28-year-old performance artist who started working as an Instacart shopper in Houston last year but has since transferred to Los Angeles, also said she "loves" working for the company.

"It's really easy work that pays well," Lace told HuffPost.

The worst part, she said, is dealing with "pushy and demanding" customers who don't tip, even after she lugs heavy items -- like cases of bottled water -- into their homes. When Instacart shoppers order multiples of the same heavy item, like cases of water or bags of cat litter, the company formula still counts those as "one" item, shoppers explained. As a result, getting the order to the customer's house doesn't always come with a bulk-order bonus.

"Some complain about the price of produce, then you get to their place and they live in a giant mansion in the hills," Lace added. "Catering to every whim of the upper crust, when you're just trying to hustle through your shift, can be aggravating, but we do our best."

Sunil Raman, a general manager at Instacart, told HuffPost that the company's data on the continued activity of its shopper fleet indicates that most shoppers are happy with the gig.

"There are bound to be bumps in the road, but we’re really working hard to help our shoppers along the way," Raman said.

Scrolling through dozens of Instacart worker reviews on Glassdoor.com, a site that lets people post anonymous reviews and salary information about companies, some common themes emerge: People posting on the site described being happy with the flexible scheduling, a high level of autonomy and a relatively relaxed work environment. Other posters complained about sometimes-unpredictable pay and the isolation of spending most of a work shift alone, as well as the financial stress of paying for a vehicle, gas, tolls and smartphone -- the engine that powers it all.

Arun Sundararajan, a professor at New York University who has been dubbed the “go-to expert” on the so-called sharing economy, said the conditions are ripe for a company like Instacart to expand rapidly, as on-demand apps continue to grow in popularity. (The sharing economy, for the uninitiated, describes an emerging business category catering to individuals who rent or borrow goods, such as cars or apartments, instead of buying them.) Instacart also sees greater odds for success thanks to the availability of apps and smartphones that use GPS, technologies that weren't in people's pockets when dot-com flameouts like Kozmo and Webvan attempted grocery delivery and failed.

“It’s very easy for someone to get a GPS-enabled smartphone, so your labor pool is potentially huge, and the technology in the stores has also become far more amenable to this,” Sundararajan said. “The click-and-collect model of how we buy stuff has become increasingly possible because of all of this.”

Still, the success of a company like Instacart ultimately depends on the quality of service offered by its workers, the vast majority of whom are independent contractors who do not earn health insurance, vacation days or paid sick leave. Instacart's full-time employees -- developers, managers and sales reps, for example -- do enjoy such benefits, but there are only about 100 of these positions at the company.

Sundararajan argued that this business model is risky for Instacart and other firms like it because it hands over so much control to workers who don't feel particularly invested in the company's overall health. Workers have detailed similar experiences at other rapidly growing apps, Uber and HomeJoy among them.

Sundararajan suggested that a company like Instacart consider, at minimum, pairing newbie shoppers with expert mentors when they are starting out.

“Eventually these companies’ brand comes from consistent high quality, and that rests almost entirely in the hands of freelance workers,” Sundararajan said. “It’s simply smart capitalism to have a healthy workforce of people motivated to work for you.”

Raman, the Instacart manager, told HuffPost the company does "try to incorporate feedback [from shoppers] into all the improvements we make in the business.”

He said the company formed a "shopper happiness" team late last year, which provides support to workers through a shopper hotline that's available 18 hours a day. The team is also responsible for shopper roundtables to inform how the company's software is designed, as well as shopper parties and other get-togethers.

Hunter Stuart contributed to this story from New York.

Clarification: A previous version of this story described Instacart's shoppers as employees; they are independent contractors.

The Long-Run Cop-Out

On Monday, President Obama will call for a significant increase in spending, reversing the harsh cuts of the past few years. He won’t get all he’s asking for, but it’s a move in the right direction.

Read the whole story at The New York Times

Nationwide Killed A Hypothetical Kid To Make A Point (And A Commercial) And The Internet Had None Of It

Nationwide had everyone feeling good with its first Super Bowl commercial featuring Mindy Kaling, and then took it all away.

The second commercial got off to a good start, with a cute little kid talking about how he'd never get cooties or get married, and then there was the big reveal: He's dead.

And the entire Internet said, "Whaaaaatttt?!" Here are some of the best reactions:

Overheard in Nationwide advertising meeting: "Yeah, these are okay, but do you have anything where we can kill a kid?"

— Eric Stangel (@EricStangel) February 2, 2015

#Nationwide: "We killed an actual kid for this commercial just so you could understand we mean business."

— Elon James White (@elonjames) February 2, 2015

Nice #Nationwide In case your kid dies, have insurance so you can go on vacation afterwards #SuperBowI

— David Brody (@David_Brody) February 2, 2015

Nationwide says "Enjoy the Halftime Show!" pic.twitter.com/VGesJZBWlN

— Dan O'Donnell (@DanODradio) February 2, 2015

So everyone hated the Nationwide commercial. Which means everyone will be taking about Nationwide. Which means Nationwide wins.

— Seth Davis (@SethDavisHoops) February 2, 2015

Hey, what's the Super Bowl for if not being reminded of how fragile life truly is?

One In 5 American Kids Are On Food Stamps

Here's more evidence that the economic recovery isn't benefitting the people who need it most: One in 5 American kids got food stamps in 2014, up from 1 in 8 before the recession.

About 16 million kids relied on the U.S. government's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in 2014, according to Census Bureau data released Wednesday, up from 15.6 million a year earlier. In 2007, before the start of the Great Recession, that figure was only 9 million.

The Census also found that the percentage of kids on food stamps rose across all types of living arrangements. Nearly half of kids on food stamps live with only their mother.

Enrollment in the food-stamp program began to steadily climb in 2007. Overall enrollment began to fall in 2013 as the economy slowly improved. Children's enrollment dipped a bit in 2013, but rebounded to new highs last year.

The numbers highlight how unfair the recovery has been so far. Most of its benefits have gone to the wealthy, while middle- and low-income Americans have continued to suffer.

The number of kids living in poverty, for example, has risen since the recession. According to a recent study by the Southern Education Foundation, 51 percent of U.S. public school students live in poverty, up from 42 percent in 2006.

Earlier this week, the Congressional Budget Office projected that food stamp enrollment would fall steadily in the coming years. But not all of the declines will be for positive reasons: The Huffington Post previously reported that food stamp enrollment is expected to fall by 1 million next year because of rules that will push unemployed, childless adults off the program.