> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Call your farmer on Monday - URL: https://giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io/call-your-farmer-on-monday/ - Published: 2026-10-11T15:05:38.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-11T15:05:38.000Z - Description: Monday through Thursday is quiet. Friday is World Food Day, Saturday stacks Pasta Day, Sweetest Day and SIAL Paris, and Halloween is twenty days out. The one task that runs on somebody else's calendar is a farmer in harvest. Plus smartwater sparkling, voice comments and the gift poll. - Author: giovanni gallucci - Tags: Organic Social, Social Platforms, Consumer Trends, Retail Distribution, Ingredients, Brand Positioning *Listen to this episode of The Week Ahead, then use the piece below.* Monday through Thursday this week, the food calendar is close to empty. One earnings release on Tuesday, a new sparkling water on a Walmart shelf, and that's about it. Then Friday and Saturday stack three food moments on top of each other, a trade show opens in Paris, and Halloween sits twenty days out behind all of it. A quiet Monday is the most expensive day on this calendar if you spend it like a quiet Monday. The one thing on this week's list that depends on somebody else's schedule is a farmer in the middle of harvest, and harvest doesn't care about your content calendar. So the plan below starts with a phone call. ## On the calendar **Monday, October 12.** [Coca-Cola's own release](https://www.coca-colacompany.com/media-center/smartwater-sparkling-walmart?ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io) says smartwater sparkling hits Walmart stores nationwide beginning October 12, with Walmart.com rolling out in late October and broader national distribution planned for 2027\. It's unflavored, made from vapor-distilled water and carbonation, with electrolytes added for taste, sold in eight-packs of 12-ounce cans and six-packs of half-liter bottles. More on why a small brand should care below. **Tuesday, October 13.** [Domino's](https://ir.dominos.com/?ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io) reports its third quarter. Results go out at 6:05 a.m. Eastern and the webcast starts at 8:30\. It's the only big food name on the earnings calendar between Tuesday and Thursday. Skip the call. You need one answer out of it: did the value deals bring people in the door, or did they give away margin to customers who were coming anyway. Every pizza, frozen pizza and snack brand gets asked about price for the rest of the month, by buyers and by their own bosses, and that answer is the one they'll be quoting. **Friday, October 16.** [World Food Day](https://www.fao.org/world-food-day/en?ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io), run by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization on the anniversary of its founding. Most brands skip it. The ones that don't post a stock photo of a wheat field, which is how you can tell they skipped it too. This is the most important dated item of the week for a small food brand, and the operator section below is built around it. **Saturday, October 17.** Two things on one date. National Pasta Day is October 17, one of the few food days the big calendars agree on. Same Saturday is Sweetest Day, the third Saturday in October, which started in Cleveland in the 1920s and still means something across the Midwest and close to nothing in Texas. Saturday is also opening day for [SIAL Paris](https://www.sialparis.com/?ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io), which runs October 17 through 21 at Paris Nord Villepinte, with the organizers projecting up to 8,000 exhibitors. **Saturday, October 31.** Halloween lands on a Saturday this year, which means a full weekend of parties on both ends of it. ## What's about to move ### A big name in the sparkling set If you make a sparkling water, a mineral water or a lightly functional seltzer, the premium sparkling shelf at Walmart just got a neighbor with a national ad budget. Shoppers see it this week. So does your buyer. You can't win the shelf fight with a feed, and you shouldn't try. What the feed does well is explain what you are in one sentence, before the shopper has to guess. Read their description again: distilled, carbonated, electrolytes added back. That's a process story, and it's a perfectly good one for a brand that size. If your water comes from somewhere with a name (a spring, a well, a town, an aquifer you can point at on a map), that's a different story, and this is the week to tell it once, plainly, with a photo of the place. One post. The source, the town, and what's in the can, in that order. No comparison, no naming them. The shopper will make the comparison in the aisle on their own. ### The comment box got bigger [TikTok announced it on September 3](https://newsroom.tiktok.com/say-more-in-the-comments?ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io): voice comments up to 60 seconds for accounts 18 and older, comments that hold up to nine photos, and polls on your own videos with up to five options and a voting window you set. Voice and photo comments were set to roll out globally over the following month, which puts the finish line right about now. Nobody asked for voice comments, and that's the reason to be early. A brand's TikTok comments today are the same ten words and a row of fire emoji. Starting now, somebody can leave forty seconds of their own voice telling you how they cook with your product. That's a better testimonial than most brands pay for, sitting in the comments for free. You get it by asking for the one thing a voice does better than typing. "Say the name of this dish the way your family says it." "Tell me how your grandmother made it." Pronunciation, a recipe, a story. People will type one word. They'll talk for a minute. For photo comments the ask is different: "show me where this lives in your fridge," and you get somebody's whole Sunday prep in one comment. The catch: a bad voice comment is bad out loud. A sixty-second complaint hits harder than a typed one. Somebody on your team listens to every voice comment within a day, and the angry ones get a written reply from a person with a first name. Don't delete them. An angry customer whose voice comment disappears comes back as a stitch, and that's a much worse week. ### People will spend, and feel bad about it A survey from [ICSC, the shopping center trade group](https://www.retaildive.com/news/shoppers-worried-affording-holidays-icsc/832615/?ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io), forecasts holiday retail sales up 4.3% to 4.9% from last year, past $1.7 trillion. In the same survey, 49% said they're worried about affording gifts, and 49% expect to borrow to cover purchases they can't pay off in full. Both at once is the most useful read a food brand gets before Thanksgiving. A $22 jar of very good hot honey is the gift that lets somebody feel generous without the credit card statement. Don't guess the price point in a meeting, though. Ask. One TikTok poll this week, four price points, one question: what would you spend on a gift for your sister-in-law. Then the November gift posts get built around the number your own audience picked. ## What to ship for Friday World Food Day is yours if you buy even one ingredient from somebody with a name. The farmer, the miller, the co-op, the roaster, the guy who brings the chiles up from Chihuahua. Get that person on camera for forty-five seconds saying one thing about this year's harvest: what came in early, what came in short, what they're worried about. If they won't go on camera, a voice memo over a photo of their hands works, with their first name in the caption. Shoot it by Wednesday night. Harvest is still running across a lot of the country, and a farmer in October doesn't answer the phone Thursday afternoon. Post Friday at 7 a.m. Eastern on LinkedIn and Instagram both. LinkedIn because buyers read it Friday morning before their calls. Instagram because a farmer's face pulls the warmest comments you'll see all month. The post, paste it and swap the brackets: > Today's World Food Day, so we called \[First name\]. \[He/She\] grows the \[ingredient\] in every \[product\] we make, out near \[town\]. This year the \[ingredient\] came in \[early / short / heavy\], and \[First name\] told us why in about forty seconds. Watch it. Then the next time you open a \[product\], you'll know whose year went into it. The still: the supplier's hands holding this year's crop (a handful of beans, a fistful of chiles, a split pecan) in daylight, shot at chest height from about two feet away, no product in the frame, no logo, dirt left on. If there's a truck or a barn door behind them, let it stay soft. One frame for Instagram, the same frame for LinkedIn. The video, 30 seconds, vertical, five shots, all on a phone: 1. **0 to 3 seconds.** Close on the hands working the crop. No face yet. First name and town as plain text on screen. 2. **3 to 15 seconds.** Medium shot, supplier talking to someone just off camera, answering one question: "What was different about this year?" Let them finish the sentence. Don't cut the pause. 3. **15 to 21 seconds.** The crop moving: loaded into a bin, poured into a sack, dumped onto a scale. Natural sound only. 4. **21 to 26 seconds.** Your product on a kitchen counter, opened, with the ingredient visible (in the bowl, on the spoon). 5. **26 to 30 seconds.** Back to the supplier, a two-second look at the camera. Card on screen: "World Food Day. Thanks, \[First name\]." Then cut a second version where the first three seconds are only hands, no face and no product, and post that one on TikTok the following Tuesday. If the hands version holds people longer, you've learned something about your audience that pays off on every supplier story you make next year. Saturday is a different call. Pasta Day is national, so if you sell sauce, cheese, olive oil or pasta, skip the pretty bowl and post the pot on a Saturday stove at four in the afternoon, real kitchen, real mess. Sweetest Day is regional: if you sell candy, baked goods, coffee or anything you'd hand somebody, geo-target that story or boost to Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Indiana and leave everybody else alone. A Sweetest Day post in Phoenix reads like you invented a holiday. And if Saturday isn't yours, sit it out. Saving your energy for Friday is a decision, and it beats a forced pasta joke. ## Halloween, the grown-up half The candy companies own the loud part of Halloween and they're spending like it. You won't outspend them, so don't try. The small brand play is the other half of the night: the drink at the party, the snack bowl on the porch, the thing parents eat at nine o'clock after the kids finally crash. Write that shot list this week while you're still calm, shoot it by the 23rd, post from the 26th through Halloween night. ## Your week, as a checklist - ☐ **Monday:** call your supplier. Book fifteen minutes on Tuesday or Wednesday to get them on camera or on a voice memo. - ☐ **Monday:** if you sell sparkling water or anything near it, walk the sparkling set at a Walmart, photograph it, then write your one origin post: the source, the town, what's in the can. - ☐ **Tuesday:** read one line about the Domino's quarter (did the value deals bring traffic) and put a sentence in your pricing notes. Ten minutes. - ☐ **Tuesday:** post one TikTok that asks for a voice comment. A recipe, a pronunciation, a family story. - ☐ **Wednesday:** run the gift poll. Four price points, one question, full voting window. - ☐ **Wednesday night:** supplier video shot and edited. Forty-five seconds of their voice, their first name in the caption. - ☐ **Friday, 7 a.m. Eastern:** World Food Day post goes out on LinkedIn and Instagram. - ☐ **Saturday:** Pasta Day only if it's yours. Sweetest Day only if it's yours, and only in those four states. - ☐ **Sunday:** check the gift poll, write the winning number on the whiteboard, and write the Halloween shot list. Shoot it by the 23rd. On the gift number: if your audience picked the cheapest option, the November gift posts lead with the small jar and the stocking stuffer. If they picked the middle, build a bundle and shoot it wrapped in brown paper on a kitchen table. Either way the posts get written in October and the photos get shot before November 1, because the week before Thanksgiving every photographer you know is booked. ## What I'm watching The first food brand to get a great voice comment, and the exact prompt that got it. That prompt will get copied inside of two weeks, so whoever finds it first gets about ten days of having it to themselves. And Paris. The flavors 8,000 companies carry into SIAL this week are the flavors American buyers start asking about by spring. Don't post about a show you're not at. Pick one product out of Paris that would surprise your own customers and ask them whether they'd eat it. That's a job for next Sunday's list. ## The show is the briefing This piece came out of this morning's episode of The Week Ahead, the Sunday show in The Daily Trend Report feed, where Alexis Parker and I walk the calendar before it starts. The show is the briefing. The article is the extension. The post is what you do with it. Subscribe on [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily-trends-report/id1896763846?ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io) or [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/033jcZwbZNGKpeUTRJvt1J?ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io), or read the rest at [the home page](https://giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io/), and the week is planned before you open the laptop Monday. I write about organic social, content systems and brand voice for food and beverage brands on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/galluccinet?ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io).