• Safeway stores still cannot sell cigarettes as a judge rejected the company’s appeal of the S.F. law banning cigarette sales in pharmacies and big-box stores containing pharmacies. [SF Citizen]
• Please do not sit on the bench outside St. Francis Fountain unless you are a paying customer. Thank you. [Uptown Almanac]
• Nojo, the new Hayes Valley yakitori/izakaya, has begun charging diners $25 per person for no-shows, even if your table is just one person short of the reservation. They only take reservations for parties of six or more and too many people were scamming the system. [Between Meals/Scoop]
• Like we’ve been telling you, organic and natural pet food is on the rise, so much so that some PetCo locations have a special store-within-a-store dedicated to the products. [LAT]
• A new study shows that using a bigger fork causes people to eat less of the food on their plates. So, small plate, big fork? [Marie Claire UK]
• Some countries have grain stores, but China keeps a frozen-pork reserve, which it plans to release to the market now that prices are up. Weird. [NYT]
• Try as it might, PepsiCo just can’t beat Coke, which continues to gain shares in the drinks market. [Street]
• New Zealand is the latest country to suffer higher inflation owing partly to rising food costs. [RTT News]
• The year-old drought affecting the swath of the southern U.S. from Florida to Arizona is being dubbed a “once-in-a-generation” disaster. [Financial Times]
