Tess Vigeland reports that pop-up stores have taken on a new dimension in the Bay Area: budding chefs are enticing foodies to an abandoned trolley car garage in Oakland, Calif., on Wednesday evenings where they offer (and test market) gourmet offerings such as duck confit, handmade rigatoni and carrot cupcakes with goat cheese frosting. Samin Nosrat and Christopher Lee started the Pop-Up General Store concept last winter after shuttering their high-end Italian restaurant. "It's just kind of a little incubator for businesses," Nosrat says. "We've realized that the current paradigm of what it means to be a food …

Yesterday, in case you missed it, was National Ice Cream Day, as designated by President Ronald Reagan in 1984. Leigh Goessl reports that Baskin Robbins earlier in the week announced that it will be "retiring" five venerable flavors to coincide with its 65th anniversary his year. The pensioned flavors are: Caramel Praline Cheesecake (1970), Campfire S'mores (1975), Apple Pie a La Mode (1976), Superfudge Truffle (2007) and -- believe it or not -- French Vanilla, which has been around since the very beginning (1945). "One can only puzzle why they would drop a popular flavor such …

Brian Steinberg reports that, according to Nielsen researchers, advertisers' focus on younger customers between the ages of 18 and 49 is out of date, thanks to a massive population of baby boomers, smaller salaries for younger families who are also likely to have fewer children, and changes in consumers' lifestyle sparked by new technology. The key point is that there will be a lot of geezers trolling the aisles in coming decades. "This is not something that demographers and anthropologists have tons of models sitting around that they can talk about," says Doug Anderson, Nielsen's senior vp-research …

Eli Lilly CEO John Lechleiter, a chemist by training and career-long company man, talks with Kathy Chu about the ornery challenges facing brand-name pharmaceuticals, including legal challenges from pharmacies alleging price fixing to looming government regulations. The biggest challenge, he maintains, is sustaining "the flow of innovative medicines" to compete against generic versions of "our own products." Not a problem for Lilly, Lechleiter maintains, despite several patent expirations on the horizon. "We have the most exciting pipeline today in our history," he says. "Nearly 70 molecules are in some stage of clinical development, so we're confident that while …

A new Joe Pytka-directed spot for Pepsi Max out of TBWA/Chiat/Day plays off of a spot the director put together for Pepsi in 1995, before the Colas Wars became balkanized with extensions to address every consumer contingency short of, say, Pepsi Sour vs. Coke Tart. In the original spot, drivers for Coke and Pepsi share their respective beverages with each other in a diner. A brawl erupts when the Coke guy refuses to return the Pepsi after having had a taste of it, Andrew Adam Newman reports. The new version, which takes on Coke Zero, ends with the Pepsi …

The cigarette industry disputed critics who say that menthol flavoring increases the risks of cigarette smoking in testimony before a U.S. Food and Drug Administration panel yesterday. The panel is considering limiting or banning flavoring on the grounds that it makes cigarettes more addictive and harder to quit, Shayndi Rice reports. "Our analysis of the published scientific literature and internal studies concludes that menthol added to cigarettes does not increase the inherent health risks of smoking," according to Jane Y. Lewis, svp for Altria Group. But Matthew Myers, president of Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, says menthol cigarettes leads to more …

Reading Jonathan Weil's coverage of the Securities and Exchange Commission's settlement agreement yesterday with Goldman Sachs, one walks away with the notion that it gained a lot more than the $550 million the brokerage agreed to pay (most of it to the investors it allegedly mislead). In short, the SEC scored a PR coup, and "finally can boast that it's doing God's work again." Some of it has to do with what Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein can't do. He can't deny that Goldman committed securities fraud. "He'll just have to suck it up and take the hit," Weil writes. "It's …