The Boston Globe - 02.08.2019

B6 The Boston Globe FRIDAY, AUGUST 2, 2019

Business

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SPECIALTY FOODS

New Stonewall Kitchen

owner has big plansB

Jon Chesto

CHESTO MEANS BUSINESS

When a giant public company says

one of its most prominent businesses

has shed billions of dollars in value,

investors might want to run in the

other direction.

But that’s not what happened this

week at Procter & Gamble. The bean

counters in Cincinnati decided that it

was time to reassess the shrinking

might of Gillette, the Boston razor

maker that P&G acquired in 2005 for a

cool $57 billion.

The Gillette grooming business,

they calculated, had lost $8 billion in

value since the acquisition closed 14

years ago. They blamed currency fluc-

tuations and competition from up-

starts, not to mention all the bearded

millennials who are simply burning

through fewer blades. (Worth noting:

The decline doesn’t reflect the other

businesses that came with the Gillette

acquisition, including the Duracell

battery division that P&G later sold.)

A grim number, for sure. But P&G’s

stock rose on Tuesday by some 4 per-

cent. Shareholders chose to focus on

the good news in the quarterly earn-

ings: Adjusted earnings beat expecta-

tions, and P&G enjoyed a 4 percent

year-over-year organic sales growth in

the grooming division. Analysts either

downplayed the impact of the Gillette

disclosure in their latest reports on the

company, or didn’t bother to mention

the write-down at all. (In fact, the

stock has been on a tear for a while.)

So what happened? P&G had final-

CHESTO,PageB

P&Gsays

Gillettehas

lost$8b

invalue

By Maria Cramer

GLOBE STAFF

R

oy Fournier’s father-in-law had one

question for him when he asked

Fournier to start working at his

cheese shop on Blackstone Street

near Faneuil Hall:

“Can you slice?”

Forty years later, he is doing a lot

more than slicing.

Since Fournier officially took over Harry’s

Cheese and Cold Cuts around 1999, he has had to

deal with competition from grocery store chains

and long hours, as well as gentrification and the

changing tastes in cheese that have come with it.

“Mild cheddar cheese is what I used to sell,

nothing really exotic,” Fournier says during an in-

terview at the 200-square-foot shop. “Now, every-

one is into the gourmet cooking.”

So he stocks his shelves with varieties such as

aged Gouda, gruyere, and manchego. But you

won’t find tasting notes written carefully on

white cards here. Fournier lists each cheese and

its comparatively low price in black marker on

neon-colored Post-its or poster boards he props

up outside the shop.

Vats of olives — kalamata, green, and black —

sit between one of his two slicers and a fridge

filled with brie and blue cheese. Outside are large

barrels full of ice-cold water that he sells for $1 a

bottle. Those barrels were once filled with cans of

Coca-Cola. When Fournier started working at

Harry’s, it was rare for anyone to ask for water.

“If they asked for a bottle of water, I’d laugh at

them,” he says. “Back in the day, it might be

someone from out of state, like California.”

Harry’s has always been on Blackstone Street,

a short stretch of small stores and businesses be-

tween Hanover and North streets that was laid

down in 1833 and became part of Boston’s open-

air market, where pushcart vendors still hawk

fruit and vegetables every Friday and Saturday.

A fire destroyed the first store 35 years ago.

Fournier’s father-in-law, Harry D’Orsi, simply

WORKSPACE,PageB

WORKSPACE

Mild cheddar is so yesterday

Harry’s Cheese and Cold Cuts is a throwback shop that’s adapting to modern tastes

PHOTOS BY LANE TURNER/GLOBE STAFF

What does Roy

Fournier say

before having

his portrait

taken? “Say

cheese,” of

course. The

Blackstone

Street shop

owner worries

about the

neighborhood’s

gentrification.

Product labels

and lists are

hand-lettered;

the offerings

include olives.

Shirley Leung

I won’t use the “R-word” to de-
scribe the front page of Thursday’s
Boston Herald, with its “Wok Tall”
headline and a clumsy photo illustra-
tion depicting Governor Charlie Baker
sitting in a giant Chinese takeout box
of fried rice.
That’s because our country is so
polarized we can’t even agree what is
racist and what is not anymore. But

for sure, the Herald front page is

highly offensive to Chinese-Amer-

icans like me — and it should be

to everyone else.

Wok jokes are straight out of

the 1970s. They weren’t funny

then, and they aren’t funny now.

What does “Wok Tall” even mean,

anyway?

The Herald has been giving

House Speaker Bob DeLeo a hard

time for spending $4,745 on Chi-

nese takeout in April to feed people

on Beacon Hill who were working

on finalizing the state budget. On

Wednesday, the Herald asked the

governor whether he would support

the state opening up all of its books

to the public, and if he had a prob-

lem with DeLeo’s Chinese food ex-

pense. The governor didn’t provide

straight answers, nor did he appear

to be concerned about the matter.

LEUNG,PageB

WithanoldAsiantrope,Heraldwalksintoabigmess

What does

“Wok Tall” even

mean, anyway?

At left is the

Herald’s front

page for

Thursday.

By Max Jungreis

GLOBE CORRESPONDENT

Many Massachusetts residents who

have switched energy suppliers are

still paying too much for electricity, At-

torney General Maura Healey said in a

new report released Thursday.

The report found that consumers

who had switched to competitive elec-

tricity suppliers paid $76.2 million

more a year than if they had stayed

with their state-regulated utilities,

such as Eversource Energy and Na-

tional Grid. The period covered the fis-

cal year that ended in June 2018.

Healey has been hammering away

at so-called competitive electricity sup-

pliers, saying they often scam resi-

dents with deceptive marketing tactics

that dangle low prices but end up cost-

ing more. In March 2018, she released

a similar report showing that consum-

ers had paid $176.8 million more than

they should over a two-year period.

Since the release of the first report,

her office has sued a Connecticut-

based energy supplier, reached settle-

ments to refund customers with oth-

ers, and filed legislation that would

ban suppliers from negotiating con-

tracts directly with consumers.

Healey’s office said it had received

about 300 complaints about suppliers

since the first report. In the past, com-

plaints have accused suppliers of using

questionable sales tactics such as pre-

tending to be utility companies in or-

der to gain access to sensitive informa-

ELECTRICITY,PageB

Healey cites

electricity

overcharges