I lived on henry street for a while, and I can't say that I know anything about the back end of the distribution network, but I can say this article is missing a lot of things about the front end. The produce is cheaper than a standard western store, but the quality is much more varied. Moreover, the market (in the economic sense) seems really efficient. If you see something cheap in Manhattan chinatown in every store, it might be a really good deal, and just that thing is in season or a lot of it was just delivered. But if something is cheap in just one store, it is probably in bad shape. Stores are willing to sell produce that simply wouldn't be sold in ordinary western stores; and do things I think wouldn't be allowed elsewhere. For example, I have seen one place where if they have baskets of strawberries, and some of the strawberries are getting moldy, they will by hand separate out the non moldy ones, toss the moldy ones, and repackage the baskets. Moreover, the stores don't bother to keep clean at all, you can smell them from a block away. If you like food shopping, and you pay attention, its great, but if you want to just get your food, it is a lot of work. I think most americans do not want this kind of tradeoff.
They definitely missed the point about ugly fruit and vegetables. From speaking to some of the vendors of cheaper fruits and veggies at farmer's markets, some of them (but not all) buy the second dibs (what the supermarkets and their other obligations don't buy) as well as more irregular fruit and produce.
Now, of course there is a growing ugly fruit and vegetable movement[1]. It's becoming more mainstream and even Whole Foods is buying in[2]. There is an effort in Boston to provide good affordable ugly fruit and vegetables to underserved communities.
> some of them (but not all) buy the second dibs (what the supermarkets and their other obligations don't buy) as well as more irregular fruit and produce.
On top of that, the wholesalers know that these buyers will never pay a premium price, so they may get better deals on 1st tier items than mainstream supermarkets when the wholesaler really wants to sell.
> For example, I have seen one place where if they have baskets of strawberries, and some of the strawberries are getting moldy, they will by hand separate out the non moldy ones, toss the moldy ones, and repackage the baskets.
The financial crisis, explained with strawberries.
Well, to approximate a synthetic CDO squared, you'd first put all the moldy strawberries in a new basket, label it "Strawberries", send it to the rating agency where it would be rated AAA American strawberries, and then sell firms their choice of the least, middling, or most risky slices of the basket of "AAA American strawberries."
There are lots and lots of strawberries of various different ages in a big pile. Some will be fine for the week and others are hours away from exploding in furry mould.
Someone splits them into the newest and oldest strawberries, and attaches a higher price to the former.
Someone then buys the older ones, and splits them again into the freshest and oldest. And so on, and so on until each group of strawberries is a set of near identical ages.
Finally, a customer comes along looking for strawberries to supply Wimbledon. It's in two days!
They find the basket of the very cheapest strawberries, and when asked how long they'll last they're told "Well, some will go off, but it's not like they'll all go off at the same time! As long as you buy them assuming maybe 5% will have gone off you'll be fine". One day later and 70% of them go mouldy and the rich folks at Wimbledon are shocked at the sudden shortage of strawberries.
> For example, I have seen one place where if they have baskets of strawberries, and some of the strawberries are getting moldy, they will by hand separate out the non moldy ones, toss the moldy ones, and repackage the baskets.
Having worked produce in both regular chain markets, and in "gourmet natural foods" markets, I can assure you that this is a common practice.
Makes sense to me. I get moldy strawberries so often at the local supermarket that I absolutely open the container and rumage around before I buy. If they bothered to remove the moldy ones for me, I'd appreciate it.
What's the alternative? Should they be throwing away the entire container?
At some point in the ripening, handling the berries damages them enough that it's not worth it, but otherwise the practice is fine. At the gourmet market I worked at, pretty much all the berries were taken from the original flats they arrived in and repackaged (removing the bad berries along the way).
Pro tip for delicate berries: when you get them home, remove them from the package they came in and store them in a broad container lined with paper towels, something big enough so they can be spread out with a minimum of stacking. They'll last much longer that way.
Mould is not like dirt that can just be rubbed off the product. If a package of strawberries has some mouldy berries in it, then that mould has already spread to its neighbours without being visible. All they're doing is repackaging the berries that don't have any visible mould on them, and that mould will grow very quickly.
If you buy a supposedly "mould-free" bundle that was repackaged from a mouldy bundle, the entire batch is likely to rot within a day or two of purchase.
They all have mold on them. It's only the ones that have mold colonies large enough to be spotted by eye that are sorted out. Does that correspond to how much mold is dangerous? Who can say?
PS: Side note, either USDA AMS hasn't updated their site in awhile, or some "most recent" frozen berry standards date back to the 50s/60s. Which, I guess makes sense; I imagine the process hasn't changed that much.
Picking the good strawberries and repackaging not only should be allowed, it should be mandatory. How are we gone so far away from (agricultural) reality that such a simple and necessary task is /forbidden/ ?
And this describes grocery shopping in China, not just Chinatown. I look forward to the day I can just go to a western supermarket and not have to worry about getting jipped on veggies...save so much work even if they cost a lot more money.
FYI "jipped" is actually spelled "gypped", which is a slur against Gypsies. I only raise this because I used to say it a lot, and was unaware of its etymology and connotations.
And "Gypsies", describing the Romani people, is sometimes considered derogatory because of its negative connotations, and because it is reflective of the mistaken belief that they were itinerant Egyptians.
Sorry, I had no idea where this word came from (or was spelled!). I should have just said "ripped off". In the states, the word has completely lost its original context (and more so in China).
>"I encounter a lot of people who tell me that they never knew the word 'gypped' had anything to do with gypsies, or that it's offensive — especially when the word is heard not read," says University of Texas at Austin professor Ian Hancock, who was born in Britain to Romani parents. "My response to them is, That's okay. You didn't know but now you do. So stop using it. It may mean nothing to you, but when we hear it, it still hurts."
Perhaps if you live in an area where the word "gypsy" isn't well-known - but it would be in most of Europe at least. And given the history of abuse and oppression (eg: forced sterilization, even before the nazi concentration camps) it's not really a word that should be forgotten - in the sense that forgetting history is a great way to later repeat the same mistakes, and commit similar abuse.
I don't really see how "jipped" doesn't end up pronounced as "gypped" - so the connotation remains. FWIW the Moby Thesaurus lists a long litany of synonyms along the lines of "con man" and "cheat" for the term "gypper".
Slav and slave have different pronunciation, not just different spelling (and actually, 'slav' in the meaning of slavic people was also spelled 'slave' - not sure if that was with a silent 'e' on the end or not). It's also as I understand it a name given to the slavic people by themselves: "Slav \Slav\ (sl[aum]v or sl[a^]v), n.; pl. {Slavs}. [A word originally meaning, intelligible, and used to contrast the people so called with foreigners who spoke languages unintelligible to the Slavs; akin to OSlav. slovo a word, slava fame, Skr. [,c]ru to hear. Cf. {Loud}.] (Ethnol.) One of a race of people occupying a large part of Eastern and Northern Europe, including the Russians, Bulgarians, Roumanians, Servo-Croats, Slovenes, Poles, Czechs, Wends or Sorbs, Slovaks, etc. [Written also {Slave}, and {Sclav}.] [1913 Webster]"
I'm reminded of a quote about what if the German army named their machines of war after the people they tried to exterminate, like the Apache helicopter etc.
I'm not saying we should "prohibit" words, I'm just saying I don't quite see how one could make much of a case for "gypping" being a word that isn't steeped in history of abuse of and discrimination against the Roma people. As recent as the 70s and 80s (and even to this day) for most of Europe. Eg, to quote song "Magnificent Seven" by the Clash: "What Do We Have For Entertainment? / Cops Kickin' Gypsies On The Pavement". (I never interpreted the song any other way than as a critique of systematic abuse by the police, and callousness of mass media - not as a slur by the Clash against "gypsies").
Just because "nigger" is derived from "negro" and means "black" doesn't automatically mean we can choose to pretend black people hasn't been and still are victim of racism, and decide that "nigger is now ok to use".
Because the American speakers who use it don't have a history of discriminating and abusing Roma people? There are barely any Roma people in America to abuse. Certainly in much of Europe Roma people have been treated very badly.
It's certainly true that many portrayals of black people in continental Europe often look very odd or offensive to American eyes.
I'm not sure that makes much sense. By that logic I should be fine using "indian" rather than Native American or First Nation, because it's been a thousand years since Norwegian Vikings first killed Native Americans? (Which makes doubly no sense, as there were a number of Norwegians in the early settlements of the west, and I'm sure there are a few tales of horrors to be told about some of their exploits).
To clarify, I didn't mean that the discrimination/abuse of the Roma happened a long time ago. I meant that most discrimination/abuse of the Roma has happened in Europe, not in the US. Anti-Roma racism in Europe is obvious, ugly, and contemporary. In Europe, Roma people are a coherent social group of millions of people; in the US, without mass immigration, they are a scattered minority so small that the only thing most Americans "know" about them comes from "The Hunchback of Notre Dame". With nothing to refer to, the word has been bleached of reference to Roma people in American use.
Or dig deep into English vocabulary and select a more appropriate synonym without the unwanted association: hustled, conned, swindled, scammed, deceived, ripped off, tricked, cheated, flimflammed, bamboozled, bilked, duped, hornswoggled, rooked, fleeced, burned, chiseled, snowed, fast talked, screwed, shafted, bled, suckered, stiffed, milked, gouged, overcharged... there are probably more. Some of them are shaded according to the intent of the other party and how you felt about it.
But I'm not sure any of these apply to the practice under consideration, which is selling substandard produce to people who haven't properly calibrated their expectations.
The fruit in China, at least in the big cities, is pristine. Apples are individually wrapped, everything is generally impeccable. You can get cheaper beat-up fruit in some food stalls at a cheaper price if you want.
This definitely happens outside of Chinatown as well. In fact there's a place at the border of Los Altos and Cupertino (right next to a Trader Joe's in fact) that deals with produce that is very close to expiration that was clearly sent over from other supermarkets. They also sell green that aren't "baby greens" -- i.e. they're grown a bit too mature and are now bitter and tougher than what the typical grocery store patron would like.
Obviously the nutritional value is the same, so the place makes for a great source for smoothie ingredients and frozen fruits to be consumed at a later date.
It's a very impolite but common way that Americans differentiate the two groups of people that are called Indians when the context isn't clear. Native Americans (feathers) and people from India (dots). Feathers refers to Native headdress and dot refers to a bindi, the decoration commonly worn by Hindu women.
I understand that the dot/feather thing is considered crass, but I will say it's a bit overboard to be offended at it. The idea isn't that all India Indians have dots or whatever, it's just synechdoche, where one aspect of the broader culture stands in for the whole. Like if you said, "He's from America - suit not cowboy boots." (Referring to urban vs rural America) it would hardly be offensive as a stereotype.
"Yankee" or simply "Yank" is a synechdoche that the British use for people from the US.
Tell a 6th generation Georgian whose family farm was destroyed by Sherman's March to the Sea that he's a "Yankee" and see what response you'll get.
And your 'suit not cowboy boots' comparison doesn't even make sense. In the parts of the US where cowboy boots are popular in rural areas, they are also popular in urban areas. Visit Dallas and see that dress cowboy boots go just fine with a suit. Governors and legislators, President Bush and innumerable wedding party members, have all paired cowboy boots and suits.
Lets start with nobody said they were offended, just pointed out the GP was using a racial stereotype. Calling a racial stereotype a racial stereotype when asked for clarification isn't the same as "I'm offended," that is jumping to unfounded conclusions.
Saying "Indian (dots)" doesn't make sense out of context unless you are American or very familiar with American stereotypes. You also need the "feathers" part to be able to compare the two to give it some context for those who are familiar with American stereotypes but haven't been asked "dots or feathers?" before. Saying it in an international form is confusing and unclear thus a bad use of language no matter if its offensive or not. Additionally using racially charged language unnecessarily detracts from the overall message the poster was trying to convey and their post is now hidden behind [flagged].
>Visit Dallas and see that dress cowboy boots go just fine with a suit.
I just went to a wedding a few weeks ago where the entire wedding party (including the bride) were formally dressed and wore cowboy boots and I don't even live in the south or a rural area!
> And your 'suit not cowboy boots' comparison doesn't even make sense. In the parts of the US where cowboy boots are popular in rural areas, they are also popular in urban areas. Visit Dallas and see that dress cowboy boots go just fine with a suit. Governors and legislators, President Bush and innumerable wedding party members, have all paired cowboy boots and suits.
Sounds like it makes perfect sense to me, given that my whole point was that synechdoche is about using a salient feature, not necessarily a universal one. That's what I was trying to say about the dots/feathers thing - cowboy boots are associated with (mostly southern) rural areas - they're even called cowboy boots, even if they are used other places and even if most people in the south or in rural areas don't wear them most of the time. Suits are associated with big metropolitan companies, even though people in rural areas still wear suits.
> cowboy boots are associated with (mostly southern) rural areas
Your expression seems to become less meaningful as you clarify it.
Cowboy boots are part of Western wear. The specific style (as differing from general equestrian boots) started during the cattle drive era of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas in the late 1800s.
It spread, certainly. Cowboy boots are a much more salient aspect of Montana, New Mexico, and Wyoming - decidedly non-Southern states - than Virginia, Florida, or North Carolina. What cotton farmer, tobacco farmer, or citrus grower works in cowboy boots? The traditional Florida cowboy wasn't even called a "cowboy", which is the western term, but a cowman or cracker.
I'll say this again, they are indeed called cowboy boots, which means they come from the area where there are cowboys. That's the West, not the South. (The two areas overlap in Texas and Oklahoma.)
So 1) are cowboy boots a salient feature of rural life in the US? No. They are not common to rural life in Michigan, New York, Maine, and other non-plains states.
3) Is the south the area where cowboy boots are the most salient feature? No. That would be the West. In the South you buy cowboy boots at places which sell Western wear. You don't buy cowboy boots at a places which sells "Southern clothing."
On the other hand, in the West, where cowboy boots are a salient feature, you are also likely to find people in the cities wearing dress cowboy boots with a suit.
So "cowboy boots" means someone from the West, and "suit" means someone dressed formally, "suit and cowboy boots" means someone dressed formally in the Western clothing tradition.
While "suit not cowboy boots" tells someone in the Western US to dress in the standard US/European business tradition.
But "cowboy boots not suit" makes little sense as a disjunctive. It certainly doesn't characterize someone from the rural US, or characterize someone from the rural South in the US, with someone from the city.
I'd like to chime in for future readers of this thread, a passive observation. In 2016 Seattle tech, I hear the "dots not feathers" formulation (or rarely the reverse), at least monthly, always in professional settings and nearly always used by a person in describing him or herself. Subjectively it would ring very odd and impolite to hear it from someone not describing his own ethnicity.
Clarification: Americans confuse Indians between those from Bharat/India and Native Americans. Dots and feathers is a common way to differentiate between both. I am from India.
I am from the US. "Dots and feathers" is not a common way in the US. It feels pejorative as well.
If it's ambiguous, I say "Indian (from India)" or "Indian (subcontinent)" vs. "Indian (Native American)". Or I'll just say "from India" or "Native American", and avoid that ambiguity.
Plus, I think many in the US don't know about the bindi, so referring to "dot" in that context may not help as much as you, someone from India, may think.
>I am from the US. "Dots and feathers" is not a common way in the US.
I am from the US, I have heard people say things like "I picked up some Indian artwork this weekend, dots not feathers." I've also been asked "dots or feathers?" when I was talking about something Indian. I've also been asked in gestures, pointing to the forehead to represent a bindi then saying "or" and covering and uncovering the mouth while making a noise to do that mock Indian battle cry (see the scene in Peter Pan if you are unfamiliar with it)(1).
Its not super common (for obvious reasons) but I've heard to several times from several different people so its common enough in at least some parts of the United States. Being casually racist in informal conversation is still a "thing" in the United States.
That being said, its impolite racially charged language thus very inappropriate in most cases and should be avoided especially in formal communication.
(1) I am ashamed to admit that I did that while playing "cowboys and Indians" as a child before I knew better.
A Google Book search finds only a 2002 Weekly World News opinion piece by "Ed Anger" and a 2009 book "Stealing Ganymede: A Novel".
There are ~150 hits in DDG for "Indian" plus any of the four combination of order and choice of {"and", "or", or "not"}. There are 94 hits in Google for "dots or feathers" and 120 "dots and feathers". This includes "polka dots and feathers."
Almost every single one referring to people uses that phrase in a derogatory way.
None of the 6 phrases exist in Google's n-grams.
That makes it decidedly not common, at least in the written word.
> Being casually racist in informal conversation ...
Correct, I never, ever, ever said it was appropriate, it is decidedly not. If you look up a couple posts I highlighted the problems with using it on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11985794). I don't expect that it would be in written word to often either. Point is its common enough that I've heard it several times over many years from several different people. Perhaps you don't talk to too many casually racist people or it is regional.
I still don't think it's common, though I agree it's not rare. I provided counter-evidence that my observations are not solely biased by the people I know nor the regions I've lived in. To flip your question around, perhaps you are in the one region of the US where people do that?
The other part of my response was because I didn't like the wriggle room in your paragraph describing how being 'casually racist in informal conversation is still a "thing" in the United States' and that such uses are 'very inappropriate in most cases and should be avoided especially in formal communication.'
HN is full of informal conversation. Is HN casual enough that it's one of the few places where this "thing" is appropriate? I don't think that's what you meant. I wanted to make a more firm statement which removes that possible interpretation.
I wouldn't claim that the phrase is PC, and it is indeed lazy in written form, but people need to get over being so easily offended on behalf of others.
Yes, it seems that phrase is more common than I originally assumed. That said, movies use derogatory terms, even Oscar winning movies.
People need to get over the word "PC". It's a nearly meaningless term because it comes with the pejorative assumption that the reasoning behind it is always excessive.
Do you have any word for "politically correct but not excessively so, so I think I'll change my language"? Or is every such suggestion inherently based on offense and therefore easily dismissed?
Because my statement above was to show pictures of Puebloans in Santa Fe from now and from 100 years ago, and argue that "feather" makes about as much sense as calling a 6th generation true son of Georgia a Yankee.
Are you going to go to the South and start calling everyone Yankees? Or would that not be politically correct?
I think that one factor is that in the Chinese culture, you don't expect everything to be good and available during all seasons.
At a Whole Foods, you can reasonably be assured of asparagus in the winter time. In Chinatown, things are only available when they're in season, like a farmers' market.
Also, if you've ever ordered at a Chinese restaurant with a Chinese family, you'll see this phenomenon. Instead of ordering what you want, you'll consult with the waiter to see "what's good today".
For instance, the spinach might be not up to par, so he'll substitute some nice fresh bok choy. I've not seen that in a western restaurant.
"I think that one factor is that in the Chinese culture, you don't expect everything to be good and available during all seasons."
I don't think that's a cultural thing, and certainly not an ethnic thing. I think it might have something to do with how many generations-removed one is from agrarian life (or close physical/logistical proximity to it)... Growing up in my (very white) hometown in New England, which still had plenty of farms at the time, it was well understood that the good produce was seasonal and not available in chain supermarkets.
I don't think it's an ethnic thing. But I definitely think it's a cultural thing. I agree with you about how many generations-removed you are from food production. Rather, how many steps/middlemen you're used to.
For example: China is still a developing country with a generally low per capita income. You're intimately familiar with the seasons, and what's available when, and what it takes to get your food.
Few can afford to shop at Western style supermarkets regularly, so you have a better idea (and know) the people growing and selling your food. "Oh, that's the place that always has the good cabbage". That sort of thing.
Compare that to the states, where even produce comes shrink wrapped and you have no idea how it got in the store, you just know you need to pay money to bring it home. How many trucks/resellers/packagers has this produce gone through before I take it home?
This is almost right...but the western style supermarkets in China like bgh are still very Chinese. A lot of produce comes shrink wrapped, which is something I have never seen in the states before! And it is annoying, because they will hide wilted leaves under good ones...damn it. In general, I find shopping for veggies in China nerve wracking, and it's mostly my Chinese wife doing the picking while I'm just waiting and waiting...
Wet markets are no better...often there is no place to get good cabbage, at least nowhere near my house, and we have to use something else that we could find in decent condition.
In Hawai'i produce shipped from the mainland can come shrink wrapped, such as cabbage. But also there is a lot of local produce here, so it's easy to avoid that. I think mostly it's also the "Western" style to ship something all the way to Hawai'i when it is growing not too far from the store itself.. a lot of local people shop at stores like Safeway that stock shipped produce.. it's unfortunate but it seems to be cheaper.
Was gonna say "ethnic thing means the same as cultural thing", but apparently these days people are using "ethnic" to mean "racial" rather than, well, ethnic?
Ethnic is more specific than cultural; it generally refers to a package deal that includes language, historical narratives, customs, and sometimes religion. You can speak of, for example, Cajun or Sicilian ethnicity, but you can only speak of global consumer culture.
Which is I think what the above was referring to when they said it's cultural and not ethnic; it has to do with cultural factors that cross ethnic lines.
Cultural things can be transmitted through geographic proximity rather than along ethnic lines, using "ethnic" in its original sense of "from a foreign nation" (ethnos).
Frequently in the United States, people interpret mainstream white culture as "normal" and not culturally distinct. Thus they use "ethnic" as a synonym for "nonwhite" or "non-American".
There's a lot of western restaurants (Admittedly usually on the higher end) who change their menus seasonally, if not daily to reflect whats available. Its part of what the whole farm-to-table phenomenon is about.
One thing is a lot of asian recipes tend to be more modular.
Also, the middle/lower range asian restaurants can't afford to print menus each day.
So for instance, if the shrimp don't look good that day, they'll gladly throw in the littleneck clams that just came in. Same with green leafy vegetables, where they're pretty much interchangeable.
"We have ong choy instead of a choy. Deal with it."
Whereas in a lot of western cuisines, if you need endive in a dish, it has to be endive. Especially in higher end restaurants. They care so much about the flavor that substitutions are not possible.
Maybe this green is slightly more bitter than this other green, and it throws off the whole flavor of the dish. Whereas, in a lower/middle end asian restaurant, nobody really cares.
It's not about farm to table, it's about economics and about what people prefer to eat especially in places where there is a big difference between winter and summer.
Gazpacho isn't a dish you really want to have when the temperatures drop below 0, but on a hot summer day is perfection.
Pretty much most restaurants regardless of being high end or not, have fish of the day, soup of the day, dish of the day etc. that's just a normal reaction to the supply of the market during that day as it's often considerably cheaper to secure the daily catch or w/e your veggie guy has that morning than securing seasonal items daily.
IMO, it's all about getting food from speciality purveyors vs. just checking boxes from Sysco. The cost reflects that, as the chef has to go hunt around for stuff.
I hear people say that, but I keep seeing things that are cheaper at Whole Foods than they are at Safeway. Identical products, like Endangered Species brand 88% dark chocolate and Racer 5 IPA beer are cheaper at my local Whole Foods than they are at Safeway. $3.29 vs $3.99 and $4.99 vs $5.99, respectively. Their produce and meat may be more expensive, but appears to be of higher quality.
I'm not actually sure how much more expensive Whole Foods is compared to a place like Safeway.
The two stores deal with very different tagret markets and have very different economics. Whole Foods shoppers are willing to spend way more on produce, which is usually very low margin, so they don't need to make up the profit on their other items. Compare, for example Vons and Pavilions, which are owned by the same company. In my town we have a Vons literally across the street from Pavilions and while their prices for alcohol are the same, stuff like produce, coffee, and cereal can have a huge price differences even from the same vendor. Likewise, Trader Joes has the cheapest and best eggs, milk, and other staples in my general area, despite being overall more expensive.
When it comes to produce or meat, I have never seen anything at Whole Foods that would be more expensive at a low end grocery.
Trade Joe's entire reason for existence is that most of their stuff, both packages and produce. is cheaper than other area stores. There are a private label store.
This is a common myth. I've concluded Trader Joe's exists to give a veneer of guilt-free-ness to buying junk food. Avoid the cheese and meat at all costs.
Trader Joe's is great for prepared meals, but they are absolutely the worst grocer with regard to meat and produce. Often substantially worse than discount grocers like Krogers or Smart and Final.
Mostly quality, but also pricing. IMO the meat is average price and the produce is maybe a little cheaper, but the quality of both is generally very poor, especially the meat. I've had meat that was a few days away from going rancid from several different Trader Joe's locations.
Do you have a source on that? Other than a few staples (broth, grains, sauces, eggs, milk, etc) my local Trader Joes stores are definitely not cheaper than their local competitors, especially not the ethnic markets a few miles away. Their website marketing copy says so in a roundabout way but I shop at several Trader Joes flagship stores (including the original in Pasadena and the massive ones in south Florida) and that hasn't been true for at least a decade for produce. Their frozen foods like pizza and whatnot seem equivalent but definitely not their produce (20 cents a bannana!?)
Your experience definitely does not mirror mine. Where I live, there's a WF literally across the street from a Safeway. I've extensively comparison-shopped, and have found that WF's produce (I don't eat meat, sorry) is always cheaper than Safeway's, and there's lots more selection. In general, the local WF is cheaper for anything shopping the perimeter. Packaged goods are more expensive, and often not brand-for-brand comparable owing to WF's banned ingredients.
Where do you live? My experience comes from wealthy suburbs in Los Angeles and Miami as well as the Bay Area in general but different markets are different.
There can be many effects in play like marketing, staffing, and real estate prices. The Vons I mentioned is actually getting more expensive while the Pavilions is getting cheaper because the Vons cut back on cashiers. The longer lines have caused many of my friends and I to start shopping at Pavilions, which is causing a death spiral as Vons tries to charge more for produce just so they can pay the overhead on the building (the Vons location costs twice as much in rent as the Pavilions because of lease terms and the outdoor mall it's in, despite being across the street).
I would imagine that different markets make a huge difference.
My only two points of reference are Denver, CO and Kansas City, MO.
In Kansas City, Whole Foods produce and dairy prices were anywhere from 100-200% more than their Price Chopper / Hen House / Hy-Vee equivalents. Meat was marked up around 150% from their commodity supermarket price with a marked increase in quality and variety.
Denver has a roughly 30% higher cost of living than KC, and here the Whole Foods / Sprouts produce and dairy goods prices are competitive to slightly-higher than the King Soopers (local Kroger subsidiary) / Safeway prices. Meat is marked up around 100% from the commodity supermarket price, but with the same distinction in quality and variety.
This is all anecdotal and subject to my terrible aggregated memories of shopping trips, but this subject is fascinating to ponder.
Those sorts of things are loss leaders. If you pick 20 random items at Whole Foods, you see a 30-50% price difference.
My sister is a Whole Foods acolyte. She spends like $6 a gallon for shirt dated, ultra pasteurized milk because While Foods. Same product made in the same dairy at the local store for normals is like $2.79/g.
I used to like whole foods for the cheese and hot bar. But as they made the prepared food shittier and local groceries upped the cheese game, it's just a ripoff.
My main point is that most western groceries have an expectation of having any produce in any season, eg apples during the summer and peaches during the winter.
Whole Food is just an example of a national food chain most people are familiar with.
For example, outside of the west coast, nobody knows what an Albertson's is. And outside of the midwest, nobody knows what a HyVee is.
Have you shopped at Whole Foods or Bristol Farms for seasonal products? Compared to the major grocery store chains their produce is leaps and bounds better. I don't believe in the organic marketing crap but their food, especially when it comes to fruit, is amazing, unlike anything you can find at Kroger, Publix, or Safeway.
Cherries, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, peaches, pears, apples, tomatoes, and countless of other produce taste much better than anything I can get at a normal grocery. Hell, I have very fond memories of eating fresh food from my grandparents dacha or picking wild berries in the forest behind my school and the high end grocers are the only place where they taste even remotely as good as what I had in Russia. Russia.
You get what you are willing to pay for, especially when it costs two to three times the lower end.
Part of this is due to volume. A chain like Safeway needs massive volume to supply all their stores. A smaller chain can be more selective in what they buy because they need smaller amounts. Smaller chains are also more willing to deal with local farms directly for regional supply.
In PDX, I'd rank the produce quality as:
1) farmers market (unlike many cities, in Portland the vendors are the farmers)
2) Zupans - on the spendy side but quite good
3) Whole Foods
4) Fred Meyers
5) New Seasons - small local chain, but lousy buyers
6) Safeway
At one time the farmers markets in PDX were superb, great produce at modest prices. Over the years they've become "fancy", kind of resembling Saturday Market, and prices are high. There are bargains to be found, though it takes some effort.
Asian markets, like out on 82nd, offer some interesting (and to us non-Asians, rather exotic) options. Unlike the Chinese vendors described in the article, produce is generally in good shape and prices reasonable. Also they're good places to buy cooking hardware, like an authentic cast-iron wok, for way less than what they charge at upscale kitchen stores.
No argument about Zupans for fresh fish, better than other grocers in PDX. They usually have good produce, but it is expensive and often available elsewhere for less.
Whole foods is OK, but I don't find it's particularly superior. New Seasons can be good, if selections somewhat quirky.
Freddy's is probably best for staples, partly because they're a Kroger's subsidiary which is a huge national chain. Hardly ever go to Safeway as nothing special there and further away.
I'd add that local, seasonal produce isn't hard to find in PDX, many grocers do feature regionally sourced fruits and vegetables, along with the "factory made" stuff. There's always the option of "U-Pick" on Sauvie's Island, an adventure in itself.
Whole Foods produce is only better in areas that have a Whole Foods. In areas without a Whole Foods, all the produce goes to the lower-end stores and sold for the lower prices, regardless of quality. Once Whole Foods moves in, they split off the higher-quality produce, selling it for a higher price, and the quality everywhere else drops.
Do you have any data on that? How would you know that the food that would be marked up by Whole Foods is sent instead to regular groceries to be sold for cheaper? Maybe the good produce grown locally at small scale is sold to local stores but given the extremely lucrative agricultural export market, I find it very hard to believe that the good produce is sold cheap locally instead of shipped elsewhere at a huge markup. California avacados or oranges, for example, cost significantly more in Florida or New York, far beyond the extra cost of transportation, spoilage, etc. and this profitability fuels the California agriculture industry.
Most grocery stores with a reputation for being expensive or upscale actually have list prices on comparable goods to "cheaper" stores, but carry a preponderance of more expensive products that the cheaper stores don't carry at all.
(This is for general chain grocery stores; independent and ethnic stores don't necessarily follow the danger pattern.)
Nah, I shop at both Safeway and Whole Foods, and the comparable products are cheaper at Whole Foods (vegetables, fruits, and meat) on the whole, except for the very high end items.
> For instance, the spinach might be not up to par, so he'll substitute some nice fresh bok choy. I've not seen that in a western restaurant.
All good chefs/restaurants do this. IMNHO fixed menu a la carte restaurants are rarely very good - but for some reason they seem to be common. Perhaps what's more interesting is how common it is to not do this in many restaurants. It usually just means that the kitchen doesn't care about the ingredients, or about the meals they prepare for that matter (eg: the line chefs/people actually working the kitchen day-to-day might have little freedom to influence the menu).
It helps if you speak the language. I'm not saying you don't speak the language, just for those following along at home.
You have to have some rough idea of what you want. If you want stir fried vegetables, you'll say something like "I want stir fried vegetables. What's good today?" Or "I want a seafood noodle soup. How do the mussels look? Any suggestions?"
Time location is important. Instead of just saying "What's good?" ask "I like rice plates. Anything good come in today?"
Finally, it's not always like this. I know I've squashed down at some street vendors and ordered a bowl of noodles without this conversation. This doesn't happen at every meal.
Asian restaurants in Asia tend to specialize. You want curry, go to the curry place, if you want noodles, go to the noodle place.
Asian restaurants in the states (Thai and Chinese especially) have huge menus with no clear recommendations in the name. For instance, what are you getting when you go to Morton's steak house?
The name gives you the cue. Just like if you're heading into a restaurant called "Shanghai Dumpling House" you're probably getting dumplings.
"Golden Dragon" or "Wok Shop" gives you no information to work with, so you have to extract what is good from the waiter instead of the menu.
"Just like if you're heading into a restaurant called "Shanghai Dumpling House" you're probably getting dumplings."
Be careful with this. At least in the US, the English name often has very little to do with the Chinese name, and it's the latter which is meaningful. As an example there's a place in Boston's Chinatown called the "Dumpling House" (or something along those lines) but the Chinese name is something like "tastes of north and south". Go figure, you see a lot of Westerners complaining about the dumplings here.
Basically, if you show up at an ethnic place and order what the other ethnic people are getting, it's hard to go wrong.
That's why it's maybe more of a thing in the states where you interrogate the waiter. In Asia, each restaurant does one thing, because the competition is so intense.
In the states, you expect to get broccoli beef in every Chinese restaurant, so they sort of have to offer it. Once you talk to the waiter, everything will be made clear.
Yep, that's the one. It's not that their dumplings are bad or anything like that, it's just not as much a forte of theirs as the English name would lead you to believe.
By the way, in Cupertino there is a restaurant called "Shanghai Dumpling". They serve some of the best soup dumplings I have had. The soup is not too salty and does not leave an oily mouth feeling. The service is poor, but food fast and delicious.
In Germany, asparagus season is just over, lasting from April to June. Interestingly, asparagus is one of the few vegetables which Germans fully accept as being available only seasonally. And conversely, they go totally crazy during asparagus season for no apparent reason.
About the only other seasonal vegetable is kale, which Northern Germans will once a year cook to death and serve with disgustingly fat sausages whose name derives from an old word for "penis". You can't make this up. :)
There’s some more things Germans accept as seasonal: Plums, Strawberries and non-frozen raspberries.
Especially strawberries – during early summer, on every street corner there’s someone selling strawberries from a small camping trailer painted red with green roof.
I can't help but think that this article, and other comments, gloss over some major, obvious factors:
1) More than anything else - high volumes, low margins, and intense competition. People travel to Chinatown from all over NYC to buy at those prices. When they do, they're often making a long trip (in many cases, over an hour), and so they buy in much higher quantities than they would at a local grocer or supermarket. Conversely, people who just get their groceries at a local shop aren't fools, they're saving considerable time by not having to go to Chinatown.
2) Low labor costs. Most retailers are, small-scale immigrant businesses. In many cases, it would be a family operation, where children feel obligated to help their parents, or the workers are immigrants that speak little or no English (beyond that required for selling produce), are possibly undocumented, possibly are paid cash-in-hand without being taxed, and for one reason or don't have many employment opportunities outside of Chinatown. Compared with an outfit like D'Agostino, Gristedes (both of which use unionized staff), or Whole Foods, they're going to be paying a lot less for their staff in Chinatown.
But what you are missing is that it is not primarily about the costs. The prices elsewhere are higher because those grocers want the prices to be high. They make more money from it, and there is insufficient competition to force them to lower prices.
Where I am, for example, the base price at Safeway/Vons/Pavilions for any of the cheaper produce items is $1.99/pound. It goes up from $1.99: $2.99, $3.99, etc. Nothing has a base price of $x.49/pound. This pricing scheme has little to do with costs!
(Bananas are the only exception for $x.99---depending on the location, they can be $0.69 or $0.79/pound---and there are a few items below the general $1.99 base price: like carrots or jicama, available for $0.99/pound.)
Furthermore, they do mark items down at a times. So a fruit that is normally $1.99/pound will drop to $0.99/pound for 3-7 days. This is partly because of seasonality, but mostly for marketing. It is only one item at a time, for example. Under no circumstances will they mark multiple items down to $0.99/pound simultaneously, even if the items are both in season (which is easy to judge by looking at produce markets, farmers' markets, and more sensible grocery stores). It can be frustrating to know that it is high season for peaches, but the powers-that-be have determined that this week they're marking grapes down from $3.99 to $1.99/pound, so peaches can't be discounted.
I don't think I missed that at all - I said it's mainly about high volumes, low margins, and intense competition (for example, I'd imagine the rents are actually pretty high).
I'm sure the vendors in Chinatown want the prices to be high too. It's just that, unlike Safeway/Vons/Pavilions, they have dozens of competitors within walking distance.
The other piece you are not paying for is the store, both the square footage in perhaps a more expensive location, code compliance, air conditioning/refrigeration etc.
[Edit] also, farm conditions, and supplier audit trail probably do not stack up well in realtive terms vs. mainstream grocery store
Yeah the tax thing is notable too. You see this quite a bit in NYC. Cash-only stores and restaurants can more easily misreport their income. Less paper trail to follow....
The veggies in NYC's hispanic green markets are also really cheap. Same with the produce in the Korean markets, the Cambodian markets, etc.
While there might be something unique about the Chinese markets, I think in general stuff marketed to white people is just overpriced. Just look at how the cost of food at Smorgasburg compares with the cost of prepared food in Flushing, or at the price of housing between those two locations for that matter.
This is my experience in Los Angeles as well. The Korean, Chinese, Armenian, and Mexican groceries are almost always cheaper than the national supermarket chains and often have better produce (with the exception of high end stores where you pay way more for quality) . NYC Chinatown may be a more extreme case due to density or something but American food marketing seems to have little to no effect on immigrant communities, which can easily support many low cost/high quality groceries in any metropolitan area.
Definitely true. My roommate was a Chinese international and he thought everyone in my college was crazy to pay so much for X Chinese dish or Y food at a restaurant or market. I started to agree with him once I began to go to places that aren't Whole Foods.
The local Lotte (a large Korean conglomerate) in northern VA has a huge variety of vegetables and far cheaper prices than the mainstream. Their target audience is asian/indian/hispanic and it shows. The place is totally packed and they also follow the Walmart model of renting out space inside the building for restaurants and shops (optical, barbershop, etc)
I've wanted a website for price spreads for ages. I keep ending up doing the math myself whenever one of these topics come up. Thanks!
In general, people have no idea that the retail price is 4-10 times the price for the underlying farm price. While shipping and processing take up some of the price, the limited data that I could find is that distributors are the ones taking all the profit. If you cut out a few distributors you can easily cut the price of certain goods in half. I'm guessing this is what most of these ethnic supermarkets are doing.
I'm really hoping that with the age of the internet farmers' groups will form groups that sell more or less directly to the customer and see some profit for themselves (which they can ultimately use to improve production practices).
You can see that the retail price has nearly doubled while the production price has only gone up by 30% since 1999. Some random inflation calculators on the internet tell me that since 1999 inflation has gone up 44% so the real price going to the farmers has dropped considerably.
Of all the economic issues I'm worried about, this ranks at the very top.
Growing up, I remember Marina Foods in Cupertino being much fresher than the other grocers.
> Chinatown’s green grocers, in contrast, buy their stock from a handful of small wholesalers operating from tiny warehouses right in the neighborhood
Chipotle tried hyper-localised procurement and processing. That backfired, since heterogeneity in sourcing and processing means heterogeneity in quality control. How do these markets avoid food poisoning their customers? Are the meat makers, distributors and retailers wholly separate? Do farmers of Asian vegetables avoid fertilising with manure?
> How do these markets avoid food poisoning their customers? Are the meat makers, distributors and retailers wholly separate? Do farmers of Asian vegetables avoid fertilising with manure?
By not being a juicy target for a lawsuit. These are mom and pop shops that would just disappear into the ether if there was a big foodborne illness outbreak linked to their wares. They're also not selling prepared food--if you serve unsafe food that is because you did not prepare it correctly.
Lets start with the obvious - a modern food is disgustingly safe compared to what a human immune system is capable of handling. No matter what Madison Avenue has tried to convince the US public - a single or couple of bacteria won't kill you.
And if you mean prepared Chinese food - have you seen the burners under the woks - they look, sound and consume fuel at comparable rate to a jet engine. It is very intense style of cooking using high heat for small amounts of time. The surfaces (where all the nasty stuff is) on everything that has went trough it are thoroughly sterilized.
Stuff like pickling, acids in the dressing also make the non heat treated stuff safe.
It is hard for people with normal immune system to get hurt by modern food.
In fact, a couple of bacteria are usually good for you. It keeps your immune system occupied. Over-cleanliness fuels development of allergies, as I can attest for myself, having to cope with all sorts of food, pollen, dust and animal allergies.
I had the good fortune to grow up when Have Gun Will Travel was first broadcast. One of my favorite episodes was Gun Shy, where Paladin travels to Montana and visits Ma Warren's boarding house.
Ma's house was famous for its food. Paladin lived in San Francisco and enjoyed the city's finest, and he was surprised and delighted with what Ma Warren prepared in this remote area. She was obviously a talented cook, but Paladin wondered how she got such a variety of quality ingredients. She explained.
Ma knew all the local farmers and ranchers, and they would bring her their best produce and meats to serve in her boarding house. In return, she cooked for them too!
Ma didn't have a reputation for poisoning her customers.
I wonder if Chipotle's problems had to do with being a big nationwide chain trying to be hyper-local, instead of just being someone who knew her neighbors and what they grew?
I'm pretty sure that health incidents due to food-borne pathogens have declined dramatically in the past 150 years. Eating at Chipotle is probably an order of magnitude safer on average than eating at the real "Ma Warren's" of 1875.
Absolutely. We've learned a lot about cleanliness and transmission vectors in that time, especially after there was a whole progressive reform movement on food safety sparked by Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle (ironically, a book about the living conditions and exploitation of immigrants).
There's also this effect that you hear when there's a chipotle incident anywhere in the country, but if there's a local grocery incident, it will either be local, or, not at all (because the victim count will be so low).
Bacteria can't be effectively washed off with water, which is why we use chemical abrasives and surfactants like toothpaste and soap when brushing our teeth or washing our hands. I don't know anyone who uses dish soap on their lettuce and grocery store outbreaks of food borne illness are a regular occurence, just not as sensationalized as the outbreaks at national fast food chains.
Hence the "effectively" qualifier. The physical force of running water is enough to wash off the top layers of microbes but even a small amount of bacteria can cause food borne illness so no matter what you do there will be a risk. If you dive deeper into the FDA recommendations there are toxicity reasons for not using soap or dish fluid and they actually recommend using a brush to clean firm vegetables and fruits because the abrasive movement is far more effective.
I recommend reading the CDC's studies of outbreaks which point out that in many instances the source is cross contamination of bacteria that can't be washed off due to specific molecules that adhere to the surface of produce. The CDC deals with crises and it's in a better position to study food borne illness than the FDA, which provides general advice with nearly a century of history tracing back to the progressive movement in the US. That advice is not necessarily up to date since our treatment of food has evolved to included irradiation, waxing, safety codes, etc. which get the vast majority of microbes to begin with.
my grandmother would always wash fresh vegetables in a potassium permanganate solution. i guess the practice declined as food was increasingly perceived to be safe
> Fruit and vegetable washes claim to kill more bacteria, but studies from the University of Maine have shown that tap water does as good a job or better. When produce is rinsed thoroughly, water can remove 98 percent of bacteria.
Chipotle is itself a large chain. The incentives to avoid some bad food poisoning the market for one of your 2,000 stores are a little different from the incentives to avoid poisoning your only market.
Looked at another way, the fact that a Chinatown vendor's source would add heterogeneity to a national chain's supply chain doesn't mean the Chinatown guy uses heterogeneous sourcing. He is as localized as his source is.
"Chinatown is way cheaper... I figured the prices were cheap because the selection is all C-grade bok choy and yesterday’s bananas.
Wrong again! Chinatown’s 80-plus produce markets are cheap because they are connected to a web of small farms and wholesalers that operate independently of the network supplying most mainstream supermarkets."
So what's stopping the mainstream supermarkets from doing the same thing, undercutting their competition while simultaneously increasing their profit margins? Somehow, this sounds too good to be true.
Supermarkets have to operate at scale, and their inventory has to be a relative mirror image across all locations, as well as match prices they plan and advertise in advance. To enable that standardization, there's a lot of central planning, and I imagine also a lot of centralized logistics.
These farmer market-style operations are much more fluid and flexible.
How does El Super do it because they appear to operate at scale. A friend said it could be cheaper labor cost and I just saw this-
http://elsupermarkets.com/supply-chain-act
They reference slavery and human trafficking, and say they investigate reports of it but don't audit their suppliers.
I don't have specifics but I think you could buy apples for 80 cents a pound, and everything else is just unbelievably cheap.
I'd buy a shopping cart full of vegetables and fruits for $30 which at Gelson's would easily cost 3-4 times as much.
They appear to operate at scale but they dont, at least not when compared to the major national chains. El Super has 40 stores in California and a few hundred more in Latin America whereas Safeway and Kroger have about 2500 stores each, in a market that is more picky about the appearance of produce and other factors not relevant to most other markets.
El Super, Superior, Superking, etc also source their products differently and there can be huge variation between stores depending on the neighborhood socioeconomics.l
Demand. Chinatown can do it because it's ethnic residents don't just want a great selection of produce, they demand it. They want it bad enough to fuel an entire alternative supply chain. If the people buying Chinatown's produce were replaced by less-discerning customers, the produce markets would disappear overnight and the farmers would have to unload their current crops at cut-rate prices.
Normal customers don't want it that badly. So supermarkets can't rely on being able to continually turn a profit on such a risky endeavor.
A service doesn't just have to be ten times better than the alternatives to drive mainstream adoption. It also has to be something people want bad enough to pay to create an entire industry around delivering it.
This still doesn't explain why it is cheap -- it's cheap likely because there are not too many steps between the consumer and the producer? And not too much money spent on infrastructure...
I bet the produce wasn't so cheap at first. Economies of scale had to get wrung out over decades. This is where the "China" in Chinatown becomes important, the Chinese really value the sort of long-term thinking that makes this kind of endeavor profitable.
I've looked into this a bit and it seems to be a problem of distributors. Essentially there are very few distributors in North America. In some cases there is only one distributor. If you need volume, you must buy from those distributors.
The retail price for unprocessed vegetables is somewhere around 4 or 5 times the price paid to the farmer. The big exception is milk where in most countries there are laws on the retail price. Milk is about twice the farm price. This gives you an understanding of how much the distributors are shaving off.
If you are running a small shop and you have connections to non-traditional distributors, you can probably cut the price in half. Which is what the article is claiming. But they will never be able to scale it because they just don't have access to most of the food.
> So what's stopping the mainstream supermarkets from doing the same thing, undercutting their competition while simultaneously increasing their profit margins?
you need to provide carrots/bananas/apples whole year while each is exactly the same as the other.
It's not worth the time/effort of negotiating low volume deals. Whereas local, small businesses try to maximize return on income (ROI) on low volume, bigger businesses try to maximize overall profit.
Beyond the price, I've been doing almost all of my produce shopping at smaller markets for years as a way to avoid excess packaging.
I browsed a Whole Foods last weekend and nearly everything had some form of label wrapped around the stem, was stored in a plastic mesh sack, etc.
Whole Foods promotes environmental awareness as part of its package, but a full shop there would create a significant amount of waste / recycling compared to shopping at a local farm with a basket.
I've had a similar experience with small turkish shops in Vienna. The vegetables are cheaper, fresher, and there's more varity than in the major supermarket chains.
I believe it comes down to centralisation. Major supermarkets only deal with large wholesalers than can deliver produce reliably to a large number of shops.
A small shop on the other hand is happy to buy a single crate of whatever salad just happens to be available cheaply.
In Denmark in supetmarkets 25% of the price goes to advertising. I suspect in US this is similar if not worse. So I guess that a part of the reason for cheap vegetables is that in Chinatown they do not need to advertise.
> Because the wholesalers are in Chinatown, they can deliver fresh produce several times a day, eliminating the need for retailers to maintain storage space or refrigeration
Somebody has to store the inventory someplace, incurring those storage costs, whether it's the retailer, wholesaler, or someone further upstream. And regardless of who stores it, I'd expect those costs to have the same effect on the consumer's price.
Unless the farmers literally harvest multiple times per day, wash/clean/prep the merchandise, and deliver it to the wholesaler. That seems unlikely.
Also, what about the lost economy of scale of selling and delivering to a bunch of small wholesalers, and in a physically hard-to-access location (Chinatown in Manhattan)?
Doing daily harvesting isn't that unlikely also not everything is harvested at same hour of the day. And storing inventory is open for just few hours doesn't spoil the veggies.
This is not just in NYC...but also Atlanta. I only buy from western grocery stories if I absolutely need something. Maybe some western vegetables like lettuce I will get from Publix. But fruits, vegetables and meat are cheaper at the Korean, Chinese and Mexican grocery stores. I'm not talking about the small mom and pop stores, but giant chains.
Not only are they cheaper but they have more variety. If you go to an American grocery store...the fresh fruits and vegetable and meat selection is utterly pathetic. The price can be double. And people wonder why Americans don't eat enough fruits and vegetables
In Atlanta there are major streets like Buford highway, Pleasant Hill that have several large grocery stores (size of Walmart) within a few blocks of each other ,and no western grocery stores nearby because they can't compete. You may find an Aldi, or Walmart...but not Publix or Kroger. The sale prices at American grocery stores don't even touch the regular daily prices of the ethnic markets.
You walk into an American grocery store and you have a whole aisle dedicated to cereal, a whole aisle for potato chips, a whole aisle of soda...the fresh fruits, vegetables and meat are barely 10% of the square footage. While the ethnic grocery stories it's more like 25%...and those stores are larger. Meats of any cut, filets of fish, whole fish, fish head, live fish, live crab and lobster, pigs feet, ox tail...fish of many types...American stores, you'll have your salmon filet and shrimp.
It's true the quality can be hit or miss. I never frequent the Korean stores (hmart, assi mart) anymore unless I know I will eat it within two days. I go there once every few months. I frequent the Chinese and Mexican ones. Too many bad experiences at the Korean ones. When I shop at the Korean ones I open up their meats in the store and smell it...there's been a few times when I get home and open the package, the meat is rotten.
This is not to say I don't have bad experiences at the American markets. I have...milk that expires the next day (I wasn't attentive to the date, just picked the one that was furthest out...which happened to be tomrrow), the good ol rotten strawberry in the middle...but it happens less.
American grocery stores don't offer the same price or quantity because Americans don't demand it. They would rather want their aisle of frozen dinners and breakfast cereals.
On the flip side, whenever I go to local farms, I find the prices to be high. I am not sure why this happens. For example, a pound of tomatoes just the other day at a local farm was $5.99 and my local Whole Foods was selling organic tomatoes for $2.99. I also can never seem to find organic produce from local farms.
At a guess, your local farm is engaging in price discrimination. If you care enough about "buy local" to drive out to the farm to buy the vegetables, chances are they can charge you more.
Not trying to be stereotypical but perhaps it's just because Chinese people simply value price more than other people?
one only needs to walk through Chinatown to see how much things are cheaper there. It's not just fruit and veggies but things like a haircut, repairing watches, bakeries and even pharmacies.
> Not trying to be stereotypical but perhaps it's just because Chinese people simply value price more than other people?
That is a negative way of saying Chinese people are better at making stuff cheap.
Things are cheap because their raw costs are cheap to begin with. So it is not about "valuing price", but paying for the actual cost that is appropriate.
As much as it's stereotyped as dirty and loud, I'd love to move to Chinatown (maybe a quieter part of it!) just for the super low prices in everyday goods and foods.
I can get a filling, healthy lunch for $4-5 there!
I live in the south bay, but whenever I have a business meeting in SF it's requested that I stop in Chinatown for veggies and meat, because it's so much cheaper and better than what we can get even here just 45 miles away.
I live in Dallas and have noticed significantly lower prices in the local Indian grocery stores as well. Would anybody here know if the same concept applies there as well.
This is not unique to CT. For example, you could -- last checked a few years ago -- get quite good and inexpensive fruits and vegetables around Lefferts Garden (below SE end of the Park) in Brooklyn. My personal speculation back then was that it was either a case of jacked up prices in Manhattan or a form of subsidy for that demographic.
I recently went from shopping at Gelson's in Orange County to shopping at El Super's in the Valley. The price difference in everything was shocking but the fruits and vegetables are unbelievably cheap.
As always, you can copy and paste the title on Google and bypass the paywall or use the "web" link under the title.
For those who won't bother, this is the TLDR version:
"Chinatown’s 80-plus produce markets are cheap because they are connected to a web of small farms and wholesalers that operate independently of the network supplying most mainstream supermarkets ... Because the wholesalers are in Chinatown, they can deliver fresh produce several times a day, eliminating the need for retailers to maintain storage space or refrigeration"
Would be nice if the Google link were on the front page instead of having to waste many seconds dealing with this bullshite (go to page, full text loads, split second later screen flashes and locks down, make it out to HN, look for Google link, almost flag post, wait for discussions to load, find Google/web link, wait,find correct link, reload same content, discover fluff).
Come on, really? I'm sort of hoping you're being ironic!? I mean - you're reading articles on HN about fruit and veg in Chinatown. On a Sunday. A few seconds isn't worth getting angsty about :-)
This millenium maybe? You know, the one when Internet consumption largely switched from computers with wired connections to mobile with wireless ones. The one when all the media companies started jamming tons of javascript and user interface dark patterns down our throats.
Madox's site is a "small text page"; the WSJ site, even the mobile version, is a stellar scale monolith in comparison.
This is the snob effect. People like the author believe produce is cheaper because of poor quality. Does Chinatown respond by lowering prices further because people won't buy poor quality produce?
If it weren't for prejudice then Chinatown groceries might price for more profit. The customers are missing out too. Marketing can fix this.
That's incorrect. Cheaper produce is generally known to be the best produce.
For instance, it's summer in the northern hemisphere right now. You can't turn around without running into a ripe stonefruit (peach, plum, apricot).
Because the local trees are bearing right now, not only do you get high quality produce, but you get it for cheap because there's a glut of supply. But if you want an orange, you settle for an expensive, tasteless orange flown in from Chile, cause it's winter down there and that's when oranges become ripe.
If you tried increasing prices of produce in Chinatown, people would laugh in your face and move on down. The Chinese culture is very food aware and value conscious.
I was replying to your comment that marketing was going to "solve the problem".
See my comment above about how Chinese culture is food savvy and value conscious. Increasing prices won't increase profit, it will just decrease sales to very low levels, while people laugh and move on down to the next stall.
"That's incorrect. Cheaper produce is generally known to be the best produce.
For instance, it's summer in the northern hemisphere right now. You can't turn around without running into a ripe stonefruit (peach, plum, apricot).
Because the local trees are bearing right now, not only do you get high quality produce, but you get it for cheap because there's a glut of supply. But if you want an orange, you settle for an expensive, tasteless orange flown in from Chile, cause it's winter down there and that's when oranges become ripe."
was a response to "People like the author believe produce is cheaper because of poor quality."
Perhaps there's more to it than snobbery? Take, as an anecdote, this list of food safety incidents in China [1]. Whether or not that's comparable to the issues in the North American food supply chain, someone felt that there was enough concern surrounding the quality Chinese food to write an article about it. Food for thought.
Exactly. This is why I use the word prejudice. We can extrapolate this to Muslims. Though the conversation won't be as lighthearted.
I think snob effect is the main factor, as I listed it first. Assuming I jumped to xenophobia as the deciding factor is biased. Of course how we view Muslim immigrants and Chinese produce are orders of magnitude apart in impact.
Your original post mentioned that you thought the author was inappropriately associating low prices with low quality ... that's not prejudice, though, right? That's a bog-standard standard heuristic people in my culture use to establish value (see: putting weights in electronics to make them feel more 'premium'). IMHO, it is genuinely terrifying that melamine made it into so many chinese dairy products. Perhaps the media sensationalized it too much, making the event stand out in my memory over similar local events? Who knows.
I guess what I'm getting at is rushing to the conclusion that xenophobia is the only deciding factor here seems a bit premature, and that the problem itself is likely multifaceted.
Exactly. The Aldi-principle: Sell a lot, with a low amount of labour (often even putting the pallet directly from the truck into the store), and it’ll be cheap.
Or their prices are lower because their customers, being aware of overseas prices, are more sophisticated about pricing than a typical US shoppers and so the vendors can't get any with absurdly inflated prices.
I say this because I spent a dozen years living in southern Europe where, not only are all food prices lower, (eg a loaf of bread is often 1/10 what it is in the states and American brand boxed cereal and California wine is cheaper then in their paces of origin.) but also there are product differences that reduce prices but not quality (eg eggs and milk that don't require refrigeration, vastly less packaging, few advertisements)
So yes marketing would raise prices but by bringing in more naive consumers and raising their expenses.
> there are product differences that reduce prices but not quality (eg eggs and milk that don't require refrigeration, vastly less packaging, few advertisements)
Being aware of products on sale for cheaper does not help if they're on another continent. (Given that the EU is basically an agricultural-subsidy league, it's not surprising to see produce for cheaper, either, though it depends on local wages as well.)
But the real thing which drives down the prices isn't just savvy, it's that these customers care about the price and are wiling to go to additional efforts to pay less, whether by shopping at a less-traditional or inconvenient place, or by using coupons. Meanwhile the rich-white-single-programmer happily cruises down to a nearby Whole Foods because he really doesn't care about an extra few dollars on his grocery bill; he even buys the pre-sliced fresh fruit as a convenience.
With regards to milk, note that you can find boxed milk in the US (UHT milk, or even milk powder)... it's just not as common, and culturally is regarded as an inferior good. As for eggs, you'll have to blame the USDA for the mandate that they are washed before shipment (as opposed to by the customer).
