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As a fish loving Indian, I was totally surprised to see that in Capitalist America the choice of fish was absolutely pathetic. At American fish places you only get "shrimps" may be "large shrimps" and "small shrimps". Salmon, Bass, Red Snapper and just few handful of usual fish. My small village fish market offers at least 20 varieties of fish in India's coastal region. A proper fish market would offer at least 100.…
Fascinating. I'm wondering if there's an opportunity for a tech startup to replicate this network more generally. I could see the network connecting the sellers with the farmers directly, plus coordinating delivery of the veggies... it's an easier problem than ubereats delivery as you've got fewer nodes. Maybe you even skip the sellers entirely, which basically gets you to CSA boxes but those always felt expensive to…
This feels like the proverbial dollar left on the street that economists say should not exist, so I'm racking my brain trying to figure out what's stopping chains from replicating this. I wonder whether this alternate network is as scrupulous about source tracking and food safety regulations. Those costs could be driving up prices on the traditional retail side.
>I'm racking my brain trying to figure out what's stopping chains from replicating this. Scale. Anything living has a level of variability and likelihood of failure/damage/spoilage to it that gets harder and harder to manage as your scale gets bigger. When you're a small shopkeeper who sells about 3 baskets of apples a day, it's both easier to sift through it and throw out the bad ones AND easier to find 3 basket's w…
So instead of "I want to grow, and my current 100 suppliers are an unmanageable drag on that." being followed by "I need that consolidated towards 10, so my purchasing agents can talk with them all more often, and thus better manage my supply chain.", it might instead be followed by "I need that replicated towards 1000, so my purchasing software has the sample sizes and redundancy to do the machine learning and statistics to better manage my supply network."
> When you're smaller, have smaller scale suppliers, and less complicated distribution network
A more complicated to manage network in some ways. Lots of fine grain tactical purchasing with multiple competing suppliers, that you couldn't staff at supermarket scale.
As a fish loving Indian, I was totally surprised to see that in Capitalist America the choice of fish was absolutely pathetic. At American fish places you only get "shrimps" may be "large shrimps" and "small shrimps". Salmon, Bass, Red Snapper and just few handful of usual fish. My small village fish market offers at least 20 varieties of fish in India's coastal region. A proper fish market would offer at least 100.…
As explained below, the issue is one of demand. For whatever reason, people in the US don't like fish.
I'm Bengali, which means our cuisine includes a lot of fish. But in the US, I almost never eat fish in restaurants - only when we're cooking it at home. And that's because the way it's cooked is absolutely terrible. People in the US tend to prefer fish that's already bland to begin with (cod, haddock, tilapia, and sometimes tuna or salmon), and the ways they like it cooked don't add very much flavor to the process.
So, for people like me who actually enjoy tasty fish, there are very few options in the US (short of cooking it ourselves) because there are very few others (like me) in the US who actually enjoy tasty fish.
It's sad, but true.
As a fish loving Indian, I was totally surprised to see that in Capitalist America the choice of fish was absolutely pathetic. At American fish places you only get "shrimps" may be "large shrimps" and "small shrimps". Salmon, Bass, Red Snapper and just few handful of usual fish. My small village fish market offers at least 20 varieties of fish in India's coastal region. A proper fish market would offer at least 100.…
America has a lot of land, and infrastructure to feed, raise and transport animals. Meat prices in America are so cheap relative to cost of living it's staggering.
But yes, this means our seafood market choice is pretty bad.
As a fish loving Indian, I was totally surprised to see that in Capitalist America the choice of fish was absolutely pathetic. At American fish places you only get "shrimps" may be "large shrimps" and "small shrimps". Salmon, Bass, Red Snapper and just few handful of usual fish. My small village fish market offers at least 20 varieties of fish in India's coastal region. A proper fish market would offer at least 100.…
OTOH try getting a real salad in China
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Chinese don't eat raw foods at all, and especially not vegetables, which they correctly (by the standards of Chinatown produce) view as being unsanitary until thoroughly cooked. That's not strictly true. There are plenty of classical Chinese dishes - many of them family type dishes - that are composed of raw vegetables. Also pickling is pretty big in Chinese cuisine, but I guess that's not "raw" in the technical se…
> Lastly, Chinese people love raw seafood - sushi, oysters, etc. Which Chinese people? There are approximately zero sushi restaurants in Manhattan Chinatown. There are a whole bunch of sushi restaurants in adjacent SoHo, which is filled with non-Chinese yuppies. anecdotal: took my Chinese co-worker to The Pokespot takeout for lunch and he immediately turned around and went somewhere else when he saw that the menu con…
Ha! I figured out the reason even before I read the whole article... always a gratifying feeling. That said, there are tons of food hacks if you want to save 30-40% and have a strong stomach. Buy your cashews, cumin seeds, turmeric, groundnuts, papayas, guavas from the nearby Indian store - there's tons of them in CA. Most of these are sourced from Fiji, Philippines, India etc, whereas Safeway would source cumin from…
> "and no sales tax ofcourse wink wink" Actually in CA, many groceries are not subject to sales tax, just FYI. I'm not sure where the distinction is drawn, but it seems like the less processed the food the less likely it will be taxed.
From Wikipedia: In grocery stores, unprepared food items are not taxed but vitamins and all other items are. Ready-to-eat hot foods, whether sold by supermarkets or other vendors, are taxed. Restaurant bills are taxed. As an exception, hot beverages and bakery items are tax-exempt if and only if they are for take-out and are not sold with any other hot food. If consumed on the seller's premises, such items are taxed like restaurant meals. All other food is exempt from sales tax.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_and_use_taxes_in_Califor...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Chinese don't eat raw foods at all, and especially not vegetables, which they correctly (by the standards of Chinatown produce) view as being unsanitary until thoroughly cooked. That's not strictly true. There are plenty of classical Chinese dishes - many of them family type dishes - that are composed of raw vegetables. Also pickling is pretty big in Chinese cuisine, but I guess that's not "raw" in the technical se…
> Lastly, Chinese people love raw seafood - sushi, oysters, etc. Which Chinese people? There are approximately zero sushi restaurants in Manhattan Chinatown. There are a whole bunch of sushi restaurants in adjacent SoHo, which is filled with non-Chinese yuppies. anecdotal: took my Chinese co-worker to The Pokespot takeout for lunch and he immediately turned around and went somewhere else when he saw that the menu con…
this rarely gets mentioned in these articles but it's extremely important. The Chinese food culture is substantially different than the Western food culture, and I don't just mean the items on the menu. Chinese don't eat raw foods at all, and especially not vegetables, which they correctly (by the standards of Chinatown produce) view as being unsanitary until thoroughly cooked. They have created a market that is effi…