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A man feeding a remote Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship

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Re: A man feeding a remote Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship

#131

Post by so33 »

jrockway wrote: post #32
bluedino wrote: post #22

There's a video of a grocery trip in Alaska, the prices are insane. https://youtu.be/3TVlmmVqgnQ

Some of the prices were insane, some of them are exactly what I pay at my grocery store in Brooklyn. $7.99 for a block of cheese? Yup. But as the weight/volume increases, their prices skyrocket where wight/volume doesn't seem to matter at all here. Obviously that's where the cost comes from. What is interesting is how similar the extremes are. In the middle of nowhere, the cost of the product is dominated by shipping…

> It's only when you go out to the suburbs, probably one of society's least efficient constructions, that you see the lowest prices -- a perfect balance of efficiency, I guess. It is weird and I wonder if there's some lesson in here.

I suspect the inefficiencies are just externalized! Rent is low because land is cheap(er) in suburbia, but society pays in increased average travel times* as well as the high costs of road infrastructure needed to support suburban living in general, which is paid for in our taxes and thus doesn't show up on the price tag at the store but rather as a line item on our paychecks.

* I can walk less than five minutes to the grocery store in the urban core. Admittedly I have no data on this but based on my own experience, I'd bet it takes the average suburban household at least 10 minutes to drive to a grocery store - and 20-30 minutes to drive to a Costco-like store, placed where rent is even lower - and then 2-3 minutes on average spent looking for parking and then walking across the parking lot! Time is money, and given society's obsession with optimizing time, I find it strange how little attention we truly pay to travel times.

Re: A man feeding a remote Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship

#132

Post by TooSmugToFail »

throwaway1777 wrote: post #128
LEARAX wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I ask what "ridiculously stereotypical Croatian music" sounds like?

I’m guessing turbofolk https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo-folk

Turbofolk is more of a Serbian thing.

Re: A man feeding a remote Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship

#134

Post by TooSmugToFail »

koyote wrote: post #61
Scoundreller wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rural Croatia too, except it’s a truck that comes to all of the villages 3x/week with staple items. Plays ridiculously stereotypical Croatian music through a loudspeaker to announce his arrival. And then a meat truck once a week and a fish truck more irregularly. Took requests as well. I think of it like villages having Amazon Prime starting in the late 90s.

That's interesting! I would have thought Croatia to be small enough to not need such a system; i.e. supermarkets not further than half an hour drive away. Or is it just a matter of convenience?

It's true that a supermarket or a shop is about 30 min drive for most places, but those rural areas are typically poorer, and populated with the elderly, so driving is not an option.

Re: A man feeding a remote Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship

#135

Post by dredmorbius »

madengr wrote: post #36
joncp wrote: post #10

The scarcity of flour, especially bread flour piques my curiosity. I haven't heard about anyone eating vastly more bread than before the quarantine. It's just that everyone is making it at home instead of buying it with meals at restaurants. One would expect the flour not being shipped to the restaurants would be redirected into the retail supply chain but that doesn't appear to be the case. The only explanations I c…

Flour isn’t the problem now, it’s yeast. Fortunately my mother in law traded us a few packs for an old iMac, so my daughter can now make pizza dough. Joking aside, we did give her an iMac, but you can’t find yeast anywhere.

I'm about 2 months and a couple of dozen loaves into sourdough starter. Excellent results.

Re: A man feeding a remote Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship

#137

Post by distantaidenn »

propogandist wrote: post #114
distantaidenn wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m American but was living in Seoul at the time. A couple friends and I took an overnight trip to Busan. We were having lunch at a small restaurant, and my friend asks the staff if she can order takeout and have it sent back to her home in Seoul. Mind you Busan to Seoul is 325km. This was mind-boggling to me. I asked her, “How long is that gonna take to get there?!” She was puzzled, looked at me and said, “It’ll be…

Wow... how does this sort of delivery network work? Is it inexpensive enough to manage food takeout? I've never heard of takeout food delivery across 100s of kilometers, especially same day! I really need to visit Korea

The food was already sealed and safe for travel. Can't recall clearly, but I think it was some dried fish or sausage dish. So it was just a manner of getting it delivered. She ordered a lot and didn't want the hassle of us lugging it with us during the remainder of our day.

Still, impressive nonetheless.

Re: A man feeding a remote Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship

#138

Post by toast0 »

njarboe wrote: post #126
klipt wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

U-Hauls don't have to be rented, you can buy them: https://trucksales.uhaul.com

After you buy them with the logos removed, it is just a box van/truck.

I mean when you buy a Penske truck with the logos removed, it's just a yellow box truck. A u-haul is always going to have the distinctive shape, and they usually don't do a great job at removing the logos... They might have scraped off most of the logo, but they don't paint over it.

Re: A man feeding a remote Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship

#139

Post by spockz »

Spooky23 wrote: post #54
Retric wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment is about total bread consumption, not home-baked bread consumption. Home bakers and factories are both using the same basic ingredients, so why can’t supply chain’s easily swap? And the simple reality is they use different bags for transport and factories to fill the bags. Thus it’s a bag problem not a flour problem. PS: What’s so interesting about the shutdown is it exposed so much about the supply chain…

There’s no “bread” in bread, so the commercial bakeries are always going bankrupt, consolidating and squeezing every penny possible out of the business. The average American has no access to good bread at retail, with some frozen stuff at a supermarket bakery probably being the best available.

Bakeries in The Netherlands do quite well actually. Although they also sell patisserie and sometimes (too expensive) baking stuff, the main part is bread.

Re: A man feeding a remote Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship

#140

Post by 205guy »

lonelappde wrote: post #59
dx87 wrote: post #5

That's actually how a lot of businesses in rural parts of Alaska work, even places that don't require a boat or plane to access. My dad lives right off the highway in a small town in Alaska, and the closest thing to a grocery store is an old airplane hanger that one of the locals runs a general store out of. The owner makes weekly trips to Costco, which is ~4 hours away, and buys as much as they can fit into a big U-…

Even in big cities, Costco is a restaurant and convenience store supplier. In remote areas the warehouse part is more emphasized.

Exactly, warehouse stores started off as wholesalers for commercial customers, and then gradually shifted towards retail. A few years ago, Costco used to open an hour earlier for commercial customers, but I’m not sure they do it anymore. A few aisles are more for businesses, for example takeout containers, cleaning supplies, etc. I’ve seen owners of food truck, small restaurants, and mom&pop convenience stores getting their bulk supplies there.
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