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

thehustle.co

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

#201

Post by 7952 »

madaxe_again wrote: post #164
koyote wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Small, but the transport network isn’t necessarily reliable. Mountains are a big obstacle. Croatia, like most of the balkans, is really mountainous. When it’s not mountains it’s islands. Nightmare for transport infrastructure development. A lot of rural Europe has laughably poor mountain infrastructure - dirt roads, often badly damaged, are sometimes the only way in or out of a village, and when it rains, the guy wit…

Do you think motorbikes are a viable alternative in these kind of areas? It would just seem easier to ride a dirt bike down difficult roads.

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

#202

Post by awiesenhofer »

madaxe_again wrote: post #164
koyote wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Small, but the transport network isn’t necessarily reliable. Mountains are a big obstacle. Croatia, like most of the balkans, is really mountainous. When it’s not mountains it’s islands. Nightmare for transport infrastructure development. A lot of rural Europe has laughably poor mountain infrastructure - dirt roads, often badly damaged, are sometimes the only way in or out of a village, and when it rains, the guy wit…

The sad part is, Bosnia once had an incredibly dense narrow gauge railway network throughout the country and region but it deminished and closed down starting in the 1960ies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrow-gauge_railways_in_Bosni...

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

#203

Post by dx87 »

EE84M3i wrote: post #76
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-…

What causes a town not large enough to support a grocery store to have a U-Haul rental?

It's probably not actually a U-Haul, I just couldn't think of the name of the type of truck and figured enough people have seen big U-Haul trucks that they'd be able to picture the size of truck I'm talking about.

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

#204

Post by throwaway55554 »

bigiain wrote: post #33
pengaru wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On what planet does anybody pivot to eating home-baked bread without consuming substantially more of it?

If it works, it's delicious and you end up eating heaps more than usual. If your first two or three attempts a baking bread fail, then you end up becoming one of those people with 85% of a 20lb bag of flour in the cupboard waiting for the weevils to move in... (The temp calibration on my oven is way out. Doesn't matter too much for roasting chickens or cooking lasagne, but baking is more temperamental than that, and…

> waiting for the weevils to move in...

Hatch. If you get weevils, they were already there just waiting to hatch.

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

#205

Post by jefftk »

notyourday wrote: post #194
jefftk wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been placing orders with a specialty restaurant supplier here in Boston, and the prices are generally equal or better than retail. Including delivery! As long as we're up for eating the minimum quantity it's a good deal.

They are comparable to Whole Foods or special store prices which are significantly higher than prices in grocery stores regular people ( read : people who don't spend $100/dinner for two and don't bat an eye ) shop.

I'm pretty price-conscious, and our household spends ~$140/person/month on groceries (with most meals eaten in the home).

Here are some things I've gotten from https://www.baldorfood.com/ in the past few weeks, including delivery:

* Bread flour at $0.46/lb

* Yeast at $4.96/lb

* Vanilla extract at $2.55/oz

* Cherry tomatoes at $1.42/pt

* Onions at $0.90/lb

* Honeycrisp apples at $1.05/lb

* Baby spinach at $4.38/lb

These are all as good or better than the Market Basket (local cheap grocery store) price, and the quality is higher. There are also many products that are fancier and more expensive than they would be at Market Basket, but I can just not buy those.

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

#206

Post by throwaway55554 »

mattigames wrote: post #48
Scoundreller wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the joke is that people that start fresh baking bread at home start eating a lot more of it because it’s delicious.

Specialy given making bread better than the store is very likely, my father used to be a baker and has told me how stores use a yellow coloring to make it look like bread has lots of eggs but it has near none, or how they push yeast to the limit where bread gets the most air inside possible to make it look big, or how they buy the cheapest butter and so on.

Also, store bought bread today lasts a lot longer than store bought bread from when I was growing up. I can't imagine the chemical concoction that allows for this...

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

#207

Post by jimktrains2 »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #198
madaxe_again wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small, but the transport network isn’t necessarily reliable. Mountains are a big obstacle. Croatia, like most of the balkans, is really mountainous. When it’s not mountains it’s islands. Nightmare for transport infrastructure development. A lot of rural Europe has laughably poor mountain infrastructure - dirt roads, often badly damaged, are sometimes the only way in or out of a village, and when it rains, the guy wit…

Poor people in similarly remote (similar travel distances but less circuitous routes) parts of the US and Canada with manage to get to Walamrt and back about once a week in run of the mill 20yo SUVs. Either there's some economic situation preventing similar transportation solutions working in Europe or the people who say that Europe has great transit options have a lot of explaining to do (frankly I think it's a litt…

It probably saves a ton of time not having to make that run yourself. Also, often just because something isn't common doesn't mean it isn't possible or doesn't happy; it just means that cultural norms swing one way or another. I'd bet the fish truck is ower-operated (even if the owner is a co-op), for instance, which probably has roots in how things were done for a long time.

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

#208

Post by wheels »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #198
madaxe_again wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small, but the transport network isn’t necessarily reliable. Mountains are a big obstacle. Croatia, like most of the balkans, is really mountainous. When it’s not mountains it’s islands. Nightmare for transport infrastructure development. A lot of rural Europe has laughably poor mountain infrastructure - dirt roads, often badly damaged, are sometimes the only way in or out of a village, and when it rains, the guy wit…

Poor people in similarly remote (similar travel distances but less circuitous routes) parts of the US and Canada with manage to get to Walamrt and back about once a week in run of the mill 20yo SUVs. Either there's some economic situation preventing similar transportation solutions working in Europe or the people who say that Europe has great transit options have a lot of explaining to do (frankly I think it's a litt…

There are a few major differences:

For the most part, American towns are built next to the roads. If there's not a road, there's not a town. (Alaska is a notable exception.) In Europe, said roads and towns often long predate SUVs and wouldn't be passably in such.

Also a number of the countries being mentioned are relatively poor. The GDP per capita of the US is more than 10 times the GDP per capita of Bosnia (and close to 3x that of Portugal). That obviously has an influence on the affordability of vehicles and the quality of infrastructure.

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

#209

Post by madaxe_again »

7952 wrote: post #201
madaxe_again wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small, but the transport network isn’t necessarily reliable. Mountains are a big obstacle. Croatia, like most of the balkans, is really mountainous. When it’s not mountains it’s islands. Nightmare for transport infrastructure development. A lot of rural Europe has laughably poor mountain infrastructure - dirt roads, often badly damaged, are sometimes the only way in or out of a village, and when it rains, the guy wit…

Do you think motorbikes are a viable alternative in these kind of areas? It would just seem easier to ride a dirt bike down difficult roads.

With a tank of propane and a week’s shopping? Yes, bikes get you around just great, but a load of cargo, not so much. Here in Portugal, the Toyota Hilux is the standard vehicle - usually 80’s or early 90’s.

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

#210

Post by aasasd »

phyzome wrote: post #188
aasasd wrote: post #178

> “The town might have a 100-gallon swing in demand for milk from one week to the next without any explanation of why. One week, nobody wants whole milk; the next week, everyone wants 2%.” IIRC it's a known phenomenon, but I can't remember the name right now. Buyers overestimate the demand, then the next cycle they have stock left, then again buy double because the shop might not have the thing next time. So the dema…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_distribution_game

That's exactly where I learned of the effect—the game was probably recently mentioned on HN.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullwhip_effect is the article specifically about the fluctuations.

Come to think of it, apparently in the case of the Alaskan dude just one level of interaction is enough to summon the effect with 100% variation. I wonder what the Costco managers think of the picture on their end and whether they in turn order even more reserves.

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