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Why Fruits and Veggies Are So Cheap in Chinatown
- billc8 10y agoI 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.
- percept 10y agoWhy? (paywall)
- jlukanta 10y agoAs 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"
- jedberg 10y agoOf just click the "web" link below the title.
- jsprogrammer 10y agoWould 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).
- iamben 10y ago"waste seconds" 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 :-)
- jsprogrammer 10y agoWasted time is a waste. I'd rather not. Seems like it would be seconds to implement the feature and would save man-years of time.
- more_corn 10y agoThe tl:dr here was better anyway.
- thomasfoster96 10y agoIf loading a small text page is a hassle... I'm not sure what millennium your connection is in.
- akiselev 10y agoThis 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.
- kuschku 10y agoUse this link instead, it bypasses the paywall, globally, everywhere, regardless of referer: http://www.wsj.com/article_email/why-fruits-and-veggies-are-so-crazy-cheap-in-chinatown-1466762400-lMyQjAxMTE2NjI3NjkyMjY2Wj http://www.wsj.com/article_email/why-fruits-and-veggies-are-...
- JumpCrisscross 10y agoGrowing 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?
- jonknee 10y ago> 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.
- Havoc 10y ago>They're also not selling prepared food--if you serve unsafe food that is because you did not prepare it correctly. Well a lot of fruit & veg is consumed raw so "prepare it correctly" is of limited use.
- admksx45v65uqpw 10y agoI have some bad news for you: you're supposed to be washing that food before you eat it.
- thaumasiotes 10y agoChipotle 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.
- jedberg 10y agoI 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.
- gkop 10y agoWhich Chinatown?
- HelloNurse 10y ago"Just 45 miles away"? Why doesn't anybody sell good food where you live? It's California, not Greenland; everything should be plentiful.
- jedberg 10y agoThey do, we get plenty of good food here. It's just better in SF Chinatown.
- jimmywanger 10y agoExtraordinarily similar to an article in Lucky Peach, David Chang's (Momofuku) magazine. http://luckypeach.com/pro-choys/ http://luckypeach.com/pro-choys/
- kelukelugames 10y agoThis 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.
- jimmywanger 10y agoThat'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.
- kelukelugames 10y ago"I figured the prices were cheap because the selection is all C-grade bok choy and yesterday’s bananas." Literally from the start of the article. You and many others might not think like the author but there is a segment of the population who does.
- jimmywanger 10y agoI 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.
- kelukelugames 10y ago
- jimmywanger 10y agoI 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.
- mikeryan 10y agoThere'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.
- dogma1138 10y agoIt'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.
- Spooky23 10y agoIMO, 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.
- jimmywanger 10y agoOne 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.
- Alex3917 10y agoThe 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.
- sotojuan 10y agoDefinitely 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.
- akiselev 10y agoThis 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.
- amalag 10y ago
- sampo 10y agoHere in Central NJ (Princeton area), fruit and veg are also notable cheaper in the Asian supermarkets. Which we fortunately have two.
- AznHisoka 10y agoNot 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.
- sotojuan 10y agoAs 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!
- paradite 10y ago> 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.
- syphilis2 10y agoThe USDA shares detailed data on food pricing. http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-markets-prices/food-prices,-expenditures-costs.aspx http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-markets-prices/food-pric... Price Spreads from Farm to Consumer: http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/price-spreads-from-farm-to-consumer/interactive-chart-price-spreads-and-food-markets.aspx http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/price-spreads-from-far... They also have good data on regional differences, in case you were wondering why the author was excited about $0.50/lb bananas and $1 pomegranates.
- mikekchar 10y agoI'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). For an example of how badly farmers are getting squeezed: http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/price-spreads-from-farm-to-consumer/interactive-chart-price-spreads-and-food-markets.aspx http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/price-spreads-from-far... 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.
- jakobegger 10y agoI'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.
- hackuser 10y agoI don't understand how this works out: > 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)?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- t3ra 10y agoDoing 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.
- whack 10y ago"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.
- PakG1 10y agoSupermarkets 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.
- billc8 10y agoHow 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 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.
- akiselev 10y agoThey 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
- latishsehgal 10y agoI 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.
- throwaway_bob 10y agoI 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.
- seanmcdirmid 10y agoAnd 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.
- zaroth 10y agoYou won't have to worry, you can rest assured you are absolutely getting jipped!
- danramteke 10y agoIs there away to say your meaning, but without the ethnic slur for being cheated financially?
- JabavuAdams 10y agoTo be fair, many educated and articulate people are totally unaware of this connotation.
- fpoling 10y agoIn 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.
- stevewillows 10y agoBeyond 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.
- perseusprime11 10y agoOn 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.
- fennecfoxen 10y agoAt 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.
- curiousGambler 10y agoThat and economies of scale forcing the small farm's prices higher. I do wonder how often small farms hide price discrimination behind "economies of scale" though.
- tacostakohashi 10y agoI 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.
- greeneggs 10y agoBut 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.
- smegel 10y agoDoes everyone here subscribe to the WSJ or something?
- Swannie 10y agoNope. Click on the Web link to access via Google. The Google referrer gives you free access to that article.
- eternalban 10y agoThis 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.
- fma 10y agoThis 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.
- hiou 10y agoAnd if you figure in the 10-25% of business they do laundering money you find where the rest of the margins are made up. How is something this naive in WSJ?
- tim333 10y ago>Rather than contracting with large, industrial farms, it turns out, Chinatown’s wholesalers often buy from small, family farms I miss that in the UK and the US. In Italy for example a lot of the stuff comes from local farms and tastes way better.