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 me (I'm not sure why)
If the people running these shops are eschewing credit cards as part of their cost-cutting, what could possibly possess you to think that "disrupting" them with some other form of middle-man is going to play here?
Definately. There are people operating these businesses locally and regionally. The problem is finding a endpoint who wants to buy it at wholesale.
The problem is that like anything in corporate American business models, scaling up doesn't always scale. As groceries have consolidated, you need to focus everything on industrial agriculture to deliver a consistent product.
So as a society, we do stupid things like growing lettuce in the desert and flying it across a continent while fertile land down the road goes fallow. But when you have 5,000 wal-marts to stock, it makes more sense to focus on a few big suppliers than a bunch of little ones. I purchased lettuce in February grown in upstate NY in the middle of winter -- for 50% less than stuff in the market.
It's one of the massive inefficiencies that drives me nuts about the current American mutation of capitalism.
tech is just another middleman looking to squeeze a billion+ dollars out of the industry, so I don't see how they'd be any different than Hunt's Point.
It works only as long as there are more Dabbawallas willing to do what they do. Once their kids (or grandkids) decide they can earn more/do other professions...who will deliver the lunch?
Instacart (or some other middleman). Prices will go up as India develops. The same is happening in Chinatown; the children of these shopkeepers are not as willing to stand in line at the warehouse at 3am, nor many of the myriad other unsavory chores to which their parents were accustomed.
What I believe is as long as there is a demand for this service and there is profit to be made, there will be people willing to cater for it, either the children or someone else.
It has been 125 years since this started and I dont see it stopping in the near future. And why do you think "their kids (or grandkids) will continue the same profession as their parents ?
The original article explains the cheap pricing in Chinatown markets with:
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.
But that also describes the way CSAs work. They source their produce directly from various independent farms, many owned and operated by individual families rather than large agri-corporations.
But the prices I've seen CSAs charge are often higher than prices for the comparable items at WholeFoods. Prices definitely are not comparable to NYC Chinatown.
So, is the original article really even correct about this?
Picnic.nl is doing something like that, and they just closed the largest A round ever at $100m. Just-in-time delivery using fixed routes, small electric trucks and local produce. Can't wait for them to launch in Amsterdam.
I've found CSAs to be ridiculously cheap -- Somewhere on the order of $20-$25/week for a big box of produce that is almost always more than I can figure out how to use during said week.
http://8-food.com/ - already on it, but we are focused on prepared food as the output of the fresh ingredient logistics network instead of raw ingredients (higher margin, higher preparation efficiency, lower last mile transport overheads, lower spoilage).
I've noticed that there's a pretty substantial network available to them (and not just food) on Weixin. It would be interesting to see a Western equivalent. From what I've seen, Weixin is a lot more useful a social network than something like Facebook (which seems to be more of a time waster).
