How is fresh food not in season locally always available? How sit is processed and sent off across the world so quickly and with such consistency?
In: Other
The southern hemisphere’s seasons are opposite of the northern’s.
For example during the spring and summer asparagus is grown in California and Mexico. During the fall and winter production switches to Peru.
Restaurants receive deliveries from their produce companies between 6-7 days a week and the produce companies receive deliveries from their suppliers at about the same cadence.
Frighteningly enough most major cities only have 2-3 days worth of food on hand at anyone time. That’s why the highways are full of semi trucks night and day seven days a week and railroad workers are pushed to such extremes.
We have air shipping these days, so produce can be shipped halfway across the world within a day or two, and still arrive fresh at your doorstep.
That produce is usually grown in either tropical areas where they can be grown year-round (California Central Valley and Mexico are big for this) or in the other hemisphere where it’s currently in season (Chile is big for this).
Because they don’t serve fresh food, if a restaurant got more than 3 dish on the menu it’s all frozen.
I frequently visit my local Morrisons and there’s always loads of fresh fish unsold near the end of the day. I have no idea what they do with it all, I really hope it isn’t binned.
I saw a crazy short documentary that followed some bananas through the supply chain. When they cut the bananas, they are just starting to turn yellow. They load them onto a truck that takes them directly to a ship that leaves within 12 hours. 2 days later, the produce person at Kroger is putting them out for you to buy. It’s literally 2 1/2 days from tree to shelf.
Wait, have you not been to a grocery store? Why are you only asking about restaurants?
Warehouses will order produce every day and then produce that was ordered last week will get shipped this week and arrive next week at the warehouse. Then that produce will get put on a shelf and when the previous produce that came in the day before next week gets picked and shipped out, the new produce takes its place, this is a continuous cycle that happens all the time every day. It’s not that it happens that we order pineapples from Costa Rica today and they’re on the doorstep tommorow, it’s not amazon prime. But we ordered it a while ago so they pick it and ship it off, but since were ordering pineapples today and tommorow then it seems like it comes in the day we order it
Latest Answers