In NYC, there are plenty of produce vendors on the street that sell aesthetic, fresh fruit for less than cost conscious mega-chains, like Wal Mart, Trader Joes, and Wegmans. The big chains have negotiating power, wholesale discounts, and economies of scale to help them profit on tiny margins. So, how is it that my small, local, fruit stand can outcompete pricewise with national chains and still stay afloat?
In: 2607
I can actually speak to the one in Boston. Haymarket is often called a “farmers market” but in reality its the furthest thing from it. The food may look fresh, but it is very much not so.
First my source: In college I worked for a large Citrus and Corn distributor.
So, what happens is, there is a large produce distribution center on the border between Everett/Chelsea MA, which is a few miles north of Haymarket. The majority of fresh fruit and veg being shipped into New England comes in here before it is sent off to the supermarkets, restaurants, etc. The distribution center itself is made up of dozens of smaller independent companies that rent or buy dock space and each typically specializes in a few items.
Anyway, a lot of the big orders that are done by supermarket chains are essentially just taken off the distributors truck and put on the supermarket ones, this is by far the freshest product.
But the distributors dont just buy for the big guys, and some of the big guys have figured out they can buy direct from the grower and have it all shipped to them directly, but thats another matter. In order to have product for the smaller buyers, the distributors need to keep stock in their own refrigerated spaces and then sell things off a few boxes or pallets at a time. What happens though is the system isnt perfect and some of the stuff sits around for a good while.
Enter the Haymarket buyers. Many of them are actually dock workers during the week, who setup shop at Haymarket on the weekends and they have deals with the distributors, who are often their day to day employers, where they take all the old stuff for a few bucks a box, if even that much. This frees up space in the warehouse and sells a product that no one else will buy. Since this is often cash deals, the product is also normally written off as loss (had an old boss who got some jail time for that one)
So the haymarket guys take the boxes that are best described as “puss” and they go through it trying to salvage any they can. As I said above, I worked at a citrus company and would help out at Haymarket on the weekends. There were times that I would open boxes or oranges or lemons and a box that was supposed to have 90 or so items in it would have 2-3 that were actually sellable and even that is only after getting a good bath to wash off the parts of the other rotten fruit that got on them. It wasnt at all unheard of to have boxes that would make this look fresh:
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0f/Rotten%2C_moldy_and_decaying_oranges.jpg/1280px-Rotten%2C_moldy_and_decaying_oranges.jpg](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0f/Rotten%2C_moldy_and_decaying_oranges.jpg/1280px-Rotten%2C_moldy_and_decaying_oranges.jpg)
Now, I dont know how it works in NYC, but I do know Hunts Point is setup the same way as the New England Produce Center, so I imagine there are some similarities.
If you have to ask, I would NEVER actually eat anything that came from haymarket, no matter how cheap it is.
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