Comment by matwood | Hacker News Reader

Comment by matwood | Hacker News Reader

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> Organic vegetables and fruits are cheaper than in most chains

I recently discovered the above, and after paying attention there are many items that are less expensive at WF. The whole fresh fruits and vegetables are the same price or cheaper than other local chains, and are also very high quality. The only place that beats them on price is Walmart, but quality is hit and miss (normally miss).

I have found beer and wine to be $1-$2 cheaper at WF than local chains. Not everything of course, but I tend to keep the same wine and beer around the house so I notice pricing. Good cheese can also be had for less money at WF. The WF brand whole bean coffee is also cheaper than anything else I have found locally.

If frugality is the goal I have found that for most packaged stuff Walmart is the way to go. Then WF for fruits and veggies, and finally Harris Teeter (local chain in the south) for meats (never ending special boneless/skinless chicken breasts are always $1.99/lb).

Don't you have markets in U.S where you can buy straight from farmers? It would be more convenient and helps locals. If you care about organic and fresh stuff.

Yes, there are certainly a good number of these, but one of the main reasons I would go to a grocery stores is to buy non-local produce. For instance, avocados or various other fruits aren't grown anywhere near where I live.

It is really hit or miss. It takes a large city like Dallas to have a permanent farmers market. Smaller towns might have a month where they have a farmer's market every weekend, but nothing the rest of the year.

I would say that even small towns have farmers markets that last most of the growing season (like even a village of 10,000 will often have one all summer, although it of course won't be comparable to one in a large city).

And CSAs (Community-supported agriculture) are becoming more popular.

This doesn't seem true to me at all. Where do you live? My biggish (100k) crazy-for-organics town has one that is only open on one weeknight and one weekend morning, only in the summer. My medium (25k) midwestern home town only has big box groceries.

I was unclear, I meant weekly markets that last the summer.

I was partly responding to the have a month in the post I replied to. It's typical that they run more of the season than that.

These are less convenient because they aren't open at most of the times I might want to buy groceries.

This is hugely regional, and depends on both supply and demand. When I grew up in Michigan, there were huge produce "stands" that were overflowing with fresh food. I remember one place, that's still in business, where the sweet corn was on a big trailer, and was going so fast that they left the trailer hooked up to a tractor with the engine running, and when it was empty, the next tractor pulled in with a full trailer. The tomatoes were heavenly. And so forth. Four cash registers running full tilt.

I believe a big factor was demand. People in Michigan loved their fruits and veggies. Same in northern Indiana when I went there.

Then I moved to Texas... nothing. The quality of veggies at the store was poor -- often rotting. Even at the flagship Whole Foods in Dallas. Granted, that was going on 20 years ago. People didn't eat vegetables.

Then I moved to Wisconsin. You'd think, but no. Conditions for growing veggies should be just fine in WI, but there's no demand. I've met lots of people who have never eaten a green vegetable.

We have Saturday "farmers markets." These are common in affluent towns. Each "farmer" has a little booth, and prices are astronomical. There's a little bluegrass band, and lots of the booths are selling... prepared foods, such as muffins. A plus side is that folks have recommended talking to the meat vendors. They will agree to supply you with a quantity of meat, anything you want, and it will be good stuff.

> A plus side is that folks have recommended talking to the meat vendors.

Buying meat from these types of markets really is the best of both worlds for producers: they can sell their product with a short shelf life, and the consumers are more than willing to hit the price point between cost-to-produce and cost-to-get-to-market if they were to sell through a middle man.

The local grocery (including WF) all carry locally sourced products. The problem with the farmers markets is they are only open once/week at inconvenient times.

Seafood on the other hand is easy to get local and fresh.

Depends a lot on where you live. Megan McArdle had a good summary of the situation in one of her pieces[1]:

"It's no accident that certain sorts of food movements, like "eat local" and "eat simple," tend to start and thrive on the West Coast. If you're living next door to California's abundant, incredible produce, then it's easy to say that everyone ought to be chowing down on fresh local fruits and vegetables, rather than some processed or imported version. In the rest of the country, however, fresh local produce is available only in a narrow annual window -- and if you don't have the income to shop at a farmer's market, or nearby land where you can shop at farm stands or grow your own, it functionally isn't available at all."

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-05-01/cooking-s...

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