How Goya brought ethnic food to white America | Hacker News Reader

How Goya brought ethnic food to white America

washingtonpost.com

48 pointsilamont36 comments

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_cuisine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_cuisine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_cuisine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_cuisine

etc times 100. I'm sure we all appreciate Goya for helping to keep the dying Washington Post alive with their paid-for articles, but the headline is absurd on its face. I mean, I have distinct memories of eating Mexican food long before I heard of Goya corporation. And I'm pretty sure black beans and kidney beans were not unheard-of as well.

To be fair, the reporter's original headline might have been, "A short corporate biography of Goya Foods", only to be changed by the editor to something more eye-catching.

It's a caled "othering" or "exoticification". Yes there is English, German, etc. cuisine, and all of these are 'ethnicities'. But sometimes people treat ethnicities of 'The Other'[1] as 'ethnic' or 'exotic'.

[1] Us vs. Them stuff here. Who is 'Us', and who is 'Them'/'The Other' depends on where you are.

Now who will bring white ethnic food to Han China? Seriously, I get depressed whenever I have to settle for expensive frozen sausage from Nick's or Jenny's in Beijing (our only chance t ethnic food). And let's not even get started on high quality flower needed for real baking. At least they sell green curry packets and jasmine rice at Carrefour.

Haha. When I was in China, one of my American friends there freaked out because he couldn't find a bottle of ranch dressing anywhere. Of all things, ranch dressing. He apparently liked to dip everything he ate in it back home.

About a week before I left, they opened up the first Subway restaurant in the city. I went on the first day it was open, and there was a line of white people coming out the door. I used to take Subway (and cold cuts and sandwiches in general) completely for granted, but a year in China will make it sound pretty damn good.

Things have definitely improved a lot since I lived here the first time in 2002 (decent hamburgers, good Indian food, even at the same place!)...but we still can't get some very basic things. The Chinese food market is still very insular and the fact that the ex-pat population is so small (relatively speaking) doesn't help.

Ranch dressing, peanut butter, and root beer: 3 staples you might not find outside of the USA.

Here in Italy, peanut butter is actually surprisingly available. Ranch dressing can be found here and there, and root beer is of course completely unheard of because it's an acquired taste that most people who haven't grown up with it dislike.

I'm going to be back in the US in a week, and I can't wait to eat:

* Mexican

* Bagels

* Barbecue

* Thai

* Mexican

I've lived in China and Korea, and surprisingly, pretty good Mexican food was available in both places. Somewhat less surprisingly, good Thai food was also available.

Good cheeses, breads, and wines, however, were not. And if you did manage to find them somewhere, the price was double what you'd pay in the US.

Heh - good cheeses and wines are already expensive in the US compared to here.

Of course that's not true. In South Africa, where I am, peanut butter is ubiquitous, root beer is available (imported from the US or from speciality soft-drink manufacturers) and ranch dressing; I have no idea about ranch dressing because I never by pre-made dressings.

You'll find the first two in some Indian cities. At least Bangalore, since I saw them on shelves in some of the bigger stores. Not sure about root beer.

Along with freedom, democracy and the internet, right?

China is more free than the west in some areas, depends what freedom you care about. No democracy but we actually have some Internet (like hackernews).

Anyways, I just want sausage.

This article is very east coast biased. For someone that grew up in Northern California I always found Goya is too Spanish and not as common out here than it is in the East Coast. I tend to opt for El Mexicano products, especially since it has a more Mexican flavor and it is a Bay Area company.

One of the great things about the Bay Area is that there are a ton of ethnic grocery stores, such as Mi Pueblo and Ranch 99.

Definitely, but the paper it was in was the Washington Post. If they printed that in the Chron or LA Times, people would take it for a joke.

When I went to the nearby Western Beef I was very surprised to see all kinds of sections, and then a Goya section. Over time I learned that I could find things there that I couldn't find for recipes elsewhere. But there wasn't a General Mills section. This article helps explain it.

I asked for directions from a fellow who was restocking in a local market. He deferred, explaining that he worked for Goya, not for the store. He was responsible for all the Goya products in the store (and other stores) and that the aisle we were in was dedicated solely to Goya products.

I worked for a supermarket when in high school and only store employees handled goods inside the building. Here the store allowed control of an entire aisle to Goya. And believe me, shelf space is at the very core of retail sales.

Currently hacking away on the food industry:

It's common practice for a distributor to handle stocking of product in some/many locations, it's referred to as 'merchandising' in the industry, it's often limited to speciality products. Given the comment I think the interesting thing is that either Goya is doing their own distribution or has subcontracted that out or has a special distributor relationship in some way. It's relatively uncommon for products which are in the supermarket 'core' (true for Goya at least of my local stores) to get this treatment, so that seems to say something about Goya.

This is also very common in the alcohol industry, e.g. the huge Bud Light displays you'll see in stores are usually setup by distributors, not the store owner.

Kellogg and Nabisco often stock the shelves themselves as well. And the Asian/International aisle is stocked by the vendor sometimes as well.

A number of brands do this. Blue Bell is famous for it in Texas.

Good thing I live in a place where people of different cultures talk to one another, exchange food ideas, and with some hunting you can get the ingredients you need. Specialty ethnic food stores help as well. Maybe it is the willingness to explore and not shop at places like Safeway and the other big chains?

I've purchased a Goya product or two when it was the only variety available. That said, if I need asafetida (a spice) for an Indian dish I'm not going to look to Goya. When I need tortillas for tacos, I'll buy locally made instead of Goya or Mission. (tortillas are a silly example given the diversity in the bay area...but I don't know what the big chains actually carry...)

I'm not afraid to pickup a random cookbook (be it southern cooking to pakistani to peruvian) and attempt to cook something. If ingredients aren't available, be creative and substitute.

This seems like one more "homogenization" of the US.

How, exactly, does getting tamarind and nopalitos into the aisles of Safeway count as "homogenization"?

If everyone gains access to the same ingredients, then you're no longer special for using ingredients other people haven't heard of. not special => homogenized.

I think he means: everyone eats the same thing

Meaning, we all eat the same brand "diverse" foods, rather than seek out the originals from locals of that cuisine.

Mexican people do not as a general rule go into the fields to pick tomatillos. We're talking about the raw materials of ethnic recipes, not freezer-pak reheatable Mexi-meals.

What tedunangst said. If everyone can access the same thing in the same stores, then there is homogeneity in what is available.

I don't think homogeneity ought to have any negative connotation, used in this way. I'm also not sure the OP meant it negatively, though he might have.

I took his comment as snark.

I couldn't get a clear tone from it. But downvotes of the comment indicate I am in the minority.

What makes the comments on HN small? Yours currently is.

I'm confused. I posted this a day ago....why has it reappeared?

you didn't include the sweet ?hpid=z1 tracker at the end of the url.

tl;dr: they put it in cans.

And here I thought immigrants did. Silly me, forgetting to thank our corporate overlords.

How'd you get that out of the article?

The whole thing was about Goya, an immigrant-founded and immigrant-owned enterprise, relying heavily on immigrant populations to break into predominantly-White areas, and expanding into non-Latino immigrant populations through diversification of products.

There's even the bit about continuing to employ and appeal to new immigrants in order to maintain authenticity in the product lineup. There's also the bit about rejecting traditional distribution models typical of a large food producer and instead favoring a distribution model that allows tailoring the inventory mix with independent retailers (immigrant-operated, like the Korean grocer the article names as an example) in local immigrant communities.

TIL immigrants are no longer immigrants if they demonstrate entrepreneurial spirit.

Every damn thread on this site has at least one and often many comments just like the one you responded to. Telltale signal: it could have been written without even reading the article.

There's something very corporate about how they go about this, though. It's not uncommon either.

Retail stores are a kind of small scale capitalism, with lots of merchandising. It's all about shelf space. The Korean shopowners don't know what to stock, so they leave it up to Goya.

That's not that different from having Frito Lay stock your snack rack, or having Bimbo USA control a few meters of baked goods, or having Coca Cola dominate your soda fountain. Why does Grumma dominate tortillas when there are dozens of tortilla factories in my city?

It's just a different brand. I see "Fud" brand deli products (it's pronounced "food", and it's kind of a joke), and they do the same thing. The get lots of space to do demos. They're competing with Oscar Mayer and Farmer John. The product is not that different - it's middle-range premium product.

Goya appeals to immigrants for the same reason Fud, Kraft, McDonalds, and Farmer John appeal. They're okay. Not awesome. Not crappy. Just a tad above average. Nobody is fooled.

If you'd like to write uninformed kneejerk posts without reading the articles, Reddit is that way.

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