jhlurie

from the Language of the food industry topic, user rickster says: In the sampling at whole foods topic I shot off my own mouth a bit: This seemed a bit much for the "sampling at whole foods" topic, so I've broken it out to a new topic. I've read stuff in the past few years about slotting, and I've heard it called everything from "a simple management practice" to "organized extortion". Most recently I read Paul Newman's dopey book about his food line, where he has quite a bit of fun mocking the practice and posing as some great rebel (it's nonsense because if anyone can overcome the slotting practice, it would certainly be a huge celebrity who could deliver a combination of fame and notoriety in trade). I'd really like to hear from some industry insiders on this--both defenses of it and if you are brave, exposés. How do food brokers REALLY work? What exactly are those slotting fees paying for? Who truly pays for the deals that are cut when products go on huge sales--the manufacturer, the broker, the supermarket, or all three? If we want to discuss or debate definitions of specific food industry terms, the Language of the food industry topic is still hanging around. But I'd like to dig a bit and hear some actual stories and explorations of the issues behind those practices here, if anyone wants to actually step up.

Dude... paper plate and folding in half--folded it's twice as thick, twice as strong. Of course you need to be prepared for the line of cheese grease running off it, but that can be handled. Knife and fork? I'm shuddering just reading that.

foodie, while I don't doubt the sincere desire of the supermarket to relate and promote goodwill with their customers, what exactly are the other benefits of sampling to them? I know it isn't to help decide who gets better shelf space, because the requirement for slotting fees (another deep dark supermarket topic worthy of eG discussion--I've heard slotting described as "organized extortion") makes sure that isn't possible. Are these sampled products simply ones which have already been slotted into a great display and this is a value added service of that to the food broker? Or are the samplings indepedant of anything like that (as far as you know, I mean)?

Great topic Pan. I think this is exotic enough to move over to "Adventures in Eating".

Some would argue that you can't even find decent New York style pizza in NY anywhere anymore. Good luck on the left coast. I've heard theories that at least part of what used to make it great was the local water--the same argument people used in part about NY bagels. The charred bottom is a good point. I've had plenty without that, but the "typical" does seem to have it. The Mozarella debate will start arguments. Most will say that the "classic" is only going to use er... cheaper (and definitely processed, not Fresh) cheese. The processed melts differently, and the fresh mozarella became a "trend" about the same time when the best of the classic NY places dissapeared. Then again, it could be argued that processed Mozarella itself couldn't have been part of long ago proto-NY pizza. And of course there's Mozzarella di Bufala, a nicer in-between cheese that many people swear by (hey, buffalo milk does kind of rock over cow for this). Cheese is definitely on top of the sauce, unless you get bleed from toppings. Topics are simple--pepperoni, sausage, meatball slices, peppers, onions, olives, anchovies, mushrooms--those are the old-style toppings right there, although rarely with more than two on at a time, and more frequently none. Almost always none. Certainly no avacados or pineapple or chicken or goat cheese.

Bon appetit, lil' yeasties!

But you have no excuse, Chris. Some decent Cognac's (and many of the similar brandies) are not that expensive. And they are available on both coasts!

Really, if its one of the 5000 or so places called "Seabra's" chances are it has something to do with rodizio.

If the food is placed out in small batches or seperate containers, with a store employee sitting there watching and regularly replacing them, I'll consider samples. Stew Leonard's in Connecticut and New York do this, as do a lot of smaller gourmet markets I've seen. They don't just plop down a bucket of samples and walk away--something I've seen all the time at Whole Foods. Surprisingly, I also recall a HyVee Supermarket, in Missouri, doing the monitored samples thing too... although it was just cheese.

Bryant's and Gates are hardly the cream of the K.C. crop anymore. They're just the biggest and most established.

So Joe likes Frozen Ravoili? It could be worse for him. At least he somehow convinced someone to give him a fancy place to sit alone and ignored. Many people his age have to be satisfied with cat food for dinner alone at home. He gets the cat food in a place with his name on it, and certainly every 100th person or so who comes in must recognize him, and maybe one out of a thousand might actually want to chat with him. Plus he's got a place to dump all of that memorabilia crap.

I got talked into 3 boxes. They raised the prices again this year I think.

Nick, I don't think a NY native (or even someone from across the ole' Hudson) is going to go for it. We need a tourist with big pockets!

Wow. Since when did Franklin come up enough to the second half of the 20th century to have even HEARD of Steven Van Zandt? I mean Van Zandt is the 1970's, not the 1930's-1950's. Joe is so HIP now. Joe Franklin's Favorite Things Then again the voice of Chiquita Banana is there too (see that's the food link again... oh, forget it...) If Joe Franklin didn't exist, somebody would have to invent him. The whole thing is just too funny. When he speaks he says "ladies and gentlemen". He drones. He talks non-stop about memorabilia (and was doing so in the 1950's apparently, for pity's sake). He introduced people as "the great and wonderful" or something hammy like that. And yet I suppose he deserves props in some way for being comfortable in his own time capsule.

That's funny! He had a crappy regional TV show for 40 years. Which nobody watched unless they were fond of the 1930's.

Jeez. Do they wheel him in or something? EDIT - Surprisingly, he's only 77. Who knew? I thought he had to be at least 90.

I walked by Joe Franklin's about a year ago. All I could think of was that ridiculous impression that Billy Crystal used to do of him (this was back when Crystal himself actually had a career). I also thought the decor was a monument to bad taste as well. Luckily I didn't have to suffer the food. I was a bit confused by who this place was intended for as well. Aren't most of Franklin's "fans" dead or something? This is a man who already acted old in the 1960's.

What I'm really curious about is silverware. I wonder if ANY of it is safe enough to use in microgravity, or whether everything is hand-held, straw-sipped or bag-fed. And more speculatively, I wonder about what would eventually be done on the moon, on a permanent base, in a bit more gravity.

Foods they hated? I was thinking... space disasters would be more like floating food caught in the vents or something.

I want my bunless burger salad with croutons, damnit!

This may come down to interpreting what "design" means--and I suppose Vicki is the right one to make that call. It's my impression that by no means is all of the food commercial, but that the NASA's "design" role is similar to what they do with most technology. They adapt and certify things more than they invent.

IanP, I'm curious. Since NASA itself doesn't really appear to "design" food (it's more like they certify or choose it), are you suggesting a simple marketing tie-in between NASA and the companies who already make these? Are you suggesting that NASA actually should be using foods made by existing backpacker food companies in the space program? Or are you suggesting that whatever foodstuffs NASA is already using, be repackaged as backpacker food?

Dismissing it is certainly not necessary tommy. Dealing with the part of it which is in our own hands (that is... our own behavior) is. And dealing with it as the problem as it really is--a larger societal problem about how people are raised, how they value or don't value their fellow man and how those values impact communication skills--in my opinion, is better than marginalizing it as some sweeping tide of local misbehavior. Getting this back to food (we all remember food right? ), I think this is just a case that food is something that people feel especially passionate about. But its not the food, or the food website, which is causing the behavior. It's genetics, it's our upbringing, our television, our bad diets. Okay... so maybe it IS the food. FistFullaRoux - To cap this off in terms of your last post... I think its understood by many here that on-line forums can act as a magnifying glass to highlight those things that are the worst part of our nature. But perhaps we are coming to a fundemental divide in terms of how to deal with it. From an admin standpoint, we try and remind people to be careful, to use smileys, to follow the golden rule, etc. To me though, I still don't see a smoking gun to prove that the problem is rampant, uncontrollable or even in a growth pattern here. We have a group of users than, by and large, we are proud of here. When specific misconduct rears its ugly head, that's dealt with. And we've got various ways for people to report abuses, and mechanisms to try and clear up misunderstanding. When it doesn't, I think we like to give people the benefit of the doubt. If the point here is simply to say "be careful, be nice" I can applaud that. But there seems to also be some implication that something isn't being done that should be, without a constructive example of what that might be. Again, I can't help but return to the reality that its not within our ability to change people's behaviors of a lifetime in this environment--all we can do is enforce against violations of the User Agreement and other egregious misconduct.

The premise of this topic is that its getting worse. Its in the first paragraph of the first post, and its been stated and restated. I think its perfectly valid to think that, of course, I'm just saying that I don't buy it as a given just because someone makes the observation. And while there's nothing wrong with a suggestion to be civil and considerate, there's also benefit in recognizing that the problem that Roux is talking about is a universal phenomenon, not a "local" one here. I see it every day in the real world... don't you?

That said, I still haven't seen anything on this thread which proves to me that snobbery and dismissive posting is the rule now on eGullet and not the exception. I've seen supporting evidence for specific incidents, but nothing that proves any kind of sea change or a need to collectively put everyone in a defensive mode. To me, the percentage of how much of this I have to put up with here isn't noticeably different than what I have to put up with in my everyday life. And that's why I really think that "real life" incidents are the meat of this topic--if we see or perceive this behavior here it is just a manifestation of what we are always dealing with in a big bad world filled with snobby and insensitive people.