The goal is not to compete with Chinatown grocers, but to move their model to other markets.
The problem is that like anything in corporate American business models, scaling up doesn't always scale. As groceries have consolidated, you need to focus everything on industrial agriculture to deliver a consistent product.
So as a society, we do stupid things like growing lettuce in the desert and flying it across a continent while fertile land down the road goes fallow. But when you have 5,000 wal-marts to stock, it makes more sense to focus on a few big suppliers than a bunch of little ones. I purchased lettuce in February grown in upstate NY in the middle of winter -- for 50% less than stuff in the market.
It's one of the massive inefficiencies that drives me nuts about the current American mutation of capitalism.
The Dabbawala System: On-Time Delivery, Every Time http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=38410
Me too.
The original article explains the cheap pricing in Chinatown markets with:
Chinatown’s 80-plus produce markets are cheap because they are connected to a web of small farms and wholesalers that operate independently of the network supplying most mainstream supermarkets.
But that also describes the way CSAs work. They source their produce directly from various independent farms, many owned and operated by individual families rather than large agri-corporations.
But the prices I've seen CSAs charge are often higher than prices for the comparable items at WholeFoods. Prices definitely are not comparable to NYC Chinatown.
So, is the original article really even correct about this?