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Could it be that they just don't have the cruft & boilerplate & inefficiencies that traditional retail has? Having been in several types of workforce, I've seen plenty of missed opportunities that continued indefinitely because of management incompetence, so I wouldn't doubt it if they're able to have high quality & cheap produce just by cutting out the middleman and by being competent.

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Calling it management's incompetence is probably unfair, although certainly there is a lot of incompetence in the retail sector. I think it's more accurate to call it corporate inertia. It's easier to build such a network for a single stall on a busy street than it is for 500+ retail locations that all have to be exactly the same to keep the brand image.

Or perhaps management competence? If goal is to sell more product to more people for more money, then perhaps the traditional grocery store model is better. They're just optimizing for different things.

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