What if grocery stores were like websites?

Other Merchants...J. Crew

There are a lot of merchants I learn from, big and small. I'll write about some of them in a new category of posts (click "Other Merchants"). If there are any you think I should know about please shout!

J. Crew

I don't think there's a better clothing mass merchant these days than Mickey Drexler at J. Crew. He's like the Steve Jobs of moderately preppy. His taste, fit and overall merchandising are diabolically good. Their stores are fairly well run, which is saying a lot for a company that has over 200 locations, mostly in malls. Stylistically, Mickey almost never makes a wrong move and, eight years in, he just seems to be getting better. If I had to compete with him I'd be very scared.

I particularly like how he's picking iconic brands both popular (Timex) and somewhat unknown (Loro Piana, the legendary Italian fabric maker) and mixing them in. Sometimes they're sold as an item with a J. Crew twist. Sometimes they're part of a garment. In either case, he doesn't hide them, but he also makes sure you know it's J. Crew that's running the show in how they're included. He also uses facts and education to help sell clothes rather than just trend, which is how I've always tried to sell food.

Recent Reading

Is junk food cheaper than good food? Bittman says no.

Is Groupon a bad idea?

Vinyl record sales are way up—and not just in the USA.

 

The guy who runs Zappos fines his employees for saying the words "Social Media." Also, he loves orders by phone.

The Parking Lot is a documentary on a group of parking lot attendants that turns into a pretty funny take on the metaphysics of the service industry. There are so few films that get anything right about work life. This one does. (For one of my favorites go see Office Space.) It left me wondering, do you need to be a hopeless romantic to enjoy being in service?

Nice view, beans. Enjoy it.

Margot, Zingerman's Deli's chocolate maven, is traveling Italy and Sicily with Gioacchino, our source for many Italian foods. She took time away from sweets for this shot: a shipment of lentils from Ustica waiting for a boat to take them to America. Are these beans in for a shock. They're leaving the island where it's 80 degrees, bright white sun, to arrive in Michigan sometime in November where, I promise, they will experience neither of those things. 

The lentils are an old crop on Ustica but new to America. Brad is bringing a batch in for the Culinary Adventure Society shipment this December.

Vintage Fruitcake, Ready To Get Dressed

 

The Vintage Fruitcake packaging is done. It's a vellum wrap over an archival box. The shot of Robert on the car circa 1970 is screened behind the title. I think it looks kinda hot. Thanks, Nicole, Brad and Kristie. 

Robert has sent the cakes so they'll be here next week. Meanwhile, he's finishing up this year's cakes. Here's some orange peel soaking up cognac in his kitchen.

Recipe: Fried Pickle

 

Earlier this summer I had a long drink with Rick Field of Rick's Picks and he told me how much he'd been loving frying pickles. Why don't we make a Rick's/Zingerman's fried pickle kit? Maybe for the Superbowl? I don't usually trust ideas hatched under such conditions and, for some reason I can't explain, I've never had a fried pickle. So last Friday night we got to work.

A jar of Rick's People's Pickles has about 30 thick-cut slices. We fried all of 'em, save the six his daughters snagged for dinner.

Fried (People's) Pickle Recipe

1. Lay a paper towel on a plate. Put each slice on the towel and top with another paper towel. Let sit for at least ten minutes. (Reuse the leftover brine. Drop in a peeled hard boiled egg or green beans or some thinly sliced carrots. Refrigerate for a couple days before eating.)
2. Heat two inches of vegetable oil in a ten or twelve inch pan. We used a  cast iron skillet.
3. Dust the pickles with flour on each side.
4. Beat two eggs in a bowl.
5. Dip the pickle slices in the eggs then roll in cornmeal. We used cornmeal Rick bought in Vermont, but I'm thinking they'd also be good with Marino's Polenta.
6. Fry for about ten minutes, or until they turn golden brown.

We'd been drinking wine so the timing could be off—watch the color for your cue.  Also, it'd probably be helpful to know what temperature the oil was at but we didn't have a thermometer. (I pretty much suck at recipe development.) We threw some water in and it popped. The first pickle went in and Rick said, "That's a good fry." I took his word for it.

Later he explained, "You don't want to kill the pickle. Too many fried pickles are annihilated. We want to keep it juicy inside." Spoken like a man who's eaten a lot of fried pickles.

Douse 'em with a bit of hot sauce (I like Cholula, though I bet the new Piment d'Espelette hot sauce we just got in would be scrumptious) and eat 'em while they're hot. I thought they were pretty good.

If any of the crew at ZMO—or any other readers—try this, let me know how it turns out. I'm still thinking about it as a gift kit this winter.

A good fry.

Is there something wrong with farmers markets?

 

Last year one thousand new farmers markets started in the U.S., an almost 20% increase over the previous year. Now, in a separate article, farmers fear a glut of too many farmers markets. 

Why would someone who makes things worry that there are too many places to sell it?

The answer lies in what makes farmers markets tick. They are limited quantity events that allow farmers to sell food at a premium. 

In general, though you can find lots of exceptions, farmers market food is slightly more expensive than standard grocery store food. I won't get into whether that's good or bad or what's behind it, but from what I've read it seems to be mostly the case. The big deal for farmers, though, isn't that their prices are higher than at Kroger. It's that they get a chance to charge retail prices, period. Usually they are stuck being wholesalers. Selling wholesale, farmers can only charge 50-60% of the price they get to charge at a farmers market. So they're making more profit at the market than they would wholesale.

The prices that farmers get to charge are a big reason why there are so many new markets cropping up. It's classic economics, a lesson taken straight from the upward-sloping supply curve. When prices go up supply increases. In other words, where there's an opportunity to make money, business will follow. It's kind of like how nature abhors a vacuum. Business abhors big profits. Where they exist they will be swallowed whole.

Since farmers can get higher prices at a market than wholesaling more farmers want in on the action, hence more farmers markets. So far the growth in markets hasn't meant an oversupply. But the farmers are right to worry that they might. Textbook economic says that would result in lower prices and lower profits. After all, there are only so many people who can afford—or maybe want to pay?—six dollars a pound for heirloom tomatoes. That's the reason you can find ten farmers markets within a fifteen minute drive of downtown Ann Arbor (pop: 114,000, median income $46,000) but only nine in all of Detroit (pop: 714,000, median income $30,000).