书籍介绍
What does it take to run the American supermarket? How do products get to shelves? Who sets the price? And who suffers the consequences of increased convenience end efficiency? In this alarming exposé, author Benjamin Lorr pulls back the curtain on this highly secretive industry. Combining deep sourcing, immersive reporting, and compulsively readable prose, Lorr leads a wild investigation in which we learn:
• The secrets of Trader Joe’s success from Trader Joe himself
• Why truckers call their job “sharecropping on wheels”
• What it takes for a product to earn certification labels like “organic” and “fair trade”
• The struggles entrepreneurs face as they fight for shelf space, including essential tips, tricks, and traps for any new food business
• The truth behind the alarming slave trade in the shrimp industry
The result is a page-turning portrait of an industry in flux, filled with the passion, ingenuity, and exploitation required to make this everyday miracle continue to function. The product of five years of research and hundreds of interviews across every level of the industry, The Secret Life of Groceries delivers powerful social commentary on the inherently American quest for more and the social costs therein.
精彩摘录
- "Shopping is suddenly a far more personal act. It is an exercise in selection, an opportunity to demonstrate the skill of choice. For the first time, customers can use all this conscious sifting as a vessel for meaning: saving money becomes an act of loyalty for family, picky acquisition a sign of co"
- "I come to see the trucking industry that creeps along the margins of society and seduces the vulnerable, feeding itself on their aspirations, coaxing them to lend a little bit of their lives and credit in exchange for a promise that is almost never delivered: a stable job and control over their own "
- "She is liable to burst into laughter at her own inside jokes during all this. But it is an odd laughter. Despite all our time together, I never totally crack the code of Julie's humor. Perhaps she is good-natured without being good-humored. Perhaps she is good-humored without having a good sense of "
- "One of the first things you realize working retail grocery is that people, in general, are hideous and insane, but their depravity almost miraculously balances out in the ledger of the day so that aside from bruised feelings and egos, which never really balance, the store itself makes out just fine."
- "The dark side of this aspect of consumption, "McCracken writes, "is it helps enlarge our consumer appetites so we can never reach a sufficiency of goods and declare, 'I have enough.'" And so it is with food. Once we discovered this genie, we were in its thrall, and the grocery stores was only too ha"
作者简介
Benjamin Lorr is the author of Hell-Bent, a critically acclaimed exploration of the Bikram Yoga community that first detailed patterns of abuse and sexual misconduct by guru Bikram Choudhury. Lorr is a graduate of Montgomery County public schools and Columbia University. He lives in New York City.
用户评论
比较一般般，好多故事好像不知道在哪读过
Private label居然是缺德舅发明，且缺德舅起初的理念是针对over-educated， underpaid人群，也不知道是不是在骂人，哈哈。
从作者亲历的采访调研结果出发，描述了生鲜的供应链中一般人不了解的，较为阴暗的地方。不过感觉内容有点太松散了，没有系统，可能主旨就是给你看看那些恶心的地方，然后去超市的时候心里会膈应。
一开始我以为是给Trader Joe写的一曲赞歌，后来发现每一章都会讲不同人的故事，通过个人的故事反映和grocery这个行业每一个相关的环节的“dark miracle”。最后发现它还是一曲写给trader Joe的赞歌。以及结论就是这dark，但还是一个miracle。你们消费者都有原罪。
很有意义也很好读的书，帮助消费者了解超市的运转与行业里的人：店主，供货商，买手，卡车司机，店员。语言很鲜活，故事也很depressing，让人觉得非常无力（or maybe radicalized?）"What the people called the supply chain is a long, interconnected network of human beings working on other human's behalf." 相信经历了一场covid，书里的许多观察会让人产生更多共鸣
Deeply researched.
收藏