Daily Table is a new grocery store place just outside Codman Square in Dorchester, Boston. The nonprofit store sells surplus and aging food at a discounted price. There customers can find potatoes at 49 cents per pound, bananas at 29cents per pound, a dozen eggs at 99 cents and canned vegetables, two pieces at the price of, $1. The grocery store opened on Friday.
The store is run by the former president of Trader Joe’s, Doug Rauch. He came up with this concept while thinking about how frustrating it is that large quantities of nutritious foods are dumped just because they are close to the sell-by date while millions of people do not have anything to eat or do not eat very well. He remarked:
“As you can see right here we’ve got a pile of bananas at 29 cents a pound. They’re Chiquita bananas, there’s no little black spots on them. Those probably have another three or four days before you start to go, ‘Oh, banana bread!’
Most of the stock is donated by markets and food wholesalers. They are products in surplus or product which did not sell. Noemi Sosa, one of the customers, was amazed at how low the prices were. Another customer, Latoya Bush, was surprised to see that a carrot ginger soup container which consisted of three servings was just $1.29. Charlie Vlahakis left with a stuffed bag from the shop and paid only $6.
Rauch had announced his plan to open this business in since 2013. Right now he is thinking of opening two more locations in Boston. He explained that he gets wholesome, excess food from Boston Produce Market (Chelsea). Besides this the store also has several special buying arrangements and they can buy products at extremely discounted prices. In the future Ranch says they might sell products which are beyond their sale-by date. He says that even if the sell-by date of the product was exceeded with one day the products are still good to eat and most people do not realize this. Rauch believes that this is a matter of education. Nutritious food is expensive, whereas empty calories are cheap. He said that if we want better health outcomes we must change that.
If you want to shop from the store you have to offer you phone number and zip phone so that the staff can know that the customers come from less well-to-do communities.
Image Source: Entrepreneur
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