How being big lets you be small
Tuesday, June 17, 2008 | 12:53 PM ET
by Kevin Yarr, CBCnews.ca
In my first trip ever to New York City earlier this month I was struck by a similarity to another gigantic city I am more familiar with: London.
I was surprised to find, just one minute from my hotel's front door, a small fruit and vegetable stand spilling out on to the sidewalk. Inside were a few more grocery essentials.
I had always equated this kind of small neighbourhood shop with Old World charm. Seeing the same setup in New York forced me to rethink.
I didn't have to think for long. This small shop was available within walking distance of thousands of people - not for any complex cultural reason, but simply because there were thousands of people available. It was all about population density, combined with what that population density does to the price of real estate.
Where I was staying, on the upper west side of New York City, the higher stories along Broadway were packed with apartments and condos. There were more along the side streets to the west. Densities were somewhat lower to the west, with more townhouses, but even there people were way more packed in than in my neighbourhood in Charlottetown, where my house sits on a quarter-acre lot.
The price I pay for being surrounded by all this greenery is a 15-minute walk to the nearest place to buy food: a soulless, national-chain supermarket marring the landscape with a couple of acres of parking lot in front of it (a financial impossibility in Manhattan). Does anyone ever walk there? Only rarely, I imagine.
(Have you seen an interesting example of a small food vendor making a go of it in a big city? A more traditional approach being used to sell food in a modern setting? Do you wish big grocery stores would do things differently? Tell us about it using the Comments link below.)
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Amber Hildebrandt writes for CBCNews.ca in Toronto. Growing up on a farm in Manitoba, she acquired an insatiable appetite, but it was during a stint in Japan that she developed her discerning tastebuds and "foodie" ways.
Andrea Chiu is an associate producer at CBC Radio Digital. Though she loves to eat, cook and discuss food,
don't ask her to bake. It never turns out well. She tweets as @TOfoodie on Twitter and organizes food and wine events in Toronto called FoodieMeet.
Tara Kimura is the consumer life reporter for CBCNews.ca, covering a wide range of issues that range from rising food costs and the growing organic movement, to new trends in the marketplace.
Andree Lau is a CBC web reporter in Calgary. Her journalism career includes seven years as a CBC-TV reporter. Her own blog called "are you gonna eat that?" chronicles her eating adventures (including sampling snake and camel hoof tendon).
Jessica Wong is a CBCNews.ca writer who loves to eat and cook, as well as discuss, read and watch programming about food, sometimes all at once.
Kevin Yarr, CBCNews.ca's writer in Prince Edward Island, wrote about food and beer for national and regional magazines before joining the CBC. He acquired a desire for new tastes on his first trip to Europe, and an appreciation of eating locally and in season when he finally settled down on P.E.I.
Elizabeth Bridge is a writer with the CBC Digital Archives in Toronto. She first ventured into the kitchen as a child to indulge a sweet tooth by baking cookies and making fudge. A student budget compelled her to be a vegetarian (for a while) and instilled in her an ongoing curiosity about food and cooking.
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Comments
shirley
When I travel in the US, I research ahead the location of organic food stores like Wild Oats along my travel route.
While at Convention in Salt Lake City I explored on foot during my lunch break and found a Farmers' Market in the park right in the vicinity of the Delta Centre and Salt Lake Palace. I would think that visitors staying in our downtown Vancouver Hotels would welcome a grassroots type vendor for their daily fruit/veg intake. This would serve not only the seasonal high density population in hotels but also the locals who work downtown.
Posted June 18, 2008 01:03 PM
Charles
Montreal
Try walking along the avenue Mont-Royal on the Plateau district in Montreal you will be suprised at the number of small fruit and vegetable stands that abound, as well as all these specialty shops that sell fresh fish, cupcakes, fine bread, delicious meats, etc. Of course this being one of, if not THE, most high density areas in Canada confirms your point. Lots of people bring lots of proximity brings lots of choice brings convenience etc, and I might add, less carbon emissions as you are walking to these places as opposed to driving your SUV to get through the concerte wasteland of a parking lot that surrounds most grocery chain locations.
Posted June 23, 2008 08:17 AM
Maria Gatti
I also live in Montréal, a bit north of the Plateau, in the old district (Villeray/Petite Patrie) surrounding the Jean-Talon Market. It also has a remarkable number of small shops representing growing ethnic diversity: the traditional Québécois and Italian shops (and those of a small but longstanding Lebanese community) have been joined by strings of East and South-east Asian shops, Maghrebi, Latin American (from many different countries) and others. I can walk to everywhere I need to shop, from tiny shops to a Loblaws (near Parc métro a bit to our west), at least two other smaller supermarkets, a few SAQ (wine and spirits) outlets, etc.
Wonder if Mr Yarr from Charlottetown has set in a vegetable patch? Then his food would be more local still.
Posted September 3, 2008 02:12 PM