The Shift from American Markets to Food Purveyors

Food distributors are functional middle-men that are based around the fundamental laws of supply and demand. The United States has evolved to the point where distributors are highly relied upon by restaurants, grocery stores, institutions, and shoppers. Prior to the advent of food distributors (or "purveyors" to those in the food industry), food and goods were brought directly to the market from their place of origin. It was not but several generations ago that this was the common practice. Some communities across the United States still do this. The community market was an undesignated meeting place for the entire community. Farmers, fishermen, families, shopkeepers, chefs, restauranteurs, butchers, bakers, cheesemakers, and other artisans gathered to purchase, trade, and barter for goods and services.

Markets in the United States have not died and still exist today, despite the majority of the population embracing the grocery store concept. Even to this day, many thousands of people weekly converge on small towns to buy locally grown corn, fresh baked Amish cookies, table after table of apples from the local orchards, rows of produce, live chickens, ducks, geese, rabbits, turkeys, goats, cows, fudge and an endless supply of farm tools, household goods, and trinkets. Other markets still have the "Old World" atmosphere such as in Hay Market in Boston (Friday/Saturday across from the North End) and New York City's China Town.

As great as open air markets are, they are limited. Do not expect to buy freshly caught soft-shell crabs in Iowa. Likewise, the maple syrup you're buying in Phoenix won't come from a cactus down the road. It's been estimated that markets began to decline around the end of the 19th century. The immigration explosion in the late 19th century brought cultures and ingredients from around the world into our kitchens. New demands were coming of age. The advent of refrigeration now allowed produce from around the country and its ports to reach anyone in the United States. Another culinary explosion happened after World War Two, when hundreds of thousands of troops were returning home bringing some new-found food interests with them. The economic boom was on and restaurants were gaining popularity. One of the final evolutions came with the Food Network and the idea of celebrity chefs. There was a time when only the top chefs around the world were given the honor of having a cookbook; now, a pretty face and a good publicist can get you published.

Now that a demand had been established, businessmen came to supply it. With a fleet of trucks, trains, ships, and catalogs, they sought out restaurants, bakeries, institutions, and grocery stores with guarantees that the old fashioned markets could not match: consistency, quality, and variety. A customer can now buy bananas at a grocery store in the middle of winter in North Dakota. Sushi-grade tuna, indigenous only to oceans, can be cut into sashimi in restaurants in Chicago's business district. Kobe beef from Japan could now be guaranteed in any of San Francisco's top restaurants. We now literally have world cuisine preserved and packaged for us at our fingertips in any town. So there is little doubt that while some decry the decline of the traditional markets and the older way of doing things, large distribution networks have refined the production, distribution, and costs of foods to such a high degree, that they're not going anywhere.