speaker-0: This is Shelf Space. You know that feeling when you're reading a book you just can't put down? The secret life of groceries was exactly that for me. So I was thrilled to sit down with its author, Benjamin Lohr. His immersive journalism pulls back the curtain on the dark side of the food value chain, the evolution of the grocery industry, and we even muse a little bit on where it's all headed. Before we dive in, a big shout out to the partners who make it possible for me to bring shelf space to your pod box. Benchmark 60, REMA, Picnic Creative, Faskin Law, TD Business Banking, and Pacific Coast Distribution. Here's my conversation with author Benjamin Lohr. Benjamin, I'm a fan of your book. I read it once, maybe even a little bit, not a full second read, but I did skim it a second time. So I don't know if that's good or bad, but I'm glad that we're actually able to connect and meet for the first time. And I'm gonna kick things off with a shelf space classic. And that is jumping into the first questions. ⁓ the question that is looking to the future, what's the one innovation you would love to see in the grocery store?
speaker-1: It's a tough one for me. I mean, the grocery store is so resistant to innovation. I think I'm waiting for somebody who can bring some of the voyage of discovery to the online sphere. I've not like ad adopted anything except for basic replenishments online. I still go to the physical store a lot. And I think there are big reasons for that. But I I'm open to it. And I think someone has to like crack the code of like, how do you make the process of Going online and selecting food items, something more interactive, something more tantalizing, how we're connecting this to recipes, how we're connecting this to our imagination, you know, how we what are you teaching me about the products? Are there some skill that I feel like I'm I'm like exercising or can flex on other people about? So that's like a place where I'm looking forward to things changing, I think. I mean, death of the physical store is not really like a great thing to hope for, but it just seems like low-hanging fruit that someone's gotta get on.
speaker-0: Yeah, that's a good one. And you know, some would argue that's TikTok, but I don't know about you, but I anytime I drift by TikTok, I just get, ⁓ it's just so overwhelming and it's just so,
speaker-1: I'm incapable of making that argument, I guess, because I haven't been on it enough. I find Instagram reels, which is probably my generation, that's like enough of a concussive force on my brain that I don't need to go the full dose of of Instagram. But yeah, maybe there is something there, but i is that ti how is that tied to like direct sales and like item purchasing? It's definitely exploratory.
speaker-0: Maybe my friends at Instacart will come up with a great idea. Who knows? Well, listen, before we really fully jump into groceries, I want to take a quick step back and just highlight the fact that the book you wrote over 10 years ago now, ⁓ Hellbent, it was about competitive yoga. The reason why I bring that up is that I am curious to know did that project, did that insider writing project about yoga?
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
speaker-0: How did that inform your approach to writing about the dark side of groceries?
speaker-1: ⁓ yeah. I mean, well, first there's like a literal breadcrumb trail from book to book. So Hellbent, it was very much like an immersive journalism project. And it was ostensibly about competitive yoga, but also really broke the story of Bikram Yoga, Bikram Choudri, who's the guru behind Bikram Yoga, who's the guru behind hot yoga. You know, all forms of hot yoga ⁓ kind of stem from that. And competitive yoga is probably the most outlandish thing that like, you know, is an attention-grabbing piece of that. world, it broke the story of his being a a sexual predator. And that came through a lot of really immersive practices where I was deep it was pretty deep in that world, both for personal reasons, but also as an eyes open journalist. And I gained a lot of trust from people who would talk about things that hadn't been talked about in that world before. And so from that perspective, I knew I wanted to take the grocery world, which is a pretty secretive world when it comes to press. It's definitely an industry that self-identifies with victimization by like people who don't understand it from the outside kind of coming in and maligning it for ⁓ violating ⁓ some sanctimonious ideals that they hold because they're outsiders and don't know how this the literal sausage gets made, right? And so I wanted to get to a place where I could have conversations with people on the inside of that world where they would let that guard down a little bit. And I think I got there, although a lot of that is not on record in the book, but it really informed the research directions that I took. And then of course there's like a very literal path from book to book where I got the ideas to write the grocery book because I was at a Bikram yoga training doing yoga for like nine hours a day. at this retreat to get close to to Bikram, the the guru who's who's hard to get into his inner circle. And you know, we're kind of marooned at this hotel. There was you had to cook your own. You could either go to restaurants that were like on site at the hotel. You could cook food in your room and everyone had little like electric stoves that they were using to do that. Or you had once a week or so they would drive you to a grocery store. And this was in San Diego. So the grocery store that we went to was a Trader Joe's. And it was my first time in a Trader Joe's. And all of these like yogis who'd been bound up in this like ostensibly cult-like environment burst into the Trader Joe's like kids going to Disney World and were like, gaga. And I had never been to a Trader Joe's before and they were just running up with their favorite products. You've got to try this, you gotta try that. And I saw the same identification with the grocery store that I'd been see a self-identification enthusiasm that I was finding in this cult yoga community. And it's like, wow, this is night and day different from the grocery store I grew up with, which was a definitional chore. It's an obligation. You the idea that you would identify or put some of your personal self into the giant grocery store that I grew up with, which was flat linoleum flooring and bare fluorescence and like one step away from like a sub dungeon basement. Yeah, it was just mind blowing. So I was like, okay, I want to figure out this from an identity standpoint.
speaker-0: So it was status grocery that was the big switch that went off in your head of like, I gotta dive into this.
speaker-1: Think so.
speaker-0: It sounds like it was the status groceries trigger that really sort of, you know, like flipped that switch for you since the book coming out about five, four, five years ago. Do you see the grocery store evolving in a positive direction when it comes to identity markers, or do feel like it's changing it less so?
speaker-1: It's an interesting question because I don't really put a moral valence on it one way or the other. I think it's p wrapped up in a larger trend, right? We've moved away from Veblen kind of goods and like kind of these like conscious signifiers of ⁓ status and wealth to hidden signifiers of status and wealth. So I think yoga is a good example. It's a signifier because there's a skill around it and there's time and energy that has to go into learning it. And I think a lot of that transferred into to food knowledge. And I don't think of it really being a good or bad thing. It's just a new way that humans can flex on each other and kind of assert ourselves and to some extent exert some type of ⁓ dominance, but also just ex you know, go going back to like the romantic poets and the self expression, food is just a great vehicle for that. I think it's n you know To so dodging the question on moral valence, but I guess I will say it's not going anywhere. I don't think we're going back even with Trump and gold toilets and and very ⁓ explicit displays of wealth. I think the era of that is is over. It's certainly over for a a large segment of the population who doesn't embrace Trump. ⁓ you know, it's even like amplified like ⁓ like the idea like people going around taking the T's off their Teslas. Because their vehicle is a form of expression on a like very day to day political level. I think that's that's just like here and it's here with food in a even more present way.
speaker-0: Well said, I I I get that. You talk about the grocery industry being a dark mile. So I have to ask what stands out as the darkest part of that mile?
speaker-1: Well, if you read the book and and then skimmed it again, it gets pretty bleak in there. And I hesitate to bring it all up because I don't think of the book as a downer. And I I really believe the dark miracle ⁓ action in that subtitle is is is holding a lot of personal weight for me. Like I think there's something really miraculous about the American grocery system, and it is super American. We exported this to the world that is making people's lives better, providing very cheap you know forms ⁓ of nutrition and high quality goods. However, to get that, the current system is largely low margin based. It's largely looking at using price ⁓ at price and quality as a way of competing with people. And that has set up really perfect conditions for a race to the bottom where a lot of Companies are kind of jockeying for position by looking over their shoulder at what the grocer next to to them or the manufacturer next to them is is doing. And that pressure, you know, is a hundred, in my opinion, a hundred percent consumer driven at checkout. Because customers go to their store of choice and then look for the lowest val the the lowest price value that they can get. And that checkout pressure goes to the buyer. That buyer puts pressure on you know the exporter importer that puts pressure on the manufacturer, the manufacturer's putting pressure on the raw goods, you know, distributors who are and brokers who they're buying from and the brokers are putting pressure on the the people who are actually extracting this stuff. And when you are or growing this stuff and when you get to the way, way bottom of the chain, that pressure for a lower, lower price every year, as you know, can come from two places really. There's so many fixed costs in the grocery world with safety regulations and stuff and just like basic norms of c of competition to to to like be a global standardized good. And the two places those come out of are the environment where you can cheat on price by extracting in a a kind of a way where there's a major externality slash devastating harm to our world, or you can ⁓ get a ch lower price by you know shaving it off labor and cutting the price that you're paying to your workers lower and lower. And by the bottom of that chain, especially with an outsourced world, especially where we have trade treaties that don't have enforcement teeth or even if enforcement mechanisms in some some capacity, you get to places where it is the logical necessary thing to compete is to find somebody who will get you brokered, bonded, cheap, or abused labor in some form. So you are you lowered your labor costs in a way that allows you to participate. And I found that was just endemic. And so the book this is all a super long-winded way of saying the book follows some some men and women who are trafficked laborers. And I look at the shrimp industry in particular. But just using that as a microcosm of a compromised supply chain. And, you know, I followed people who are bought out of prison, put on boats, ⁓ forced to work under the threat of death, to watch their friends get shot and kicked off the boat, to watch their f got beat themselves, lost limbs, the most horrendous working conditions you could find. And then in the the both that tiny microcosm of the Thai shrimp industry, but in many supply chains that are problematic, that labor is necessary at some point to hit the low price that Western buyers expect.
speaker-0: Yeah, well, let's stay there then for a moment. And, you know, there are certifications and programs that claim that they're and are working to address some of those. Some of them are better than others. ⁓ you had commented in the book that you that from your perspective, it sort of felt like ⁓ there was a lot of marketing associated with those certifications, but ⁓ you were concerned about the impact of those. Do you feel over the last few years that that narrative has just become more and more true? Or do you see that there's changes coming when it comes to certifications and other such programs for labor and for environmental causes?
speaker-1: I think it it's become more and more true. I I'm optimistic that and everyone loves to talk about blockchain back in the day and now artificial intelligence and there's gonna be some great technological deliverance from this. I think that that is possible and I'm really optimistic about it. I don't think that has been reached, but I I do believe there is a technical solution to some of these problems because a lot of them just come from the problem of scale. And the fact that these vol the volume is so big that traceability becomes really difficult with large numbers of brokers in in certain industries that aren't vertically integrated. So yeah, that's not something I've seen bet get better. In the book, I was constantly, from a repertorial standpoint, looking for someone who would defend the current audit system to me, right? So most certifications are based on an audit snapshot. Which means that one, this is a kind of pay-to-play system. You pay the auditor to come into you and certify you. So there are there's a little bit of missed mixed incentives on that level. There's also mixed incentives on the fact that because you're paying for them, you've arranged this as a site visit. It's something you know about, you know what they're looking for. It's also deeply problematic because in tr things like labor, there is no real great empirical. Marking points. It's one thing if we're looking to see whether a pathogen is present or whether pesticide residue is present. And those are the ways that this audit system evolved historically, was looking at really empirical things that came right out of the E. coli scares and the tort litigation that resulted from that. But when you're talking about labor, And you're talking about like, did someone's paycheck get a deduction six months ago? And you're talking about someone who doesn't speak the language that you as an auditor come in with, and then you're talking about the fact that the company had six months to prepare for this. It's just like a system that is you know, total cover your ass, kind of not designed to do much more than provide. plausible deniability to everyone involved except for the people it's supposed to be protecting. So consumer gets plausible deniability, the manufacturer gets pla plausible deniability, the store gets plausible deniability, and the worker nobody cares. ⁓ nobody's looking out for them.
speaker-0: Yeah, it's certainly there. It's a tricky area. I enjoyed kind of reading that part through the book. I have to ask, maybe it's because ⁓ you know, people do expanded editions or they republish. If you were to add a chapter, maybe one day you get to add a chapter, what chapter would you add to the secret life of groceries?
speaker-1: ⁓ that's a good question. And I I just want to I'll let me ask for that last thing too. If there's someone listening who wants to come up and speak on behalf of the audit regime, like I am listening. I spent five years looking for someone to be like, I work in this and I know better than you, and here's why it's the best possible world, or even like the best possible now. And like I couldn't find them. So I always ⁓ I want to include that because I it's a real harsh critique of a fifty billion dollar industry. But I would love to be wrong about it. Okay. So what would I like to do differently? I mean, look, I got very interested in like the big box model. I mean, not the big box model, but like a membership club, Costco, BJ's pretty late in the game. I you know, I obviously ⁓ encountered it early, but it I didn't it felt too far away from like the Michael Cullen grocery store that's just like volume based to get low like lower and lower margins. That I had kind of put a bead on and used was using Trader Joe's as a disruptor of. And then but I think that the Costco model has a lot to recommend itself for for these exact things where your customers, you one, know what they care about and they care about certain values, and your whole interest is in renewing them as members in your club. I think that adds a lot of integrity to quality assurance. And so that became like a real I wish I had I wish I had like poked deeper down that world. I mean, Costco's quality assurance people, I did talk to them while writing the book and they were super helpful, but I didn't quite put the dots together when I was writing like how that model was protective. And then yeah, I don't know. I loved hanging out with the small entrepreneurs who are bringing things to market. And I you know, I love hang out with Julie, who is the woman I I feature in the book with Slaughsa, but I I feel like there's so many good stories in that world. I could think you could just do a whole book on these like small entrepreneurs who are going to shelf. And then I I guess like big data and and logistics is that was always a missing piece, both from the perspective of consumer tracking software that's like kind of doing some behind the scenes dot connecting as to what do our customers value and what do they like and what deals can we give them and and how we're following that. And from a logistics standpoint of okay, you know, like we can now crunch more data than we could ever crunch before and we can do so with an intelligent set seeming partner. How do we get that one day delivery down to one hour, down to 30 minutes, down to, you know, it's there when you think about it.
speaker-0: I think variable pricing is an area that I would love to watch carefully and learn how it's working, how it's going to get implemented, ⁓ how it's going to impact everyone in the system. The fact that I think variable promotion pricing is one thing. You know, I mean, if a manufacturer says this product is 20% off, but over the span of two months it's goes between 8% and 12%. I mean, that that's just sort of fancy marketing. But if there's Other ways that pricing gets sort of weaponized. ⁓ I certainly ⁓ fear that. Maybe that's just maybe it's the inner Luddite in me. But ⁓ yeah, that would be an area that I would also love to dive into.
speaker-1: I think that that's a real fear. I mean, and it's interesting, you know, really like who's at the FTC who's gonna be looking, you know, like I don't know exactly how Robinson Patman would be impacted by that, but I I think like the pricing laws on the books are depression era and the tech is like n changing by the second. And so yeah, I think there's there's just a lot of really interesting questions about how that's gonna be applied.
speaker-0: So for listeners that haven't read The Secret Life Life of Groceries yet, you know, you did dive deep into the fish counter, the seafood counter at Whole Foods, which was a fantastic way to jump into ⁓ what you were presenting. I have to like, did you when you walk by a fish counter now, do you cringe? Do you cover your eyes and don't look directly at the seafood? What's what's about do you buy fish anymore from the grocery store?
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. No I mean, first, yeah, no cringe. I mean, so the book ⁓ for ⁓ you know, if you ever read the book, it opens with a explicitly not over the top, ⁓ but it is still gross, a really gross description of the reality of the Whole Foods fish market ⁓ seafood counter that I worked at for for research during the book when I was cleaning it at the end of the ⁓ every other month, which was not a regular cleaning schedule that should have been adhered to. One, that particular store has cleaned up it and totally renovated that fish counter. Whether that had anything to do with the book, I have no idea. Maybe it was just overdue, but that is physically not what there's it's not the same place. I have also a number of people have reached out to me from the Whole Foods World. And some people are like, yeah, that's exactly what it's like at my store. And some people are like, ⁓ my God, you worked at like some depraved place. But no, the answer is no. I my buying habits have changed very little from the book. And I think that that was like a take home lesson that I hope people get, which is these are problems that are baked into the system and you are not going to with the education, even as a very informed consumer, are not going to be able to make choices that will absolve you of ⁓ some of the things that are at the bottom of the supply chain that are that are rotten. And so The seafood counter is a metaphor for that. And as a consumer, I don't want to be dodging the fact that I think true reform will come through legal the legal system, policy, unions, or direct like raising of worker voice, ⁓ not through enlightened purchasing. Because of a lot of what we discussed with the audit regime, there's just not an information flow that allows you to know what an informed thing is, and there's a lot of misinformation. So, yeah, my buying choices are r largely unchanged. Even, you know, Thai shrimp is a perfect example. Like, what would you do with that information? Thailand has reformed its shrimp ⁓ production more than a lot of the other places that people would run to buy shrimp from. And the labor problems that exist were just displaced from Thailand into those other places. So if you were to read my book, be like, ⁓ my God, these are horrendous practices and avoid the Thai shrimp industry, which is very understandable, you would be running away from one of the few places where there has been a spotlight on the supply chain and going to places where that spotlight hasn't been applied. You're like not rewarding the very people who are trying or They're not trying, they've been forced to by market responses, you know, and and government policy and to respond and going to places where it's still maybe the wild west. And it's just because as a consumer there's a lag in information. And not just as a consumer, the buyers at grocery stores suffer from the same lag of information. They often have no clue what they're buying.
speaker-0: Yeah. Has there been any feedback about the book that surprised you over the last few years?
speaker-1: Well, going into it, I was pretty nervous. You know, I talked to the people I talked to and I it's a massive industry, right? So it's a one trillion dollars of like people doing things. And I didn't it's pure hubris to think that I could have like gotten it all right. And so I was pretty nervous, like what's the reaction gonna be when this hits? And I guess I was surprised this will sound like a humble brag, but I was surprised that like A lot of people really identified with the book inside the industry in various sectors. And I was like bracing for like you total outsider amateur didn't get this. And instead, a lot of people, you know, to go back to what we were talking about at the way beginning about like the fearful press response, a lot of people were like, ⁓ this felt like you know, you put your time in and you got it. And this was the first time I've ever seen XYZ. part of this industry discussed openly. Thank you. So that was a surprise in terms of reaction. You know, COVID also just made things different. And so some of the reactions have been just like, hey, come back to trucking and look at us now, or like come back to this sector and like and see how it's changed. It's not really surprise, but I think I think there have been major pivots since since the book was published.
speaker-0: Well, in books like Anthony Bourdain's Confidential Kitchen, is that the right title? So I have read it, but I can't remember. Yeah. He's obviously he was an insider. And then you come into the grocery space as basically an outsider. And I would agree that, you know, after reading, I'm like, yeah, it's you know, and that's pretty, pretty good snapshot of some of these dark places. But ⁓ like you, I'm not looking for darkness. I'm looking for light. I'm looking for
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah.
speaker-0: Areas that excite me. And I think to your earlier point, the the reality is that access to nutritious food, as much whole food as possible, so that you know people can thrive. I think for the most part, there's a lot of good wins. I think the area that probably concerns me the most from a big picture perspective is probably food waste. I feel like we're wasting a lot of food in at every point in the value chain and especially in in food service and ready made meals and and all the types of things. We're just worth we're binning a lot of food. But ⁓ there's opportunities to grow and change. And I think your perspective was entertaining and insightful. So yeah, appreciate you the the top secret work you had to go through to pull that off. Great writing.
speaker-1: Well, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. I it's funny, I'm now I'm working on a book on the Elder Care World and very much an outsider there. And it it's it's funny to try to apply some of the misses or like think through how to do this all over again in a new industry. But it does feel like very much like going in not knowing anything is like there is a part of that that's an asset because you can be very naive and let people talk to you. on their own terms and ask very obvious questions that that maybe people take for granted when when you do it day in and day out.
speaker-0: Yeah, so true. All right. My final question for you, Ben. Favorite grocery shopping experience ever, anywhere in the world. Where was it?
speaker-1: Ever? man. That's a weighty question, a good one. You know, you get so many repetitive questions and the the do you do all these podcasts? I've never think I've ever been asked that. It's a great question. I've had so I'm I like a grocery geek long before the book. Like I love like this was born a little bit out of like the fact that I like shopping. I mean I had you know, it's it's a little touched in the book, but I I had some formative experiences in Kenya. when I was a undergraduate and going to some markets there and that kind of boundary line between a world where I had been living with no running water, no electricity, really out in a environment that takes a lot of like Western privileges and makes you reminded of them. And then would go to my first grocery store back. I it was a mind blowing experience. ⁓ and like I will not ever forget gazing at the two liters of soda lining the aisles and just being like reverent for some type of vision of America that I didn't know. Like I was both like re if you'd asked me before I was a bit of like repulsed by it. But then I was like, ⁓ man, I owe so many childhood good memories to this overabundance and I just saw it with those eyes of like, this is like a very powerful thing.
speaker-0: That's wild. Yeah. I've been to Kenya four times for work projects and ⁓ some of the food buying spaces were pretty sketchy. Some were interesting, some were very agricultural y ish. And some were just like, I gotta get out of here. But ⁓ yeah, thanks for the time, Ben. Appreciate it. And ⁓ you just alluded to your next project, so we'll keep an eye out for for that. And ⁓ are you gonna wear a fedora and like dark rimmed glasses and walk around with a cane? Is that that's where this next book is going?
speaker-1: Sor that's right, I'll do old like me and secretly infiltrate. ⁓ actually a friend of mine suggested that, but no, I'm not. I think ⁓ I'll find some trusted geezer allies to get me into that world which is always fun. Like I love a good intergenerational friendship and have some good friends that I think will be my guides to that world.
speaker-0: Thanks for the time, Ben.
speaker-1: It's total pleasure, thank you.
speaker-0: Thanks for listening to this episode of Shelf Space. If you like what you hear, I would be eternally grateful for a five-star rating and a quick share on social. Your support means the world to me and our partners: TD, Faskin, Rema, Pacific Coast Distribution, Picnic Creative, and Benchmark 60. For bonus content and resources from our sponsors, go to ShelfSpacePodcast.com. I'm Corbin Hebert. I'm glad we're on this rocket ship together. I'll see you in the future.
speaker-1: It's a tough one for me. I mean, the grocery store is so resistant to innovation. I think I'm waiting for somebody who can bring some of the voyage of discovery to the online sphere. I've not like ad adopted anything except for basic replenishments online. I still go to the physical store a lot. And I think there are big reasons for that. But I I'm open to it. And I think someone has to like crack the code of like, how do you make the process of Going online and selecting food items, something more interactive, something more tantalizing, how we're connecting this to recipes, how we're connecting this to our imagination, you know, how we what are you teaching me about the products? Are there some skill that I feel like I'm I'm like exercising or can flex on other people about? So that's like a place where I'm looking forward to things changing, I think. I mean, death of the physical store is not really like a great thing to hope for, but it just seems like low-hanging fruit that someone's gotta get on.
speaker-0: Yeah, that's a good one. And you know, some would argue that's TikTok, but I don't know about you, but I anytime I drift by TikTok, I just get, ⁓ it's just so overwhelming and it's just so,
speaker-1: I'm incapable of making that argument, I guess, because I haven't been on it enough. I find Instagram reels, which is probably my generation, that's like enough of a concussive force on my brain that I don't need to go the full dose of of Instagram. But yeah, maybe there is something there, but i is that ti how is that tied to like direct sales and like item purchasing? It's definitely exploratory.
speaker-0: Maybe my friends at Instacart will come up with a great idea. Who knows? Well, listen, before we really fully jump into groceries, I want to take a quick step back and just highlight the fact that the book you wrote over 10 years ago now, ⁓ Hellbent, it was about competitive yoga. The reason why I bring that up is that I am curious to know did that project, did that insider writing project about yoga?
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
speaker-0: How did that inform your approach to writing about the dark side of groceries?
speaker-1: ⁓ yeah. I mean, well, first there's like a literal breadcrumb trail from book to book. So Hellbent, it was very much like an immersive journalism project. And it was ostensibly about competitive yoga, but also really broke the story of Bikram Yoga, Bikram Choudri, who's the guru behind Bikram Yoga, who's the guru behind hot yoga. You know, all forms of hot yoga ⁓ kind of stem from that. And competitive yoga is probably the most outlandish thing that like, you know, is an attention-grabbing piece of that. world, it broke the story of his being a a sexual predator. And that came through a lot of really immersive practices where I was deep it was pretty deep in that world, both for personal reasons, but also as an eyes open journalist. And I gained a lot of trust from people who would talk about things that hadn't been talked about in that world before. And so from that perspective, I knew I wanted to take the grocery world, which is a pretty secretive world when it comes to press. It's definitely an industry that self-identifies with victimization by like people who don't understand it from the outside kind of coming in and maligning it for ⁓ violating ⁓ some sanctimonious ideals that they hold because they're outsiders and don't know how this the literal sausage gets made, right? And so I wanted to get to a place where I could have conversations with people on the inside of that world where they would let that guard down a little bit. And I think I got there, although a lot of that is not on record in the book, but it really informed the research directions that I took. And then of course there's like a very literal path from book to book where I got the ideas to write the grocery book because I was at a Bikram yoga training doing yoga for like nine hours a day. at this retreat to get close to to Bikram, the the guru who's who's hard to get into his inner circle. And you know, we're kind of marooned at this hotel. There was you had to cook your own. You could either go to restaurants that were like on site at the hotel. You could cook food in your room and everyone had little like electric stoves that they were using to do that. Or you had once a week or so they would drive you to a grocery store. And this was in San Diego. So the grocery store that we went to was a Trader Joe's. And it was my first time in a Trader Joe's. And all of these like yogis who'd been bound up in this like ostensibly cult-like environment burst into the Trader Joe's like kids going to Disney World and were like, gaga. And I had never been to a Trader Joe's before and they were just running up with their favorite products. You've got to try this, you gotta try that. And I saw the same identification with the grocery store that I'd been see a self-identification enthusiasm that I was finding in this cult yoga community. And it's like, wow, this is night and day different from the grocery store I grew up with, which was a definitional chore. It's an obligation. You the idea that you would identify or put some of your personal self into the giant grocery store that I grew up with, which was flat linoleum flooring and bare fluorescence and like one step away from like a sub dungeon basement. Yeah, it was just mind blowing. So I was like, okay, I want to figure out this from an identity standpoint.
speaker-0: So it was status grocery that was the big switch that went off in your head of like, I gotta dive into this.
speaker-1: Think so.
speaker-0: It sounds like it was the status groceries trigger that really sort of, you know, like flipped that switch for you since the book coming out about five, four, five years ago. Do you see the grocery store evolving in a positive direction when it comes to identity markers, or do feel like it's changing it less so?
speaker-1: It's an interesting question because I don't really put a moral valence on it one way or the other. I think it's p wrapped up in a larger trend, right? We've moved away from Veblen kind of goods and like kind of these like conscious signifiers of ⁓ status and wealth to hidden signifiers of status and wealth. So I think yoga is a good example. It's a signifier because there's a skill around it and there's time and energy that has to go into learning it. And I think a lot of that transferred into to food knowledge. And I don't think of it really being a good or bad thing. It's just a new way that humans can flex on each other and kind of assert ourselves and to some extent exert some type of ⁓ dominance, but also just ex you know, go going back to like the romantic poets and the self expression, food is just a great vehicle for that. I think it's n you know To so dodging the question on moral valence, but I guess I will say it's not going anywhere. I don't think we're going back even with Trump and gold toilets and and very ⁓ explicit displays of wealth. I think the era of that is is over. It's certainly over for a a large segment of the population who doesn't embrace Trump. ⁓ you know, it's even like amplified like ⁓ like the idea like people going around taking the T's off their Teslas. Because their vehicle is a form of expression on a like very day to day political level. I think that's that's just like here and it's here with food in a even more present way.
speaker-0: Well said, I I I get that. You talk about the grocery industry being a dark mile. So I have to ask what stands out as the darkest part of that mile?
speaker-1: Well, if you read the book and and then skimmed it again, it gets pretty bleak in there. And I hesitate to bring it all up because I don't think of the book as a downer. And I I really believe the dark miracle ⁓ action in that subtitle is is is holding a lot of personal weight for me. Like I think there's something really miraculous about the American grocery system, and it is super American. We exported this to the world that is making people's lives better, providing very cheap you know forms ⁓ of nutrition and high quality goods. However, to get that, the current system is largely low margin based. It's largely looking at using price ⁓ at price and quality as a way of competing with people. And that has set up really perfect conditions for a race to the bottom where a lot of Companies are kind of jockeying for position by looking over their shoulder at what the grocer next to to them or the manufacturer next to them is is doing. And that pressure, you know, is a hundred, in my opinion, a hundred percent consumer driven at checkout. Because customers go to their store of choice and then look for the lowest val the the lowest price value that they can get. And that checkout pressure goes to the buyer. That buyer puts pressure on you know the exporter importer that puts pressure on the manufacturer, the manufacturer's putting pressure on the raw goods, you know, distributors who are and brokers who they're buying from and the brokers are putting pressure on the the people who are actually extracting this stuff. And when you are or growing this stuff and when you get to the way, way bottom of the chain, that pressure for a lower, lower price every year, as you know, can come from two places really. There's so many fixed costs in the grocery world with safety regulations and stuff and just like basic norms of c of competition to to to like be a global standardized good. And the two places those come out of are the environment where you can cheat on price by extracting in a a kind of a way where there's a major externality slash devastating harm to our world, or you can ⁓ get a ch lower price by you know shaving it off labor and cutting the price that you're paying to your workers lower and lower. And by the bottom of that chain, especially with an outsourced world, especially where we have trade treaties that don't have enforcement teeth or even if enforcement mechanisms in some some capacity, you get to places where it is the logical necessary thing to compete is to find somebody who will get you brokered, bonded, cheap, or abused labor in some form. So you are you lowered your labor costs in a way that allows you to participate. And I found that was just endemic. And so the book this is all a super long-winded way of saying the book follows some some men and women who are trafficked laborers. And I look at the shrimp industry in particular. But just using that as a microcosm of a compromised supply chain. And, you know, I followed people who are bought out of prison, put on boats, ⁓ forced to work under the threat of death, to watch their friends get shot and kicked off the boat, to watch their f got beat themselves, lost limbs, the most horrendous working conditions you could find. And then in the the both that tiny microcosm of the Thai shrimp industry, but in many supply chains that are problematic, that labor is necessary at some point to hit the low price that Western buyers expect.
speaker-0: Yeah, well, let's stay there then for a moment. And, you know, there are certifications and programs that claim that they're and are working to address some of those. Some of them are better than others. ⁓ you had commented in the book that you that from your perspective, it sort of felt like ⁓ there was a lot of marketing associated with those certifications, but ⁓ you were concerned about the impact of those. Do you feel over the last few years that that narrative has just become more and more true? Or do you see that there's changes coming when it comes to certifications and other such programs for labor and for environmental causes?
speaker-1: I think it it's become more and more true. I I'm optimistic that and everyone loves to talk about blockchain back in the day and now artificial intelligence and there's gonna be some great technological deliverance from this. I think that that is possible and I'm really optimistic about it. I don't think that has been reached, but I I do believe there is a technical solution to some of these problems because a lot of them just come from the problem of scale. And the fact that these vol the volume is so big that traceability becomes really difficult with large numbers of brokers in in certain industries that aren't vertically integrated. So yeah, that's not something I've seen bet get better. In the book, I was constantly, from a repertorial standpoint, looking for someone who would defend the current audit system to me, right? So most certifications are based on an audit snapshot. Which means that one, this is a kind of pay-to-play system. You pay the auditor to come into you and certify you. So there are there's a little bit of missed mixed incentives on that level. There's also mixed incentives on the fact that because you're paying for them, you've arranged this as a site visit. It's something you know about, you know what they're looking for. It's also deeply problematic because in tr things like labor, there is no real great empirical. Marking points. It's one thing if we're looking to see whether a pathogen is present or whether pesticide residue is present. And those are the ways that this audit system evolved historically, was looking at really empirical things that came right out of the E. coli scares and the tort litigation that resulted from that. But when you're talking about labor, And you're talking about like, did someone's paycheck get a deduction six months ago? And you're talking about someone who doesn't speak the language that you as an auditor come in with, and then you're talking about the fact that the company had six months to prepare for this. It's just like a system that is you know, total cover your ass, kind of not designed to do much more than provide. plausible deniability to everyone involved except for the people it's supposed to be protecting. So consumer gets plausible deniability, the manufacturer gets pla plausible deniability, the store gets plausible deniability, and the worker nobody cares. ⁓ nobody's looking out for them.
speaker-0: Yeah, it's certainly there. It's a tricky area. I enjoyed kind of reading that part through the book. I have to ask, maybe it's because ⁓ you know, people do expanded editions or they republish. If you were to add a chapter, maybe one day you get to add a chapter, what chapter would you add to the secret life of groceries?
speaker-1: ⁓ that's a good question. And I I just want to I'll let me ask for that last thing too. If there's someone listening who wants to come up and speak on behalf of the audit regime, like I am listening. I spent five years looking for someone to be like, I work in this and I know better than you, and here's why it's the best possible world, or even like the best possible now. And like I couldn't find them. So I always ⁓ I want to include that because I it's a real harsh critique of a fifty billion dollar industry. But I would love to be wrong about it. Okay. So what would I like to do differently? I mean, look, I got very interested in like the big box model. I mean, not the big box model, but like a membership club, Costco, BJ's pretty late in the game. I you know, I obviously ⁓ encountered it early, but it I didn't it felt too far away from like the Michael Cullen grocery store that's just like volume based to get low like lower and lower margins. That I had kind of put a bead on and used was using Trader Joe's as a disruptor of. And then but I think that the Costco model has a lot to recommend itself for for these exact things where your customers, you one, know what they care about and they care about certain values, and your whole interest is in renewing them as members in your club. I think that adds a lot of integrity to quality assurance. And so that became like a real I wish I had I wish I had like poked deeper down that world. I mean, Costco's quality assurance people, I did talk to them while writing the book and they were super helpful, but I didn't quite put the dots together when I was writing like how that model was protective. And then yeah, I don't know. I loved hanging out with the small entrepreneurs who are bringing things to market. And I you know, I love hang out with Julie, who is the woman I I feature in the book with Slaughsa, but I I feel like there's so many good stories in that world. I could think you could just do a whole book on these like small entrepreneurs who are going to shelf. And then I I guess like big data and and logistics is that was always a missing piece, both from the perspective of consumer tracking software that's like kind of doing some behind the scenes dot connecting as to what do our customers value and what do they like and what deals can we give them and and how we're following that. And from a logistics standpoint of okay, you know, like we can now crunch more data than we could ever crunch before and we can do so with an intelligent set seeming partner. How do we get that one day delivery down to one hour, down to 30 minutes, down to, you know, it's there when you think about it.
speaker-0: I think variable pricing is an area that I would love to watch carefully and learn how it's working, how it's going to get implemented, ⁓ how it's going to impact everyone in the system. The fact that I think variable promotion pricing is one thing. You know, I mean, if a manufacturer says this product is 20% off, but over the span of two months it's goes between 8% and 12%. I mean, that that's just sort of fancy marketing. But if there's Other ways that pricing gets sort of weaponized. ⁓ I certainly ⁓ fear that. Maybe that's just maybe it's the inner Luddite in me. But ⁓ yeah, that would be an area that I would also love to dive into.
speaker-1: I think that that's a real fear. I mean, and it's interesting, you know, really like who's at the FTC who's gonna be looking, you know, like I don't know exactly how Robinson Patman would be impacted by that, but I I think like the pricing laws on the books are depression era and the tech is like n changing by the second. And so yeah, I think there's there's just a lot of really interesting questions about how that's gonna be applied.
speaker-0: So for listeners that haven't read The Secret Life Life of Groceries yet, you know, you did dive deep into the fish counter, the seafood counter at Whole Foods, which was a fantastic way to jump into ⁓ what you were presenting. I have to like, did you when you walk by a fish counter now, do you cringe? Do you cover your eyes and don't look directly at the seafood? What's what's about do you buy fish anymore from the grocery store?
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. No I mean, first, yeah, no cringe. I mean, so the book ⁓ for ⁓ you know, if you ever read the book, it opens with a explicitly not over the top, ⁓ but it is still gross, a really gross description of the reality of the Whole Foods fish market ⁓ seafood counter that I worked at for for research during the book when I was cleaning it at the end of the ⁓ every other month, which was not a regular cleaning schedule that should have been adhered to. One, that particular store has cleaned up it and totally renovated that fish counter. Whether that had anything to do with the book, I have no idea. Maybe it was just overdue, but that is physically not what there's it's not the same place. I have also a number of people have reached out to me from the Whole Foods World. And some people are like, yeah, that's exactly what it's like at my store. And some people are like, ⁓ my God, you worked at like some depraved place. But no, the answer is no. I my buying habits have changed very little from the book. And I think that that was like a take home lesson that I hope people get, which is these are problems that are baked into the system and you are not going to with the education, even as a very informed consumer, are not going to be able to make choices that will absolve you of ⁓ some of the things that are at the bottom of the supply chain that are that are rotten. And so The seafood counter is a metaphor for that. And as a consumer, I don't want to be dodging the fact that I think true reform will come through legal the legal system, policy, unions, or direct like raising of worker voice, ⁓ not through enlightened purchasing. Because of a lot of what we discussed with the audit regime, there's just not an information flow that allows you to know what an informed thing is, and there's a lot of misinformation. So, yeah, my buying choices are r largely unchanged. Even, you know, Thai shrimp is a perfect example. Like, what would you do with that information? Thailand has reformed its shrimp ⁓ production more than a lot of the other places that people would run to buy shrimp from. And the labor problems that exist were just displaced from Thailand into those other places. So if you were to read my book, be like, ⁓ my God, these are horrendous practices and avoid the Thai shrimp industry, which is very understandable, you would be running away from one of the few places where there has been a spotlight on the supply chain and going to places where that spotlight hasn't been applied. You're like not rewarding the very people who are trying or They're not trying, they've been forced to by market responses, you know, and and government policy and to respond and going to places where it's still maybe the wild west. And it's just because as a consumer there's a lag in information. And not just as a consumer, the buyers at grocery stores suffer from the same lag of information. They often have no clue what they're buying.
speaker-0: Yeah. Has there been any feedback about the book that surprised you over the last few years?
speaker-1: Well, going into it, I was pretty nervous. You know, I talked to the people I talked to and I it's a massive industry, right? So it's a one trillion dollars of like people doing things. And I didn't it's pure hubris to think that I could have like gotten it all right. And so I was pretty nervous, like what's the reaction gonna be when this hits? And I guess I was surprised this will sound like a humble brag, but I was surprised that like A lot of people really identified with the book inside the industry in various sectors. And I was like bracing for like you total outsider amateur didn't get this. And instead, a lot of people, you know, to go back to what we were talking about at the way beginning about like the fearful press response, a lot of people were like, ⁓ this felt like you know, you put your time in and you got it. And this was the first time I've ever seen XYZ. part of this industry discussed openly. Thank you. So that was a surprise in terms of reaction. You know, COVID also just made things different. And so some of the reactions have been just like, hey, come back to trucking and look at us now, or like come back to this sector and like and see how it's changed. It's not really surprise, but I think I think there have been major pivots since since the book was published.
speaker-0: Well, in books like Anthony Bourdain's Confidential Kitchen, is that the right title? So I have read it, but I can't remember. Yeah. He's obviously he was an insider. And then you come into the grocery space as basically an outsider. And I would agree that, you know, after reading, I'm like, yeah, it's you know, and that's pretty, pretty good snapshot of some of these dark places. But ⁓ like you, I'm not looking for darkness. I'm looking for light. I'm looking for
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah.
speaker-0: Areas that excite me. And I think to your earlier point, the the reality is that access to nutritious food, as much whole food as possible, so that you know people can thrive. I think for the most part, there's a lot of good wins. I think the area that probably concerns me the most from a big picture perspective is probably food waste. I feel like we're wasting a lot of food in at every point in the value chain and especially in in food service and ready made meals and and all the types of things. We're just worth we're binning a lot of food. But ⁓ there's opportunities to grow and change. And I think your perspective was entertaining and insightful. So yeah, appreciate you the the top secret work you had to go through to pull that off. Great writing.
speaker-1: Well, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. I it's funny, I'm now I'm working on a book on the Elder Care World and very much an outsider there. And it it's it's funny to try to apply some of the misses or like think through how to do this all over again in a new industry. But it does feel like very much like going in not knowing anything is like there is a part of that that's an asset because you can be very naive and let people talk to you. on their own terms and ask very obvious questions that that maybe people take for granted when when you do it day in and day out.
speaker-0: Yeah, so true. All right. My final question for you, Ben. Favorite grocery shopping experience ever, anywhere in the world. Where was it?
speaker-1: Ever? man. That's a weighty question, a good one. You know, you get so many repetitive questions and the the do you do all these podcasts? I've never think I've ever been asked that. It's a great question. I've had so I'm I like a grocery geek long before the book. Like I love like this was born a little bit out of like the fact that I like shopping. I mean I had you know, it's it's a little touched in the book, but I I had some formative experiences in Kenya. when I was a undergraduate and going to some markets there and that kind of boundary line between a world where I had been living with no running water, no electricity, really out in a environment that takes a lot of like Western privileges and makes you reminded of them. And then would go to my first grocery store back. I it was a mind blowing experience. ⁓ and like I will not ever forget gazing at the two liters of soda lining the aisles and just being like reverent for some type of vision of America that I didn't know. Like I was both like re if you'd asked me before I was a bit of like repulsed by it. But then I was like, ⁓ man, I owe so many childhood good memories to this overabundance and I just saw it with those eyes of like, this is like a very powerful thing.
speaker-0: That's wild. Yeah. I've been to Kenya four times for work projects and ⁓ some of the food buying spaces were pretty sketchy. Some were interesting, some were very agricultural y ish. And some were just like, I gotta get out of here. But ⁓ yeah, thanks for the time, Ben. Appreciate it. And ⁓ you just alluded to your next project, so we'll keep an eye out for for that. And ⁓ are you gonna wear a fedora and like dark rimmed glasses and walk around with a cane? Is that that's where this next book is going?
speaker-1: Sor that's right, I'll do old like me and secretly infiltrate. ⁓ actually a friend of mine suggested that, but no, I'm not. I think ⁓ I'll find some trusted geezer allies to get me into that world which is always fun. Like I love a good intergenerational friendship and have some good friends that I think will be my guides to that world.
speaker-0: Thanks for the time, Ben.
speaker-1: It's total pleasure, thank you.
speaker-0: Thanks for listening to this episode of Shelf Space. If you like what you hear, I would be eternally grateful for a five-star rating and a quick share on social. Your support means the world to me and our partners: TD, Faskin, Rema, Pacific Coast Distribution, Picnic Creative, and Benchmark 60. For bonus content and resources from our sponsors, go to ShelfSpacePodcast.com. I'm Corbin Hebert. I'm glad we're on this rocket ship together. I'll see you in the future.
