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17 comments

No Place for Packaging?

Posted September 27, 2011 7:00 AM

What's your view on "zero packaging" stores like the In.gredients grocery preparing to open this fall in Austin, TX? Do bulk-only stores make sense, requiring customers to bring their own packages? Will they succeed in teaching healthier eating habits and helping consumers adopt more sustainable lifestyles? Is the message on the mark, or promoting the idea that no packaging is sustainable?

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Guru
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#1

Re: No Place for Packaging?

09/27/2011 7:39 AM

I am okay with getting rid of that hard plastic packaging that you need a bandsaw to get open.

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#2

Re: No Place for Packaging?

09/27/2011 8:34 AM

I will not buy anything from bulk bins. I am not germophobic, but I shudder to think how many snot-covered hands have grasped that little shovel. I also wonder how much snot might be in those bins too.

I, too, get frustrated with how much and the type of packaging that surrounds some products. So much waste. I think the products with less packaging would be ok, but with so much competition for so many similar products, the packaging is what will catch your eye.

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#3
In reply to #2

Re: No Place for Packaging?

09/27/2011 10:06 AM

It's the mice which I'd be worried about...
Come nightfall I'd have to sit and watch those bins for hours on end, ready to pounce in an instant.
Being a cat is not all curling up on the sofa, or playing on CR4 you know .
Del

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#4
In reply to #3

Re: No Place for Packaging?

09/27/2011 11:40 AM

Nah, those are just capers... or maybe little bitty raisins.

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#10
In reply to #2

Re: No Place for Packaging?

09/28/2011 11:04 AM

Steve - you do realize that the stuff you buy in a container was once out of the container, right?

When grain is in the field (we can take corn for instance), there is an endless parade of deer, 'coons, 'possum, and more that suck on the cobs from the instant they sprout to the day they are harvested. If you watch a corn field in the late afternoon closely you will be able to see the deer wandering through nibbling off of this ear or that ear as the leaves dry away and the kernels stick out the top - each stalk wiggles in succession as it walk down the row testing and nibbling them. They leave behind both snot and spit.

Then it goes through a galvanized and painted combine and into the back of a truck (possibly used off season for hauling dead cattle?), shipped up into a silo by equipment that has been sitting for 11 months and never cleaned (except by the rain), then back to a truck and finally to a silo at a handling facility (assuming it is a more direct route than some corn). I used to watch trucks being unloaded in the fall and you would be surprised what comes out of them. I think my personal record was 13 dead pigeons in one load!

The pigeons get removed by the grating before the drag conveyor, so now the corn is clean (except for the small stuff - less than 3" across - that falls off the truck while over the pit). From there it is back into storage or possibly a dryer, then to storage. After multiple trips through a handling system, it ends up going through an aspirator that sucks air through the stream and removes fines (dust, sand, mouse droppings, bird feathers (remember the pigeons), etc.) then over a de-stoner that removes the stones by density. Then it is pronounced CLEAN, and can be ground to grain based products. From there it gets bagged - into a small or bulk bag for distribution to the store.

Do you really think that the person who touched the scoop before you is the biggest influence in YOUR health? Most of the tree-huggers who would purchase that way in the US are already overdosed on hand sanitizer anyway - their hands are the least of your troubles. Your body is CONSTANTLY fighting off infections from such sources, and the people around you are only part of the equation. My bigger concern is if the guy who put the product in the bag washed his hands after his last smoke break. You can and will get fired from a food plant for not washing your hands after dumping, but I NEVER see anyone wash after smoking (which is also a high level Good Manufacturing Practice - but never enforced). How do you smoke without getting spit on your fingers and tabacco residue all over your hands?

If you want to think about your food and where it comes from - and use that information to decide how you want it packaged - you are VERY misguided. You should NOT want it packaged at all. You should want to grow it, pick or slaughter it, and then handle it yourself from field to table. That is the only way you will ever KNOW where it came from and the only way you can control whose snot is in it. Do you ever eat from a fast-food or even small local restaurant? That is WAAAAAY more "dangerous" that it will ever be to buy food from a bulk bin. Unless you eat flour raw, you will bake it and kill anything that might be in the scoop handler's snot!

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#15
In reply to #10

Re: No Place for Packaging?

10/11/2011 7:02 AM

Dear Anonymous Poster,

You are so right.

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#17
In reply to #10

Re: No Place for Packaging?

11/08/2011 7:17 PM

I've been eating corn on the cob for a number of years. Can't remember any packaging other than the husk. Ritz crackers and Kellogs Corn flakes are another matter. Are you suggesting that these should be sold in bulk? What is the shelf life of an Oreo Cookie when the ambient humidity is 85% on a dry day. What about milk, we currently have lawsuits in DC against farmers who sell unpasteurized milk. Are you saying we should buy milk from a bucket, how about ice cream. As for packaging it is built this way for inventory control as well as advertising. Oh, in closing, your "clean hands" silliness. I was at a big box store, a child was going through the cookie boxes on a sampling run. I pointed it out to the manager, and awaited results. The woman took her child and her purchases, paid and left. The manager, with cookies, in hand did nothing, if he had confronted the woman he would have lost a customer, I'm certain he made a quick count on several boxes, moved some cookies around, and gave the remainder to the people who offer free samples.

As for New Yorkers, they have green grocers and butcher shops galore.

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#5

Re: No Place for Packaging?

09/28/2011 2:38 AM

Farm products start out in bulk, including most vegetables like cabbage, and fruits like apple. That is how they are stocked in today's supermarkets. That is not new. If they want to emphasize bulk items, let them. The prices for bulk items are much lower today, than the fancy packaged ones. Even in today's supermarket.

To what extent will city people accept it, will be interesting to observe. Consumer preference is difficult to influence. If healthy eating and economic thinking were dominant, people would not buy potato chips in a can. And they do.

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#6

Re: No Place for Packaging?

09/28/2011 7:01 AM

Here in India we have many grain shops who sell groceries stored open in large containers. When customer buys any item it is weighed and is packed in paper or plastic bags. We did not face any problems due to this bulk storing.

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#7
In reply to #6

Re: No Place for Packaging?

09/28/2011 7:17 AM

Why then do we hear stories of "Delhi Belly"?

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#8
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Re: No Place for Packaging?

09/28/2011 8:01 AM

It can be due to any other reasons like water pollution garbage etc. It is not due to storage of grains.

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#9

Re: No Place for Packaging?

09/28/2011 9:36 AM

What this "back to basics" concept provides is a choice to people who are willing to put a lot of extra time and effort into their grocery shopping.

While I'm sure that these investors humbly advertise their idea as a plan to help "save the earth from garbage," the only part of this that makes financial sense is that it provides a cost savings option for people who make their living working part time or are otherwise "under-employed." Those of us who work all day don't have 3 hours to spend at the grocery store, so the cost of a box of cereal is low enough that it is well worth the convenience of not having to scoop it out of a barrel and package it ourselves.

The fact that these investors think that this store will eventually be profitable tells me that they are convinced that a large number of Americans in the area will remain under-employed indefinitely. Which is probably true since so many people under 25 are now making their living as waiters or retail sales clerks due to the loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing, construction, and mining industry jobs which were sacrificed in the name of globalization.

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#11
In reply to #9

Re: No Place for Packaging?

09/28/2011 11:15 AM

Don't forget - the retailers also save a bundle by buying in bulk, and even if they offer a few cents a pound discount, they are easily boosting their personal profit level by 50% to 200%! They win by telling you they are "going green", and in the right market can actually charge a premium by doing so, but in reality they are going CHEAP, stepping back from the general trend in America nearly 100 years, and making money.

I am not at all a fan of packaging of any sort, but think this is a non-starter investment. It is high profit on very low volume. Most people don't have the time or desire to shop this way. Right now you could ask the first 20 people you see, and I bet less than 1 of them will tell you they made their last meal from "scratch". Even the unemployed reach for the Hamburger Helper box to make supper for the family these days. People don't cook this way any more, and most don't have the technology if they wanted to. I love the idea - but it won't fly... As EE said, it might catch on for a few years, but there will be as many bulk stores sitting empty in a year or two as there are manufacturing plants empty today.

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#14
In reply to #9

Re: No Place for Packaging?

09/29/2011 4:06 PM

Globalization provides markets for the smart, not competion.

Globalization is NOT a bad word. But it IS a reality, so no point in complaining. Make it work FOR you.

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#12

Re: No Place for Packaging?

09/28/2011 12:17 PM

This is rather old news....here in Canada, franchises have been selling food "in bulk" for years. Often they are in the same mall as the big "anchor" grocery stores.

They usually seem to have started out as health food stores, selling raw grains in bulk, and many of them still are....though they have often "sold out" at least a bit by selling higher profit items that are anything BUT healthy. But they are often quite viable businesses that turn a comfortable, but not spectacular profit.

As far as succeeding in teaching healthier eating habits, well, that was what the health food stores have been trying to do for decades isn't it? Have they succeeded?

And what does healthier eating habits have to do with packaging anyway? The whole question is a non-sequiter...a seriously suspect linkage. The logic seems to be..."packaged foods are unhealthy" and "non-packaged "bulk" food are healthy". I challenge that statement.

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#13

Re: No Place for Packaging?

09/28/2011 12:58 PM

It bears repeating. Most agricultural products are produced in bulk, stored in bulk, distributed in bulk, and used in industrial food production in bulk.

It is mindless twittery by most (and personal preferences by some, who are willing to articulate), to cover up that fact by fancy packaging at the retail level. Never mind the price/pound premium it entails. Human psychology is nonlinear and discontinuos (IMHO, well considered). Trying to squeeze that into a simple, linear model is a fool's errand. Life, over an exceedingly long time winnowed out winning from losing strategies.

Let them try, and we will see. I bet on them. Not necessarily for the motivations OP presented.

P.S. #10 may be graphic, but essentially true. We are part of nature, like it or not.

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#16
In reply to #13

Re: No Place for Packaging?

10/11/2011 7:10 AM

I agree. I work in pharmaceticals and our industry has amongst the most stringent manufacturing standards and still I see so many loopholes.

Let me offer a simple example: the plastic that is used to package our 'clean' grains, while our processing of the grains may be perfectly clean, what is our hygiene norm for the packaging, its method of manufacture? I am sure the only specification the plastic bags subscribe to is weight/area or thickness.

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