A few years ago, when a Brooklyn restaurant introduced fried Twinkies, which became the talk of the town, my squeeze and I schlepped to Brooklyn to try them. They were delicious, in the way bad-for-us-food usually is, but 2 Twinkies were $8. I don’t know the price of Twinkies at the supermarket but I’m pretty sure there was quite a profit there.

Here’s a funny story: One of our friends in the business, we call him Chicken Charlie because about 4 years ago he was looking to get his own business at the fair so he bought the Broasted Chicken stand. Well, he decided that he needed to expand his offerings so he started experimenting with frying things, Twinkies,Oreos,Deep-fried Coke Syrup, all of which sold like the proverbial hotcakes. Proving that the axiom that drives the fair business - the customers are there to eat - had a corallary - and they’ll eat anything if it’s fried. Two summer’s ago he featured the famous Kripy Kreme double deck Hamburger. He’s rich by the way. Anyway, the ironic point to this story is that the whole Broasted Chicken idea was founded on the concept of not frying food because that was unhealthy.

@rhbee - I imagine the profit margin on fair food is huge. It’s probably almost as bad as the markup on snacks at the movies.

First, I ain’t no fast food junkie, that’s my partner and wife, T. We haven’t seen Super Size Me yet but I’ve railed for years at our family who are in the fair food concession business (where that strategy is rampant) and who always want us to give up our fruit and vegetable stand to come join them. They are right, there is real money in selling people fat, fried, and filling but we’ve discovered there is also a living to be made by selling what we’d buy ourselves - fresh, organic, and nutritious.

“supermarket sticker shock ”

Compared to the rest of the world, we’ve enjoyed exceedingly low food prices for 2 generations. I just heard this discussed today on a market analysis blurb on the radio. Just as oil prices and other commodities are no longer set by the North American markets; so too with grain and foodstuffs.

China and India want the variety we have come to take for granted, and they can now easily afford it.

“eating better, buying locally when possible and doing a little cooking”

Amen!