I guess this is sort of happening everywhere, but the cost of living is going up quite noticeably... although, apparently, if you don't need to buy food or pay for shelter... then things are going okay and there is nothing to worry about.

In Australia, this is made even worse by the fact that the supermarket scene is completely dominated by two heavily entrenched players (Coles and Woolworths), which means that the concept of "free market competition" is about the same as the American model of "competition". So, on the surface, things are all free-market... but in practice it is sort of fixed and corrupt behind the scenes.

... and given that food is sort of a necessary expense for most of us, this is a pretty bad thing for the finances. The supermarkets are raking in huge profits by essentially gouging everyone... which is what MBAs do best... they charge the customer like bulls using inflation as the excuse, they short change the farmers by using their duopoly market buying power, and they wipe out their staff by replacing them with automated solutions (passing the work to the consumer, and not paying them...).

So, everything that a "real businessman" considers important... maximise profit, and minimise expenses... don't care about societal or reputational impact, except as costs of doing business.

However, there is now a growing backlash against these giants... and we are doing our little bit to help by buying directly from producers...

So, first up a community sourced and operated weekly fruit and veggie box that includes little other things like nuts, bread, and pasta. Once the requests hit a certain weekly threshold, the hub will order from the suppliers and distribute amongst the members... cheaper, and better quality.

... and we also started ordering meats directly from the producers as well. Again, better quality meats... at lower prices, especially when they are packaging as special deals.

Of course, we will still need the supermarkets for the processed foods... things like school snacks, ice-cream, and lollies... but we are doing our best to remove our main ingredients away from there.

We had a pretty good thing in the Netherlands, but we are only just starting to discover and test out the options available to us in Australia.

I can also be found cross-posting at:
Hive
Steem
Publish0x

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