By Carol Lloyd, San Francisco Chronicle
November 1, 2009
Have you been to the San Francisco Ferry Building lately?
The economy may have many consumers in a stranglehold, but you'd never know it at ground zero for Bay Area food culture. Folks are still lining up to nibble on Scharffen Berger's Asante single origin chocolate ($7), to guzzle Blue Bottle's New Orleans iced coffee ($3), and to stock up on 7-ounce bottles of Stonehouse blood orange olive oil ($14).
I know, I know. You may not indulge in such edible extravagances. But before the boom expanded our grocery budget and the luxury food business stepped up to fulfill our every desire, how many of us indulged in gourmet vittles at all? Now many Bay Area residents are addicted to at least some level of gastronomic indulgence: If not coffee then tea, if not pomegranates then pine nuts, if not shiitakes then organic sausage.
Indeed, numbers support the idea that foodies (and we know the Bay Area has a lot of them) aren't willing to do without. According to consumer research firm Packaged Facts, sales of gourmet, specialty and premium foods and beverages have been growing at much faster rates than those of the overall food and beverage industry for the past five years.
In a recent Harris Poll (funded by Whole Foods), 51 percent reported eating dinner at home more often, but 76 percent said they were not willing to compromise on food quality, regardless of prices. Recent research by the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade found that consumers in the western United States are 13 percent more likely to buy specialty foods than the rest of the country.
Curious about how a new economic reality - 2.2 million unemployed people in California - has changed the market for gourmet foods, I began grilling Ferry Building merchants amid their impatient, hungry clientele (how long do you have to wait for a muffuletta, I ask you?). The response was unanimous: The bust had changed buying patterns, but not profit margins.
John Smit, owner of Hidden Star Orchards, purveyor of apples, grapes and delectable fresh squeezed juices, has noticed that though restaurant orders have declined, orders by small specialty grocers like Bi-Rite have more than made up the loss. "It's balanced out," he says.
Jacky Recchiuti, co-owner of Recchiuti Confections, echoed this sentiment. While big orders for parties and weddings had dropped, sales from individuals buying for their own consumption seem just as strong if not stronger than before. "There are fewer people," she said. "But those that come seem to buy more."
An assistant manager at Scharffen Berger (the other cacao den down the hall) speculated that the resilience of the high-end chocolate market is in fact a side effect of our new austerity: "I think people will luxuriate in a chocolate bar when they no longer let themselves go to restaurants."
Indeed, the gourmet product market seems to be surviving the restaurant industry's dark days - and even benefiting from them. (In a recent Bay Area survey by Zagat, 52 percent of responders reported that they were eating out less because of the slow economy.) A clerk at Stonehouse Olive Oil told me that sales have improved because people are cooking more.
If people were no longer buying the $5 T-shirts from Mervyns (which filed for Chapter 11 in July 2008), how could they afford $5 bars of chocolate?
"We've definitely cut back in all areas of spending except for food," said Adam Gard of Oakland, speaking for most locals queried in my random (albeit unscientific) survey about their food shopping habits. "It's the small daily pleasures that make the other sacrifices easier to handle. ... It's not cheap on the pocketbook, but we view it as an investment in our health along with our spirit ... the spirit that thrives on tasty edibles."
Many offered details about how their expensive purchases somehow managed to save them money. "The one area I absolutely will not compromise on is food," explained Holly Hansen, adding that she splurges regularly on free-range chickens for $20 each bought directly from a rancher. "They are worth every penny, and I can get at least two meals for my family of four out of them, because they go further and just taste so much better than some mass-produced chicken."
In a sense, food culture seems to be toughing it through economic times because it's not just about dollars and calories. In the Bay Area, food has become the presiding metaphor for a consciously led life: pleasure, politics, identity and love for family all wrapped up in one. And that's one reason why staying home for the holidays may not be cheap, but it's almost guaranteed to be tasty.
