How To Buy Ingredients The Supermarkets Don't Stock

How To Buy Ingredients The Supermarkets Don't Stock

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The festive season is a time when people tend to think more carefully about the decisions they make when they head out to buy ingredients. For much of the year people tend to buy ingredients based purely on need, and based on what they either usually buy, or what happens to be available in the supermarkets.

Sadly the high streets are filled less and less with small retailers offering high quality food, groceries and produce, with the supermarkets undercutting them in ways that are simply not financially viable for smaller businesses. This is a loss not only to the retailers themselves, but ultimately to consumers - you and me, the people who buy ingredients for our dinner table.

Because when supermarkets undercut local retailers, they often don't compete with the same products, Smaller retailers can afford to specialise, introducing items which may be hard to find elsewhere. But these alone don't tend to make the business financially viable, and because specialised ingredients may not be purchased in high numbers, supermarkets don't tend to be very interested in offering them either.

One classic example is the category of French ingredients, such as foie gras, goose fat or porcini mushrooms. These are ingredients you may have once been able to buy from small high street stores, but which are generally not available in supermarkets. The large national retailers look to clear the stock from their shelves within hours of days. They don't want items hanging around long enough to gather dust, and so they need to find products to sell which are popular, and which sell in high numbers.

This means that consumers are forced to buy ingredients preselected by the supermarkets, with the whole decision being based on profit, rather than on taste. This is a terrible state of affairs, and one which we as consumers really ought to be able to do something about. Perhaps one clear message to the supermarkets is by choosing to buy ingredients from specialised retailers rather than the ones being offered by the supermarkets. If enough people start buying a particular product, the supermarkets tend to take notice and start becoming interested.

But how do you find specialist retailers selling French ingredients today? Is it still possible to buy ingredients which are of a higher quality or which are more specialised than the vanilla and beige products flying off the shelves at the local supermarket?

The answer is that the internet has offered a valuable lifeline between such specialist retailers and the consumers looking for a higher quality of ingredient than is generally available. For those consumers looking for French ingredients there are obviously two alternatives - travel to France where you can pick them up yourself, or order online and have them delivered. In many cases there are UK based retailers shipping French ingredients over regularly in bulk, meaning that when you buy ingredients from them, they'll be delivered very quickly, from a supplier that's based not far away.

Clearly this is a much more economical solution than travelling across the Channel. A 60 mile return crossing in a ferry, in addition to any driving needed in the UK and in France, just for a pot of goose fat, may seem a little excessive. However, once you've tried these French ingredients in your own cooking, if you haven't already, you may just find the trip worth every mile anyway! But for most people, choosing to buy ingredients online rather than from a supermarket offers a whole new taste experience - one we deserve to enjoy, and which is currently being denied to us based purely on the sales figures of the national retail giants.

About the Author:
If you are interested in finding out where to buy ingredients such as foie gras, porcini mushrooms or goose fat, or would like to browse a wide selection of high quality French ingredients, visit The Good Food Network.



Article Originally Published On: http://www.articlesnatch.com


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