Simon Delivers may provide a useful service, is probably a good company.
I for one, will never give Brian Sullivan and his politics of poison one
penny!
And here I thought all aspects of the politics of produce had been thoroughly puree'd by the co-ops. I'd heard of the company but casually thought it a yuppie convenience affair.
My unformed concept (I'm best at those) was for a combo store like Delmonicos offering a small storefront with major neighborhood delivery out the back. Neighborhood!! Anything bigger would just lead to the centralized Hopkins based system we have now. Course that's where the cheap is.
O.K. how about franchising these operations. Cub, Rainbow, Lunds, Kowalskys-whomever could develop a model (with obviously many experiments) and start shopping it around to potential neighborhood entrepreneurs--the people who observe and think they can solve the need. Start up, set up. stock and delivery all right there (obviously with a neighborhood's food preferences included) for a franchise fee. And a strict business plan! Observance from franchisers. But then a ten year balloon on the whole thing. After that it's wholly owned by the ORIGINAL franchisee.
Luke Weisburg (sp?) expressed interest in this area. He appears to be more a businessman than myself so I shall defer to him and other economically educated folks. All I remember is how much we relied on this service; and I know there are always going to be folks in the same boat.
To massage anyone taking offense from the opening sentence; my entire weekends food came from either the Wedge or Coastal Seafood (ya gotta try fresh Monkfish). Now back to the cheap crap from Rainbow.
Jon Gorder
Loring Park
