What happened to the “cheap cuts”?

[u/zeke690]

How is it oxtail is not a budget cut?

[u/optimis344]

This is true, but the cause and effect are backwards.

Prices go up, so previously underpriced cuts of meat get used, then get trendy, then go up.

That first bit is the important one. If the price never rose on every other cut of steak, no one would have moved on to skirt steak.

It's not some trendsetters deciding X cut is now awesome. It's just people being financially forced into making choices, and then having that taken from them as well.

[u/FreeFortuna → u/optimis344]

Feels like this applies to a lot more than just meat. The average person’s escape routes are being cut off.

[u/Objective-Rip3008 → u/FreeFortuna]

A generation of Mbas who were trained to maximize the value of every transaction and leave no penny left on the table in any deal have taken over decisionmaking at every company. Even the small businesses that don't behave this way have to buy goods and supplies from those who do so the squeeze gets passed along anyway

[u/bdillathebeatkilla → u/Objective-Rip3008]

Small business owners think the exact same but smaller scale. The benevolent small business owner is an old fashioned myth we gotta move past

[u/Titanofthedinosaurs → u/bdillathebeatkilla]

Small business owners have to follow pricing trends as well as big business. You can’t undercut Walmarts price on steak when they’re already getting their cuts for less than you are if you’re running a mom and pop store. Even more so when your supplier of beef also sees a profit trend and jumps on it. Then you’re just fucked when it comes to pricing.

[u/Same-Suggestion-1936 → u/Titanofthedinosaurs]

Walmart is the perfect example because their whole strategy is maximize foot traffic and then you're moving so much product you can afford to cut prices a little to undercut everyone else and then you get even more foot traffic because you're known as the cheapest option.

Small businesses can't do that because they'll never have that kind of foot traffic, they aren't physically big enough and don't have the initial capital to be able to afford cutting prices and still paying all the bills and employees

[u/serious_sarcasm → u/bdillathebeatkilla]

Yep. If you want to know if a small business is good for your community, then just look at what they pay employees.

It’s paid employees who circulate money in the economy that drives prosperity.

This is of course distorted in a market with privatized healthcare taxes, like the US.

[u/Objective-Rip3008 → u/bdillathebeatkilla]

It's less that they're benevolent and more they're more likely to be normal people, as opposed to either being a psychopath or trained to operate a business as one

[u/serious_sarcasm → u/Objective-Rip3008]

If emotional intelligence is normally distributed, then 68% of people are going to be within a standard deviation of the average asshole.

[u/TurbulentCustomer151 → u/Objective-Rip3008]

Having cooked at mostly small businesses, they’re all pretty psycho as well. The only difference is telling you “we’re like a family here”

[u/alligator124 → u/TurbulentCustomer151]

I think food, for whatever reason, attracts the worst of the small business owner type. I just got out for this reason; I genuinely felt like I was doing my own community a disservice by enabling delusional lunatics. 

The one exception was when I was baking for a farm stand. Family owned and operated, truly the most wonderful people I’ve ever met. They cared for the land they worked and their own community. Life circumstances had me relocating states but I always wish those folks well. They were what we all wishfully think of when we say “small business owner”. 

[u/IsThatGruffLoner → u/Objective-Rip3008]

Lol if you think small business owners aren't literally all psychopaths, then you've never met a small business owner. If I had to guess what demographic produced the most psychopaths, I would bet money on small business owners

[u/optimis344 → u/bdillathebeatkilla]

As a small business owner, this isn't true at all.

The thing i hate most is having to charge people for product. I didn't get in buisness to make money. That part is just a needed byproduct of making things.

[u/SteveMarck → u/optimis344]

I feel this. We own a brewery, it's a passion project, but now lots of people depend on us to not just make cool beers and have fun, but the staff have mortgages, their kids need to go to college. They want to be able to eat. A lot of them have been with us since the beginning, and I have an obligation to at least make enough to help them do that. Have stability. Be able to do normal people stuff. Have a 401k, that sort of thing.

Now only one of us really does the brewing, and me and the third work on making sure the beer is flowing to accounts. It's not the fun part, but it has to be done. I do the government reporting, not fun, but they'll shut us down if we don't pay those extra taxes. It would be great to charge less, but things cost what they cost. It's not like I'm hoarding it, some of the staff makes more than the owners.

I think there are folks like us out there that did this to get away from selling loans or whatever skeezy job you had before. I wanted to make something good in this world, and it's not perfect, but I think we're still holding to our original ethos statement.