The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket

by Benjamin Lorr

At this point, Julie’s sole conduit to actual food is her co-packer. She uses Golding Farms, which is housed in a cavernous cement building off the side of I-40 that is not the least bit farm but is run by a Mr. Tony Golding. Tony bought a small canning operation in 1972 and used it to begin churning out his own line of salad dressings and steak sauces. The Golding brand is a modest local success. I see the full lineup at a nearby Piggly Wiggly when I visit, looking a little dusty in metaphor if not fact, two shelves below all the national brands. But over the years Tony has expanded his facilities considerably. He has always been methodical about modernizing his operations, and with each upgrade, the ever-longer strides of technology meant that soon he was capable of producing far more output than he could ever need. And so slowly Tony’s business evolved from manufacturing his own product to selling time on his line and manufacturing the products of others. The day I walk into his plant, the whole place is stinking of fermented soy, and I see an unending stream of tiny unlabeled bottles of black liquid chattering forth on the conveyors below us. They are destined to become a variety of Kikkoman soy sauce once the labeler hits them, that ubiquitous national brand found in sushi restaurants everywhere. Most national manufacturers contract out work like this. They optimize their own in-house facility for a single item—that core brand-defining mayonnaise or classic marinara—n...