Retail
With populations around the world concentrating in urban areas, food buying is increasingly removed from all aspects of food production. This is a relatively recent development, having taken place mainly over the last 50 years. The supermarket is the defining retail element of the food industry. There, tens of thousands of products are gathered in one location, in continuous, year-round supply. Restaurants, cafes, bakeries and mobile trucks also provide opportunities for consumers to purchase food.
Food preparation is another area where the change in recent decades has been dramatic. Today, two food industry sectors are in apparent competition for the retail food dollar. The grocery industry sells fresh and largely raw products for consumers to use as ingredients in home cooking. The food service industry by contrast offers prepared food, either as finished products, or as partially prepared components for final "assembly".
Read more about this topic: Food Industry
Famous quotes containing the word retail:
“A free-enterprise economy depends only on markets, and according to the most advanced mathematical macroeconomic theory, markets depend only on moods: specifically, the mood of the men in the pinstripes, also known as the Boys on the Street. When the Boys are in a good mood, the market thrives; when they get scared or sullen, it is time for each one of us to look into the retail apple business.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)