"In the tradition of Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore's Dilemma, an extraordinary investigation into the human lives at the heart of the American grocery store. What does it take to run the American supermarket? How do products get to shelves? Who sets the price? And who suffers the consequences of increased convenience end efficiency? In this alarming exposé, author Benjamin Lorr pulls back the curtain on this highly secretive industry. Combining...

Joe Coulombe founded what would become Trader Joe's in the late 1960s and helped shape it into the quirky food chain it is today. Realizing early on that he could not compete and win by playing the same game his bigger competitors were playing, he decided to build a store for educated people of somewhat modest means. Buying unusual products from around the world, he provided customers with background on how they were sourced and their nutritional...

Food has become ground-zero in our efforts to increase awareness of how our choices impact the world. Yet while we have begun to transform our communities and dinner plates, the most authoritative strand of the food web has received surprisingly little attention: the grocery store--the epicenter of our food-gathering ritual. Steinman makes a case--through analysis, stories and examples of American and Canadian food co-ops--for how food co-ops, as...