Our first stop was at Wendy's, the fast food restaurant. We went in a large group and sat down. Some students seemed confused as to what exactly they were doing there and some began observing and taking notes as soon as we got in. A woman next to me was interested in what school we all went to, and we got into a discussion about the food she was eating. "How are you enjoying your lunch?" I asked. She responded by smiling and saying that her chilli was delicious. We got into further discussion on why exactly she was eating at Wendy's as opposed to other restaurants or cooking. She said that Wendy's was so close to her job that it was just so easy. She also said that cooking would be cheaper, but with cooking comes cleaning, and so eating out was just so much more convenient. She also said that the quality of the food at Wendy's on 14th street was better than the quality of the food at Wendy's on 125th street. This brought me to think about ideas of accessibility and convenience- especially when we headed two blocks over to the local farmers market.
Stepping into the somewhat chaotic market, we completely lost track of each other, and so made a plan to return to the school at the same time, but on our own. Having experience observing food and where it comes from as a result of my time spent working on an urban farm in the lower ninth ward, New Orleans, I decided to observe what was going on in the farmers market more generally rather than speaking to individual vendors. I was struck by how crowded and bustling this farmers market was. I began to reflect on my experiences with the Sunday's farmers market at Our School at Blair Grocery(OSBG) in New Orleans. In Union Square, people were lined up to buy food at each of stands. Back in the lower ninth ward however, we were lucky if we got more than 10 customers on any given Sunday.
I thought about the racial make up of the customers who shopped at the Union Square and OSBG farmers markets compared to the customers who ate at Wendy's. One thing that the two farmers markets had in common was that most of the customers purchasing food were white, whereas most of the customers purchasing food at Wendy's were people of color, and then I reflected on why that was.
Some things that I look at when I purchase food is health, cost and deliciousness. So I haven't bought food from a fast food restaurant like Wendy's in a really long time, and I refuse to support them. But at the same time, it can be too costly to buy food from farmers markets all the time, but its what I prefer.
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