Boston Grocer Gathers, Prepares, And Sells Affordable Healthful Food

A former Trader Joe’s executive has opened a nonprofit grocery store in Boston whose mission is to sell healthful, prepared food that poor people can afford. The basic business model of Doug Rauch’s Daily Table is to collect nutritious food destined for the waste bins, prepare it for busy shoppers, and sell it extremely cheaply. It attacks two problems at once: the huge amount (40 percent) of good food that is wasted and the fact that nutritious food can be too expensive in poor communities. “A healthy meal is a lot trickier [than junk food] because of the costs associated with fruits and vegetables, dairy, protein,” says Rauch. “These are expensive ingredients."