Macroeconomics in the Snack Food Aisle

This weekend we plan on going backpacking for a few days. Food wise, this means we’ll want to pack a bit more variety than we can find at our local market, so we took our first trip to SuperMaxi, Ecuador’s biggest and fanciest supermarkets. SuperMaxi is pretty much what you would think of as a supermarket in the US. It has all the fancy imported foods, but it also has the local items as well, for a bit of a markup.

The last time I was in Ecuador, I had very little direct contact with the buying process that put food in front of me. For my home cooked meals, my Ecua-Madre bought and prepared all the food. When I was traveling with the school, most meals were included with the trip fee – pay your $X for the weekend and when we’re at the designated restaurant you get a choice of a few dishes. The few meals I did buy for myself were usually bought in the same area as the language school: La Mariscal, popularly referred to as gringolandia. At the time, I thought things were cheap. Now, I’ve come to find out that prices in the area are very inflated. Almuerzo is a set lunch menu, usually a large bowl of soup, some kind of meat with rice and a veggie, dessert, and fresh juice. One can find a great almuerzo in Quito for $1 – $1.50…around La Mariscal it is closer to $5.

My one experience with SuperMaxi back in 2004 was a day when my Ecua-Madre asked me to pick up some eggs. We lived right across the street from El Jardin, a huge shopping mall that rivals the nicest in the US. One of the SuperMaxi locations is inside this mall. It took me a long time to find the eggs, namely because they were on the shelf in the middle a random aisle instead of in the refrigerated section with the cheese and milk. Milk is also keep on the shelves.

With my undergrad econ training behind me, I thought I was prepared to reenter the world of SuperMaxi. These are the concepts that I thought would serve me well:

¨ International Economic Policy: imports will be more expensive than domestically produced items

¨ Economies of Scale: if a product is in mass production, it will be cheaper

¨ The Gringo Effect: if only the foreigners demand a product it will be hella expensive (mostly the flip side of the EoS really, but I like this name better)

All of these important economic theories can be demonstrated by the most wonderful food group of them all: snacks.

The first snack aisle we came to had chips on one side and chocolate on the other. The cheapest chocolate bar was $3 and my favorite, peanut M&Ms, were $4 for the medium size. All the products were imported, as evident by the fact that all the labels were only in English. Ecuador produces cocoa! They export it! This didn’t make any sense in my book. A few aisles down, we came across the hot chocolate. Next to the canisters of powdered tastiness were a few different kinds of chocolate. This time, the labels were in Spanish and the Hecho en Ecuador label was proudly displayed. Less than 50 centavos per bar. Now this made more sense!

Other funny examples:

¨ Ice Cream. Helado is pretty prevalent here. Most neighborhood stores carry it and about a quarter of the vendors that sell everything on the busses are selling ice cream. At SuperMaxi, a gallon of Pengüino ice cream, the most prevalent brand in Ecuador, was $2. The imported variety was almost $10 a gallon. What amazing brand of American ice cream was this? Hagen Daz? Ben and Jerry’s? Or even Graeters? No, the $10 imported gallon of ice cream was Blue Bunny. Somebody check for me on the US price of this apparently amazing product. I’m guessing no where near to $10!

¨ Cheese. Ecuador has pretty much two offerings when it comes to cheese: fresca and mozzarella…both white and both kind of bland. Both are $2 or $3 for 500g. SuperMaxi was the first place we found anything other than these two chesses, and we paid $4 for a smaller package of cheddar.

¨ Not a snack, but laundry detergent was similar. $3 for the locally produced kind, $12 for the same quantity of Tide!!! Needless to say, we bought the local brand.

My next observation speaks to the Economies of Scale/Gringo Effect. Pretzels…those wonderful salty snacks that got me through race seasons, many a car trip, and kept me from eating my weight in potato chips. Ecuadorians apparently do not believe in pretzels. Until going to SuperMaxi last night, I had not been able to find any pretzels. In that first snack aisle, at the end after all the potato chips, was one type of pretzel. They appeared to be a German import and were of the short, skinny, stick-like variety. 50¢ for a package of pretzels I could fit my hand around! No pretzels for me I suppose.

In the defense of the Ecuadorian culinary culture, they have an alternative snack product that we do not have in the US: banana chifles – banana chips. You might be thinking, of course we have banana chips in the US! Well, these are not the sweet variety. They are savory and can be given pretty much any flavor. They’re delicious, and while pretty high in fat, Ben assures me it’s of the “good fat” variety.

Finally, the beer. I suppose it technically wouldn’t qualify as a snack, but whatever. Pilsener is the local brew, a bland light beer similar to Bud Light, but Ecuadorians will argue that it is far superior. It is pretty much the only beer found at neighborhood stores and most restaurants. We were counting on SuperMaxi to provide us with a bit of variety, but sadly we were wrong. Apparently our only other choices are Corona, Budweiser, and Heineken. We shed a small tear. Someone drink a Cherry Stout back in the US for me please.

On the flip side, Ecuador offers us an alternative to bland beer. Can anyone buy a bottle of Cristal in the US for $1.60? Probably not, especially since this is not the fancy-shmancy champaign now adopted by Hip Hop stars as a sign of affluence, this is sugar cane liquor. It’s not strong liquor by any means. It’s sweet and makes for a nice hot drink: two parts cinnamon water and one part Cristal, You can also mix it with warm fruit juice. It’s magically delicious, if I do say so myself.

So while we’re adapting out preferences for what is available and cheap here in Ecuador, at least we can have $1.60 Cristal!