Frank Cherry; On Brazilian Food: Bom e Barato!

Curbside Hotdogs

This big city phenomenon was brought on by the recession, assisted by cheap food, and made practical by the Korean "toy" vans which can squeeze into small parking spaces and are "overlooked" by the meter maids…

The hot dog sellers, known as "dogeiros", always have 5-6 customers hanging out at the tailgate where the dogs are dispensed. And for a good reason: these hot dogs cost R$1.00 (US 40 cents at the then prevailing rate of R$ 2.50) and this is what you get on the bun: 2 dogs, 2 grams of mashed potatoes, 35 grams of mayo, 8 grams of corn niblets, 6 milliliters of ketchup and 3 of mustard, and 8.5 grams of potato sticks (yes, fork included). It's a meal in itself! The cost of the ingredients to the street vendor is R$ 0.41, leaving a 22% profit. How many businesses would love to have this gross margin which, in this case, is practically net? (Source: Veja magazine)

Using Your Nose to Tell the Day of the Week

Brazil has no dearth of famous French and Italian chefs and more than a few world-class restaurants, but chowhounds know that the best value for money is found in the lanchonetes, roughly equivalent to our diners--some seats at the counter, some tables, and waiters slinging hash right and left. Most of these places are open 6 days a week and they all, throughout the country, offer roughly the very same daily specials at lunch time.

When you leave your apartment in the morning, you can tell which day it is by the pungent, mouth-watering smells coming from the diner kitchens: garlicky sauces, palm-oil flavored stews, industrial quantities of meats of every kind, chopped coriander, tomato sauces simmering, and much more.

You know that on Monday you can expect 'Virado Paulista': fried pork chop with a fried egg on top, collard greens sauteed in oil and garlic, a fried banana (hold on, please, we're not finished with the word "fried" just yet), deep-fried pig skin nuggets, refried beans, and white rice. Classier diners include a small glass of perfumy sugar cane liquor mixed with lime juice--to cut the fat. You just know that it's Monday.

In the interest of brevity we will skip the other days whose signature dishes have their signature smells, except to say that on both Wednesdays and Saturdays your nose will identify feijoada, Brazil's powerful national dish, before getting very far down the block. Feijoada is a complex, caloric (1,578 calories according to Veja) affair requiring cooking over slow heat for many hours.

Office drudges and menial workers start to jam the diners at 11:30 a.m., armed with the meal tickets which social legislation requires their employers to give them. No one goes hungry. The waiters serve the food piled high on oval-shaped stainless steel platters, more than enough for two full plates.

Now for the financial part: in the bad old days when triple or worse inflation reigned, prices changed by the hour. When the Real Plan took hold in 1994, price stability put more money in the pockets of everyone; but the lower income earners were the better beneficiaries. From 1994 to today the price of the daily special has remained unchanged at R$ 6.00. On Day One of the Real Plan (June 1994), the daily special was worth parity, US$6.00; by December 1994 the real had appreciated against the dollar, and the cost in dollars was $8.25; but by 2001 the real had sunk to 2.3 and your lunch set you back only $3.04.

How to explain this remarkable price stability in a product which benefits so many? Low inflation is the easy answer; but also there have been impressive gains in food productivity and this has kept wholesale food prices low; and finally, competition is ensured by the large number of eating outlets, including the "Food by the Pound" restaurants which are everywhere.

Everyday food in Brazil is really "good and cheap".

__________________________
Frank Cherry is a Brazil-focused business consultant who has lived many years in Sao Paulo. He writes about aspects of Brazilian popular culture which are often under-appreciated at home and unknown abroad. Frank lives in New York City and his email is francischerry@earthlink.net