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This was the basic conceit:
- White man in white linen suit turns up imperiously at farms across Africa, Asia and Latin America.
- Watched by nervous locals, he carefully and slowly tastes whatever the workers have spent the last year of their lives growing.
- Having tasted the produce, the white man turns and smiles – code for his majestic approval.
- Grateful local exclaims in pantomime pidgin English to his poor-but-happy colleagues:
“The Man from Del Monte, he say yes!”
You see what I mean? It, er, hasn’t exactly aged well….
But…inside all the inappropriateness and ‘problematic’ tropes is a very important truth.
Quality control matters. Always.
In fact, in a world ever-more-dominated by Big Food and their pals in the supermarkets, it matters even more now than it did in the 1980s.
It’s why at Wylde we say ‘No’ to wannabe producers far more often than we say ‘Yes’.
It’s why we spend a lot of time visiting and meeting with them, assessing who they are and how they do things.
And it’s why we taste everything.
Because my simple rule is this:
If I wouldn’t feed it to my family, then it doesn’t go on the market.
End of.
So annoyingly, I suppose, you can sort of see what my mate is getting at.
Now where did I put those pineapple chunks….?
Nick |
