The New Localism

Why modern food brands evoke the intimacy of a cooking club

In the 1980’s in Belgrade, there were a number of state-owned bakery stores (“pekara”). One of them was in the building I grew up in, and it was operated, as it was wont in Belgrade bakeries at the time, by a family of Kosovo Albanians. Our pekara is still there, now owned and run by the two sons of the original operators. It is more than a place where someone goes to get bread, sometimes literally. Back when the main annual holiday was The Day of the Republic of Yugoslavia, people would bring pigs for the festivities to be roasted in the high-temperature baking ovens. (How was that even legal is beyond me). Recently, on his regular morning visit, my father shared the news of my upcoming book with one of the sons who was behind the counter. “She was always an excellent student” was the reply, expected only from people who have known you your entire life.

Once commonplace, then anomaly at the time of mass brands, personal relationships in food retail are making a comeback. There is a new wave of food companies (and influencers) who are building their business around wanting you to know who they are, where they come from, and what they are about. They want to know the same about you.

“I started Fly By Jing in 2019 to bring the flavors of my hometown Chengdu to the world,” says Jenny Gao of Sichuan Chili…