In my area, it is quite common for Latino food sellers to operate on Facebook, Chinese and Taiwanese sellers on WeChat/Line, Korean sellers on Kakaotalk and FB groups.
Recently some Chinese sellers have started to do collabs with local non-Chinese restaurants.
I’m am fairly certain it is grey market because some of meals are 200+ USD and they still make you pay in physical cash for them.
I know this is common in areas with many international students, mostly operating on WeChat, but is it a phenomenon that has spread to European/African descent American communities as well?
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I have no idea what you are talking about.
Common in North Florida. Tamales, Caribbean food, and lasagnas are the three I see most often, usually on FB.
I’ve never heard of such a thing before today. I would assume any cash-only business in that price range is doing something illegal, though.
One time at a Wawa in Sicklerville, NJ a guy driving a Capital Meat truck asked me if I wanted to buy something off his truck, I dunno what his deal was but it was pretty fucking sketch
The whole home cook side hustle seemed like it got big during the lockdown. Before then, there was a lady we got lumpia and musubi from and another one we ordered tamales through but tons of Facebook groups and new people in those groups popped up while a lot people
were out of work.
San Diego County (and the State of California) have been taking steps to make it possible for these operations to be legit and comply with food safety regulations.
https://www.sandiegocounty.gov/content/sdc/deh/fhd/food/homekitchenoperations.html
Common enough if you look for them. They’re usually local Instagram folks taking orders for home kitchen specialty items – like birria tacos, pierogis, BBQ, etc. some of its quite good.
Many of the better folks end up as legit businesses if they do well enough. It usually starts as a pop up restaurant takeover and grows from there.
Yeah I see ads on Facebook Marketplace or in local Facebook groups all the time.
I have never heard of this. I just go to a regular grocery store to buy food.
Working construction I see a decent amount of this. Especially on mid-sized jobs where the majority of the manpower on site are laborers from just a single company (usually framers, or demo, or concrete, or excavators). In those cases it tends to be a lot of Salvadoran immigrants who know each other outside of work (come from the same community). They’ll arrange for someone to show up at the jobsite at lunch time with a trunk full of food for sale (papusas, tacos, tamales, rice and beans, etc). I guess I don’t know for a fact, but I’d bet anything the person selling food out of the trunk of their car doesn’t have a license to sell food and is just cooking it in their home kitchen. The sales are all cash only.
Edit: I’ve also bought goat milk from people who were absolutely not legally allowed to sell it. They owned a goat farm and insisted they were selling me mason jars which just happened to have goat milk in them.
It’s extremely common. I’ve bought tamales from a lady that was walking around with a cooler while I was guitar shopping in Guitar Center for example. It’s also something that WASP Americans do too, there may be a lady that goes on Facebook selling baked goods or something like that for example so it’s not just international.
Nothing that sophisticated, but it’s normal to see people cooking and selling smoked/grilled meats with sides outdoors in neighborhoods in the Detroit area. You’ll see a big black smoker, a few folding tables, a pop-up tent, and a hastily made sign advertising ribs or chicken or whatever they’ve got for $10, cash only. Bottles of water or pop for a dollar or two. Sometimes they have dessert or sides.
It’s usually awesome.
See this every day. One of my neighbors has a little side hustle where she texts everyone in our neighborhood and takes orders for Quesabirria and Menudo then has them all ready for pick up/payment on Friday or Saturday depending on when you want to get it. All cash business she runs with her two daughters and the food is fantastic.
In my area most of what might be considered “grey market” is covered under a “cottage kitchen” law which allows for “home cooks/businesses” to make and sell food from their home. Usually we just get some baked goods, the meal prep aspiring chefs, and the families that make 15,000 lumpia at one go. Nothing overly elaborate like what you are describing.
How do I find these groups? I want to try crazy underground ethnic foods!
I don’t know if it is common.
For a while there was someone selling tamales on our Facebook. They would post on Wednesday for Sunday delivery. It wasn’t really something people could order at any time.
A few years ago there was a lady trying to get a pie business off the ground. She advertised Thanksgiving day pies. Again this wasn’t something people could order at any time
Seems like something I’d be reporting to the local health and safety regulators.