Covid-19 creates expanded coastal fruit and vegetable vending culture

The protective strictures that have compulsorily arisen out of the onset of the coronavirus may have put a squeeze on mainstream trading through the accustomed outlets, whether these be conventional shops and supermarkets or traditional municipal market vending. The reality is that large numbers of consumers have, these days, adjusted their shopping patterns as a precaution against illness that might derive from frequenting crowded outlets.

Guyanese, however, known as we are for our entrepreneurial inventiveness, have devised ways of working around the adjustments that have occurred in the trading (buying and selling) pattern by adapting strategies to fit the circumstances.

Fresh fruit and vegetables have traditionally featured prominently on the local diet and if anything, the onset of the coronavirus has boosted demand for that pattern of consumption in response to the healthy-eating urgings emanating from local as well as global organisations.

Mindful of the strictures of the social distancing refrain, the pattern of buying, in a great many instances, has shifted to some extent from the traditional permanent marketplaces to opportunist vendors who have interpreted the changes in the trading pattern perfectly. Not only have new relationships sprung up between recently turned-out vendors whose homedelivery services fit in snugly with the prevailing social distancing requirement of consumers seeking to minimise their exposure, but opportunistic vending is also manifested in the appearance of relatively recently erected fruit and vegetable stalls at strategic points across the capital and along the East Bank and East Coast and across coastal Guyana.

This strategic entrepreneurial initiative appears to have ‘hit the jackpot’ in most instances, the available evidence suggesting that significant numbers of consumers appear to prefer to avoid the conventional marketplaces and secure their fruit and vegetable supplies in an environment that allows them to be more mindful of the requirement to maintain social distancing.

While not a great deal is known about the arrangements that inform the understanding between the vendors and the municipal authorities, the available evidence suggests that the new fruit and vegetable shopping spots appear to meet with the approval of consumers given the evidence of the support that they receive. Strikingly, the opportunistic entrepreneurs appear to be mindful of the importance of both their eye-catching nature of their stall displays as well as their garbage disposal habits.

The presence of vans and minibuses that serve as both transportation and storage facilities for the fruit and vegetables that the vendors offer, suggest that most of them travel from fair distances to pick their spots which appear to then benefit from some amount of cleaning. Portable stalls are attended by some measure of shelter and even, in some instances, display contraptions are erected.

These obviously carefully thought through initiatives have become particularly popular with motorists who favour the convenience of making purchases from the windows of their vehicles. For the vendors, fruit and vegetable quality are important since the physical positioning of the stalls frequently allow the potential buyer to make decisions about quality even before they bring their vehicles to a stop. Transactions appear to ensue in an environment of pleasing cordiality, never mind the inevitable animated but mostly good-natured exchanges over issues of price and quality.

For the vendors, some of whom, we learnt, provide the service as a kind of part-time ‘hustle’, it is, in some instances, a new venture. For others, it is an extension of an existing business. What it certainly does, apart from provide a service to which consumers are responsive, is to add a new aesthetic dimension to the city and its environs and in most instances challenge the notion that street vending almost always brings with it a dimension of unsightliness manifested in indiscriminate garbage disposal.

The handful of these vendors with whom we spoke say that their ventures are not without some element of business risk. It is, they say, a highly competitive venture in circumstances where buyers are opportunistic rather than driven by a sense of longer-term loyalty. Beyond that, the perishable nature of fruit and vegetables adds an element of risk associated with what, frequently, is the high likelihood of spoilage. In some instances relationships between sellers and buyers have deepened to the point where cellphone numbers are exchanged to facilitate the arrangements into more structured transactions.

Whether or not this development portends a shift from the traditional manner in which consumers get their fruit and vegetables is difficult to say. It depends on a number of things… like whether or not the roadside fruit and vegetable ‘hustle’ will cease with the disappearance of the coronavirus… whether the relationship between the vendors and the municipal authorities hold good… and whether the vendors simply decide to raise their game above what now applies in the traditional marketplaces. Whichever way it goes, it will be remembered as one of the more interesting transformations in the local trading culture that arose out of the advent of COVID-19.