What If You Never Cooked Again? New York’s Prepared-Food Boom Explained

The useful part

Eating Dinner in New York's Prepared-Food Boom Things you buy through our links may earn Vox Media a commission. I am standing in the Long Island City commissary kitchen for the Upper East Side grocery sensation Butterfield Market, facing an unfathomable quantity of chicken. There are marinating chicken breasts in plastic vats, chicken breasts browning on griddles, chicken breasts charring on giant grills, chicken breasts destined to be sliced into coconut-coated fingers.

How it works

• New minimum-wage laws for the city's delivery workers had brought the baseline hourly rate up to $19.96 (now $22.13), a substantial improvement, though the apps had been against it:
• (Last week, DoorDash agreed to a $131.5 million settlement with the city for shorting workers.) "The vibes are turning against delivery," says Priya Fielding-Singh, a sociologist at George Washington...
• "This is where we get our deliveries," says Butterfield's executive chef, Jorge Flores, gesturing toward a conveyor belt.
• That building is now the kitchen and storefront for Goop Kitchen, Gwyneth Paltrow's "made-to-order delivery" shop, while Butterfield's kitchen footprint moved to Queens and quintupled.
• "Now we have more warehouse space for dry goods," explains Joelle Obsatz, a third-generation co-owner who heads up Butterfield's marketing, pointing at what seems to me to already be a robust amount of...

What to take from it

Oh, you're sad because it costs too much to hire a private taxi for your burrito? It just signed a lease for the garage upstairs. "This looks like a lot to her!" Obsatz informs Flores, who has just reappeared with a container of newly revamped overnight oats for testing.

Example or evidence

• Across the nation, more people have more access to more flavors than ever, and their preferences keep getting more sophisticated.
• This fact is not reflected by any improvement in their collective cooking skills.
• About 40 percent of Butterfield's business is now prepared foods — by far the market's biggest section — and that doesn't include the sushi bar, which accounts for another 8.25 percent.
• Groceries are a famously low-margin business, and, at the moment, things are particularly tough.

Details worth keeping

There is chicken rubbed with herbs and heaped in trays the size of sleds. There are racks of cooling chicken breasts — parmesan-crusted chicken breasts, chicken breasts seasoned with oregano — and silver bowls as big as manhole covers where shredded chicken breasts at this very moment are in the process of becoming chicken salad. Even when they do, they're busy, and dinner is every single night.

Related coverage

• Fodmapeveryday: Cooking at home doesn't have to feel like an unpaid second job if you know how to work smarter, not harder.
• Grubstreet: We're living through a golden age of convenience eating. I'm still schlepping groceries and turning on my oven. Here's why.
• Vinepair: More than other regular diners, chefs have a firsthand understanding of what goes on behind the scenes at restaurants.
• Theinfatuation: If you aren't doing the cooking thing this year, here's where you can grab some food on Thanksgiving.