And shiitake mushrooms, spaghetti squash, ginger and even packaged tofu?
In the 1960s, the culture changed, and so did the supermarket. Small markets with fifty or sixty kinds of fruits and vegetables transformed into supermarkets carrying hundreds of varieties. Cooking shows and cookbooks raced to teach home cooks about the new, interesting and exotic.
And Frieda Caplan showed up to orchestrate a connection between a desire for novelty and unknown international foods.
Frieda didn’t invent the kiwi. But she named it, told a story about it and brought it to the merchants who needed it. She saw that markets in flux often need narrators.
The metaphor is something we see all the time–when markets and culture change, there’s room for an agent of change to bring leverage and innovation to the world. The extraordinary thing about Frieda’s was the scale of it. One person, in the right place, the right moment, with the right attitude, transformed the diet of millions of people.
Is there any doubt that right now we’re seeing a similar shift in the culture all around us?
Go find a kiwi.
[You can see the documentary here.]