Solving a problem is often about finding the right approach / fudging the problem into something you can solve. And there is actually a disruptive solution to this: online shopping. Amazon has cheese cloth.
The problem is that it was a spur of the moment decision to try to make ricotta, needed it then and there. Amazon solves this if you regularly need cheese cloth, but not if you have never heard of it and all of sudden find out you need it that night.
This is a problem we've assessed a bit at http://foodtree.com - there are some efforts in this space but none seem to have the penetration to make it useful at scale. Our approach is to help grocers "spread their great story" as an incentive to start mapping their inventory, both in the "where it's from/who made it and how" perspective and the "what store near me has OBSCUREITEM available right now" perspective, which is your problem but only to store level. Getting to that level right now is tough with food retail chains, but they're moving in the right direction.
So that we don't have to wait for them, we're trying to enable crowd-sourcing as well; "I saw OBSCUREITEM here in case you're looking for it in town".
Again, very aware this is only your problem at the store's front door, but maybe it's nice to know someone's working on it? :)
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Solving a problem is often about finding the right approach / fudging the problem into something you can solve. And there is actually a disruptive solution to this: online shopping. Amazon has cheese cloth.
The problem is that it was a spur of the moment decision to try to make ricotta, needed it then and there. Amazon solves this if you regularly need cheese cloth, but not if you have never heard of it and all of sudden find out you need it that night.
This is a problem we've assessed a bit at http://foodtree.com - there are some efforts in this space but none seem to have the penetration to make it useful at scale. Our approach is to help grocers "spread their great story" as an incentive to start mapping their inventory, both in the "where it's from/who made it and how" perspective and the "what store near me has OBSCUREITEM available right now" perspective, which is your problem but only to store level. Getting to that level right now is tough with food retail chains, but they're moving in the right direction.
So that we don't have to wait for them, we're trying to enable crowd-sourcing as well; "I saw OBSCUREITEM here in case you're looking for it in town".
Again, very aware this is only your problem at the store's front door, but maybe it's nice to know someone's working on it? :)
But they won't deliver it before dinner today.