Okay, so this is super out there but I think it's a potential solution to supermarkets trying to force-sell factory farmed bullshit.
The food supply chain is the same from restaurants to grocery stores. They all order from the same meat, fish, produce, and dairy companies. The issue with factory farming and grocery stores is that grocery stores frequently don't care about how a product tastes or how it was made because they think about the business model as selling "food products" instead of food, so taste is way down the list of things they consider.
Most, if not all of these wholesale companies will deliver to private homes with an order minimum, or at least let people come pick up from their local warehouse. Chef's Warehouse/Dairyland, Sysco, International Gourmet Foods, Euro Gourmet, etc will all take whatever business comes their way. A 50# bag of onions at wholesale is like ten dollars. Same with baking supplies like flour and sugar- ALWAYS cheaper to buy wholesale. A case of like 25 free range chickens is like $35. Whole pork shoulders usually come in under $20 total. With fish, it's the same deal but everyone has access to the off cuts like heads. I used to buy grouper heads at .25/lb, cut the collars and cheeks out, and sell the dish with them for $15. 35# cases of butter are around $60-70 ish right now.
Essentially, in my mind we as a society don't need grocery stores or most retail stores anymore. They all follow the same model of ordering things that are available to the consumer directly and marking them up for their "help" in buying them. This is one thing in, say, wine or liquor, where many people need help picking out a bottle.
But nobody asks grocery store employees which brand of saltines to buy, or how the beef they carry was raised and slaughtered. Those are the questions that wholesale companies are equipped to answer, and the retail employees then have plausible deniability when they answer whatever way they think the customer wants to hear.
Every consumer should be educated enough about their food and where it comes from to be able to pool purchases and meet the wholesale minimum. We don't need grocery stores, amazon, or any other middleman to decide what brand of chocolate or butter we buy, they're just the status quo. Capitalism is rife with bloated selling structures to ensure that middlemen get their cut- the best way to save money is always to buy from the top of the chain.
The wholesale companies are where the real value and selection is. Specialty butter, vanilla beans, chocolate, candy making stuff, spices (to a lesser extent sometimes), meats, and cheeses are FAR easier to get.
