- Upon examining the so-called Edible Arrangements paradox, economists worldwide have abandoned many of the ideas that have dominated economic thought since the time of Adam Smith, arguing that the forces of supply and demand are powerless to explain the company's 45-piece line of officially licensed NASCAR-themed fruit bouquets.
There was a piece on NPR's Marketplace I believe, that talked about Edible Arrangements' ability to not only survive during the recession, but continue to grow. I forget a lot of the key points about what the piece was actually about, but one of the things that stuck out to me is that the part of the reason it was able to survive was because it exists in a quasi-necessary market. The reasoning laid out was that just because there's a recession, it doesn't mean people stop having life events. Births, anniversaries, birthdays, what have you. They're still going to happen and people still feel compelled to celebrate them. Coupled with the fact that they offered a unique product, something else no one else was really doing, they were bound to do well. I don't know if that'll still be the case for them down the road, but it seemed like a very compelling point.
See: Berkshire Hathaway & See's Candies My wife delivers babies at home. She currently does this in California, where no insurance carrier covers home birth. In delving into the numbers of births between California and Washington, I found the expected dip in home births in California during the recession - home birth, when not covered by insurance, is a luxury cost and when money is tight luxuries go un-utilized. However, when I studied the numbers in Washington, I saw the numbers go up: home birth in Washington is covered by insurance, which means the economic impact on luxuries did not impact home birth. But more than that, because paying for a home birth out of pocket is about a quarter the expense of paying for a hospital birth out of pocket, the home birth rate in Washington went up and went up sharply. Most interestingly, however, is that in California the rate went down, then crawled back up over time. In Washington, it went up sharply and then continued to go up slightly less sharply. None of this covers the easy criticisms of Edible Arrangements: namely that it's horribly expensive and tacky way to eat fruit. I think you're right: the future is uncertain. I was about to call them the modern version of Dippin' Dots but by damn if there aren't 1600 locations of that shitshow.
ELI5 style: Rich people have gotten richer by investing in recession-proof market segments, as you observed. I noticed that "recession-proof" depends a lot on market forces (insurance coverage or lack thereof). However, Edible Arrangements still sells crazy cheap goods for crazy expensive prices which is the point the article is making. But holy fuck. Dippin' Dots still exists. Who knew?