There are two kinds of food shopping, the essential and the entertainment. Entertainment shopping is like hiring, because everyone is trying to be more entertaining - since it is non-essential, the market is very noisy. Just like hiring, the best value available to an active shopper is found by ignoring popular choices, and by mutatively gambling on opaque categories.
If you hire anyone who is an obviously good hire due to their track record, reputation, and pricing, you get a more predictable outcome, but one which has a lower probability of surprising on the upside. Likewise, by the time any food seller has become popular, their competitive advantage has by definition been eroded, since the market is now moving in their direction, so the seller becomes closer to the mean.
Risk and reward are perpetually coupled, and in opposition to predictability in general. All of this illustrates the fundamental economics of innovation in commerce, development in the arts, and progress in fashionable cultures.
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Also upon reflection, this provides an argument for why I should be classified as a hipster. I may be an information systems hipster, but hey, it's easier to put food on the table by ... working for hipsters in other categories. Not that I really like those categories ... I just treat it as work ... which means, unfortunately, that I may be a hipster by profession.
