Yesterday, I went to Church's Chicken. The service was bad, as *again*, they didn't have enough spicy ready, and they told me it'd be 12 minutes wait.
Well, it ended up being about 20. During that period, I talked to one of the
workers, and I told her about the wing tips being sold to China in 25 metric
ton lots.

She said that she knew of two places that sold wing tips, and it turned out
that neither one did, but one place suggested a small grocery store. I
went there, and a woman from the deli went into the back, and I learned that
they too do not cut up wings, but luckily the owner arrived, and we had a
conversation. He said that his customers would probably be happy to find
the tips missing, and to come back tomorrow, when his son, who runs the meat
dept. is there.

It makes sense. This being a small grocery in *the hood*, labor costs are
probably not high, and they could charge a premium for the drummie and
forearm (his word) as fresh party wings, and sell as many of the tips as
would sell at retail, and perhaps look into selling the rest wholesale to
stores in Chinatown.

There are about 5 wings per pound, and I'd guess that only about 5% of the
weight is in the tips. If the wings were ordinarily sold for $3/#, a 2#
package of 10 wings would be $6. After disarticulation, even setting aside
the tips, one would have 1.9 pounds, and if the markup could be to $3.50/#,
considering that there would be no hassling with cutting up by the consumer,
and the usually unwanted tips weren't included, IMO, they could sell a lot
at that price. The price for the 20 wing sections is now $6.65.

The remaining wing tips from this sample set wold be only one tenth of a
pound, and while I would buy a bunch of them at $3.50/#, at first, I am
only one person. Let's say that he went to selling exclusively retail, and
the price point at which he could move the tips was even as little as $2.00/#,
these surplus tips would add another 20 cents, so the value added would bring
the retail to $6.85, or ~14%, while the additional labor cost would be minimal.

Plus, it would bring certain folks into their store on a regular basis, one
of them being the guy who has the plot next to mine at the community garden.
I was sharing my wing tip story with his wife, and she said, "Willy loves
those things too."

Now, I have successfully written Winter for the past 8 days, a record, and
now I'm shooting for 9. Ian got the wing tips off the turkey at Winter's
parents' Christmas dinner.

--B