How Mukbe came to be

This is the story of how I came up with my Mukbe Application idea. It is a bit of a different approach than the normal pitch and is longer but I wrote this as a way to understand why I made this application. I hope you enjoy my journey.

When I was young, I looked forward to the day my dad would let me go with him to the wholesale market. My dad was a grocer. He sold fruits and vegetables in a small store in Queens, NY. He worked there every day for over 40 years. Rain or snow, he would go to work. On the weekdays, he left the house early in the morning before the sun was up, to go to a giant wholesale market in the Bronx called Hunt’s Point Market. He would drive his box truck to the market to pick up his fruits and vegetables before driving to his store. I always wanted to go with him, to see what his world that always seemed closed to me was like. He would always tell me, ‘Next time, next time’. Finally, when I was 8, my mom convinced him to let me go. I guess she was tired of my nagging.?

I was so excited I could barely sleep but after what felt like just a moment, I woke to the sound of my mom calling me from downstairs. She wrapped up some snacks for me and I finally got the chance to climb into my dad’s truck. It was so tall my dad had to pull me in. As we drove across the long Throgs Neck bridge in the chilly spring morning, I couldn’t contain my excitement. I was shivering, although that might’ve been because the heater in the truck was broken.?

Hunts Point Terminal Market

The Hunts Point Market in the Bronx is a giant hub for fresh produce where food comes from all over the world. It spans over 1 million square feet and grocers from all over the Tri-state area come to buy their groceries. This was the sanctum that I was never allowed to go to. An exclusive club for shop owners; a blue-collar fraternity of hardworking men. I, with my soft hands and bookish temperament, always felt left out when it came to my dad’s interests. He would work in the garage, I would spend my time in the library. He would lift weights in the basement. I only used the basement to dance in front of the full-length mirror. Although we never seemed to match, I desperately wanted to know more about his world, one of foreign smells and sounds in this sprawling structure filled with a cornucopia of fruits and vegetables.

I walked with him on the docks where the vendors waited with their produce. Each vendor had a refrigerated section open on one side to show their wares. Some had sections that were only the size of a living room while others had sections that were large warehouses in and of themselves. Grocers walked section by section pulling their boxes on battery-powered pallet jacks and chatting with their friends while clutching cups of coffee. My Dad couldn’t afford a pallet jack, so he would pull a four-wheel hand truck instead. I would stand on its platform like a kid in a shopping cart, wishing it had a motor so I could drive it around.

It was clear that he knew many of the vendors for they would call out to him by name. I only ever understood a bit of what was being said since I couldn’t speak Spanish. While my Dad has never lived anywhere other than NY and Korea, he was fluent in a mix of Mexican and South American-accented Spanish. A strange patois created from the need to communicate with the people he worked and traded with. Dominican, Colombian, and Mexican immigrants had taught him the language as he worked at his store. A fact that my family always laughs at since he can communicate perfectly with people while my sister, who learned college-level Spanish, could not.?

"He was comfortable in this world while the rest of us were not"

He would greet the vendors, and have some small talk before inspecting their wares. He wrote down their prices in his notebook and for the life of me, I could not understand how he kept track. We must have stopped by at least thirty different vendors, each selling dozens of different types of fruits and vegetables. Yet somehow he was keeping track of all of the different prices and expenses. He would buy a few boxes from one and then a few from the other. Sometimes, he would pull out his folding knife, cut a fruit open, and eat a slice to check the taste. He would give me some and ask me if it was good. It usually was. Of course, back then I couldn’t tell the difference. But it is because of him and my mother that I am so picky with the fruits I eat today.?

As the sun rose high in the sky, we added the last few boxes of produce for the day. These boxes would last only a few days. My dad bought certain fruits and vegetables based on what his store was running low of. Each day, it would be a different list. Fruits and vegetables have a relatively low shelf-life. If he overbought, he would have boxes of decaying produce that would have to be thrown out: expenses literally going into the garbage. If he didn’t buy enough, he would run out of items that were popular and his customers would possibly go somewhere else for their groceries. That’s why he had to go almost every day to the Bronx to buy more produce. I know my dad was able to keep track or else he wouldn’t have been in business for so long but I often wondered if there was another way.

Charles Farm Fruit and Vegetables

Years later when I was in my twenties, I helped out at the store by working the weekend graveyard shift. I would come by around eight in the evening and bring my dinner and my notepad. As soon as I reached the store, I would pull out my pad and start writing down all the prices of the produce that was displayed outside. Lettuce was 69 cents a bundle, oranges were 3 for 1 dollar, and so on. I had to write them down because the prices would change depending on the day. Not only did my dad have to keep track of the costs of each item at Hunts Point, he also had to calculate the cost of each ripening fruit and vegetable. The further it ripened, the lower the price would get until it was too spoiled for human consumption. It was a race that played out in the store 24 hours a day, 7 days a week: a race to sell before it was too late.?

Prices always fluctuated making it difficult to keep track.

Once I entered the store I was expected to start working at the register, so I knew I had to have a working memory of at least the most popular items: bananas, onions, limes, cilantro. I would tack the paper from my notepad on the wall next to me and start ringing up the customers. It would take at least an hour before I felt somewhat comfortable. Each day I went I got at least a little frustrated by the fluctuating prices. Was there no way to keep track of the prices in an efficient way? I’m sure larger stores have inventory management software tracking every product that moves in their supermarkets, but this was a mom-and-pop shop. I worked there for over a year and I still struggled throughout that time.?

As the main cook in my household, I go to the supermarket and see the fluctuating prices of groceries, I remember my trip to Hunts Point and understand why oranges have suddenly risen in price over the weekend. But now I also understand from the customer’s perspective how frustrating it is to go to one store and see the prices be vastly different from that of another store. Not just for produce but also for chicken, beef, eggs, and other grocery items.?And just like when I was a cashier, there was no inventory management system available to us.

It was around this time that my client came to me with her frustrating problem of shifting expenses. She is a Custom Cake baker and the price fluctuations for basic ingredients like flour, sugar, and oil made it difficult for her to list a standard price for her cakes. She wanted to be economical and get the best price for her items. Especially in this Inflation burdened era, people like her or the standard customer(me) want the best bargain we can find.

As I thought about her problem, I was reminded of my own as a grocery customer and consumer: we have no inventory management system. But what if we did?

That was when I came up with the idea of a Price Comparison Application that I originally named Jehlyo from the Korean word for ingredient, ??.

You add the items you want along with the current price at that store and that information is stored to be referenced in the future.

It has a search filter to keep track of which stores had what prices. As more people use the application, you have access to more information. I wanted to build a community of grocery storegoers who helped each other find the most economical prices. When you go to the store, just pull up the application and type the item, you'll see how much it is in other stores. Hopefully this helps you make the best economic decision. It is still in its MVP stage but I thought I should put it out there that it exists.

Like my father had gone every day to buy produce, I go to the store and try to keep track of the costs for my meals. As a developer, I enjoy creating applications that have immediate real world value on my life as well as on others. I built this application to try to keep track of those costs. I hope this application will help you as well. I will continue to post articles here and my blog on my progress updating the application and adding features. Continuing to try to level up! Thanks for reading. :)