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Have you ever tried to make kimchi? It’s a laborious process. You never just make one jar of it. You buy a whole box of cabbage, you need to shred a root vegetable – ( I forget the English equivalent for it), and prepare the red pepper paste, among other steps. My mother has made kimchi many times this past year – she was on a kimchi-making kick, and boy, was she exhausted afterwards. This is not a task for the fainthearted. I suppose if you buy a box of napa cabbage at Super H-Mart on sale, and buy the red chili pepper flakes in bulk…etc., then yes, it is relatively inexpensive because the supplies produce at least 2-5 jars of kimchi that would last a while. However, the labor cost is hard to measure, especially for kick-ass kimchi.
This a case of my emotions getting in the way of a reasonable argument. I still maintain that Bill Kim’s $4 kimchi is not a good value. Look at New Chicago Kimchee, a small, family-owned, retail operation that also supplies a number of Korean restaurants. You can get a half gallon of their pungent kimchi for a mere $5. It’s every bit as good, if not better, than Urban Belly’s tiny saucerful. Ten bucks for a gallon.
