The crowded few

Most new food brands in Cairo start from the same plan. A better recipe, a heavier jar, a price well above the supermarket's own label, and a buyer who has grown tired of the default.

The reasoning behind it is sound. The shopper at the bottom of the shelf hardly minds which jar she takes, so leave her to the big names and make something for the person who minds a great deal.

Taken by one seller, that works. The trouble starts when every seller takes it.

In a city where most households cannot afford to step off the cheapest option, the ones who can are not a hidden crowd waiting to be found. They are a small and very visible group. They live in a handful of districts, follow the same accounts and walk the same weekend markets, where a fourth careful jar of honey is offered to them by a fourth founder who was certain he had found a gap.

So the shopper who wanted something better has become the most courted customer in the city. She is sampled, followed, discounted and messaged until her loyalty is split many ways, and each brand holding a sliver of it believes it found her first.

The bottom shelf, meanwhile, has not changed in years. The same faded label, the same lid that never quite seals, a recipe quietly adjusted to whatever was cheapest that season. Nobody new is competing for the woman who buys it.

I would not call her uninterested. She stopped expecting anything from that shelf because, for as long as she can remember, nothing on it was made with her in mind.

Every new brand in the city has left her to someone else, which makes her the one customer a careful maker could still have entirely to himself.