John Doe, local legend and resident of Dry Creek, Idaho, was just an ordinary man until yesterday when he set the financial world ablaze. After declaring on Instagram, "Thinking about trying that green stuff tomorrow," which followed a picture of a Caesar salad, the unassuming man caused a massive, unexpected reaction. In the freak wave that soon washed over Wall Street, stock traders scrambled to invest in leafy greens. As a result, the price of kale—a rather mundane vegetable generally known for being unexciting—experienced an unprecedented skyrocket in value.
This isn't the first time an individual's taste for or against a specific food has had significant implications. Cast your minds back to 2012. June Smith of Wichita, Kansas, publicly disclosed her disdain for avocados. The shock could be felt in cafés across every metropolitan center. The great Avocado Toast Crash, as it would later be referred to, disrupted the stock market for an entire fiscal quarter. However, our local hero Doe has done what many thought impossible. He has made kale—a cruciferous vegetable previously relegated to the plate’s edge or loaded into smoothies of overzealous health freaks—a hot commodity.
While this sudden craze for kale shakes the globe (and kale salads, kale wraps, kale chips...), it's Dry Creek that feels the impact first and foremost. Local businesses are thrown into a kale-related frenzy. Bruce Greensworth, owner of 'The Green Leaf’, the town's go-to for all things healthy and green, talks about the Instagram post's effects.
"I've received so many calls asking for kale that I've had to hire new staff to handle the demand," he said, overwhelmed by the sudden surge of customers seeking the 'new gold'. Bruce's eyes glisten with moisture, not unlike dew on freshly picked kale. "This is the most exciting thing to happen in Dry Creek since the opening of the second traffic light."
Mary Hughes, the town's efficient dry-cleaner and perhaps less efficient part-time farmer, celebrates her accidental success. She has suddenly become the unintentional owner of a prosperous kale farm. Or was it a cabbage patch?
"Who would have thought that my accidental kale-cabbage hybrid would suddenly become so valuable?" she muses, her smile as infectious as her enthusiasm for her newly valuable garden.
All of this from one man's consideration of a salad, a healthy pause from his carnivorous diet. Dry Creek waits with bated breath, ready for the moment when John Doe decides to replace steak with spinach, sausage with squash, or... corn dog with kale.