See: Berkshire Hathaway & See's Candies My wife delivers babies at home. She currently does this in California, where no insurance carrier covers home birth. In delving into the numbers of births between California and Washington, I found the expected dip in home births in California during the recession - home birth, when not covered by insurance, is a luxury cost and when money is tight luxuries go un-utilized. However, when I studied the numbers in Washington, I saw the numbers go up: home birth in Washington is covered by insurance, which means the economic impact on luxuries did not impact home birth. But more than that, because paying for a home birth out of pocket is about a quarter the expense of paying for a hospital birth out of pocket, the home birth rate in Washington went up and went up sharply. Most interestingly, however, is that in California the rate went down, then crawled back up over time. In Washington, it went up sharply and then continued to go up slightly less sharply. None of this covers the easy criticisms of Edible Arrangements: namely that it's horribly expensive and tacky way to eat fruit. I think you're right: the future is uncertain. I was about to call them the modern version of Dippin' Dots but by damn if there aren't 1600 locations of that shitshow.
ELI5 style: Rich people have gotten richer by investing in recession-proof market segments, as you observed. I noticed that "recession-proof" depends a lot on market forces (insurance coverage or lack thereof). However, Edible Arrangements still sells crazy cheap goods for crazy expensive prices which is the point the article is making. But holy fuck. Dippin' Dots still exists. Who knew?