In addition to being bred for yield, there&#x27;s shippability.<p>One of the biggest reasons tomatoes from the store taste so bad is that they&#x27;re picked completely green.  The second is that the commercial varieties are bred to have a pastier texture and be tougher to stand up to shipping.  The third is that tomatoes don&#x27;t stand up to refrigeration without a change in texture.<p>My uncle grows tomatoes commercially in southeast Tennessee.  If you actually let the commercial varieties ripen all the way and don&#x27;t refridgerate them, they&#x27;re pretty good.  They&#x27;re better than the anything you can buy at a fancy grocery store.  They&#x27;re not as good as homegrown brandywines, but they&#x27;re on par some of the popular hybrid varieties, and will beat out any store-bought heirloom (e.g. a store-bought brandywine).<p>However, when any tomato is picked to sell in bulk, they have to be picked completely green. Otherwise they&#x27;ll be too badly bruised to sell.  The &quot;vine ripened&quot; tomatoes you buy in the store just means that they cut off some of the vine along with the green tomatoes.<p>The site is down, so forgive me if I&#x27;m pointing out something that&#x27;s mentioned there.  At any rate, in my opinion, commercial tomatoes suffer more from being picked completely green so they&#x27;ll survive shipping than anything else.