i've been reading HN for the last 4 years or so. over that time ive slowly gotten rid of social media; first by uninstalling apps, then by deleting accounts. Lately I decided to get rid of reddit, which had had a huge impact on my media consumption. I've found myself taking the time to read articles posted on here, and as such Ive found a few sites that I favor for content.
Early on I simply read comments if a site was blocked, then went to archives, and now i'm finding myself paying for sites I appreciate. I feel like this is an eventual outcome for many, but getting users to consume "long form" media is the trick. If it weren't for these free peaks at the content, I would never have come around to paying for it.
Maybe all these paywalled sites could start a subscription service where you pay one low monthly fee and get access to X sites with it.
Then every publisher that is a member of the subscription service gets an amount of money proportionate to the number of subscribers that read their articles.
Seems so obvious to me but maybe there’s a reason why it wouldn’t (or hasn’t) worked.
With the emergence of dark grocery stores, there will be major opportunity in the space of personalized nutrition. Shoppers will be more connected with a mobile app when it comes to their grocery store experience, and those apps have the potential to steer you toward an optimal diet that saves money and improves health.
I strongly believe personalized nutrition and shopping experiences will have major impact on non communicable diseases.
Dark stores are physical stores only used for online shopping. I remember hearing about "dark kitchens" which are restaurants doing deliveries, but not accessible/visible from the outside.
Yeah same concept basically. Take over a strip mall space, paper over the windows, set up the inside in a way that's optimized for delivery only.
There's some interesting reporting on the various optimizations like all the isle being half width and one way to save floor space, or they don't put like items together so all the different ketchup brands (for example) are distrusted throughout the store so if it tells a picker to go to isle 5 shelf W and get heinz ketchup, there won't be any other similar items/brands near the heinz ketchup to confuse the picker with. They also arrange the stores in roughly descending weight so that heavy things go in first and light/fragile at the end.
Small grocery warehouses used by Instant delivery companies. From this post[1] by Tanay J
A. Dark Stores / Fulfillment Centers
Instant-Delivery Apps operate their own dark stores / fulfillment centers, typically one per neighborhood they operate in. Since these are not meant for consumers, space can be used more efficiently and typically the cost to operate these (at scale) as a percent of revenue is lower than rent space for grocery stores.
Not necessarily. Some dark stores near me (city center) have about the same layout as physical stores, but more cramped - delivery people need to pick the items from shelves.
I don’t trust a corpo-run dark store to provide me quality produce when the corpo’s first law is profits above everything else.
Rather than thinking about tech solutions for the health epidemic surrounding foods, I think we need to reign in the prepackaged food industry who relies on unnatural recipes to cut costs and increase shelf life and who adds tons of sugar to everything for flavor.
Yeah I doubt that. Personal shoppers can't even pick out the correct produce now.
It's like they search out for the least ripe or most bruised thing. Seems like it's because it's not for them so they don't care, or they don't know how to.
The other point against that theory is people will buy what they want to buy, that may be healthy food, it may not be.
Unless you're talking about taking away the choice and distributing food based on some sort of consortium which is authoritarian and assumes we have sound dietary science which is false.
On the money point, have you seen the fees these personal shopping services add? In no way is it cheaper to have someone else shop for you.
I have to say... as much as I don't like them... WalMart does the online shopping properly. I had to switch to delivery / pickup for a while during 2020 and found them to be the best. But I think this is because the people shopping for your food are paid by the hour and not by the job. They are regular employees of the store. They aren't rushed to get your order, and 50 other orders, checkout, and drive around town burning their own gas for a paltry fee. I never had shitty produce delivered, and substitutions actually make sense.
How bad is it when WalMart is treating its employees better than most?
Both Walmart and Amazon have horrid hours and working conditions. The difference is Bezos starts them at 2-3x minimum wage, while Walmart is at the rock bottom.
I’m surprised there isn’t more discussion of the fees associated with these services. Most people can’t afford to spend 25+% extra on their groceries just to gain some convenience
And some of us simply refuse to. I'd rather drive the 10 miles into town to pick up my dinner than give GrubHub money that I'd prefer to see going to the restaurant.
Frankly, unless I'm drunk, stoned, or sick, I can't see ever using a non-store delivery service.
>I strongly believe personalized nutrition and shopping experiences will have major impact on non communicable diseases.
What about all the poor people without smartphones? We have such an unequal distribution of wealth and technology in this county that (particularly on site like this with mostly digital natives) it is easy to loose sight of the fact that the poorest ~20% still don't have basic smart phones, or maybe even basic flip phones. Hell they might not even have email accounts.
One thing that has been made clear by all the social programs that were stood up during the pandemic is that landlines and snail mail are still the most common denominator of communication for the poor. Until we get to some simple "smartphones for all" program, I don't see this changing any time soon.
Some poor people have smartphones. I guess some will get to eat. Also while there is penatration of smartphones into poorer countries, it is hardly 100%
>However, compared to other markets across the globe, India’s smartphone penetration rate is still relatively low. [1]
Or the people who have smartphones and are sick of it and pine for the old ways, but feel compelled to keep one by society increasingly expects that everybody have one and capriciously install invasive apps on it, even for things like buying groceries!
What's invasive about a grocery store app? Seems less invasive than going to the store - they could always record you there and they certainly know what you buy.
Web pages work just fine on phones, except companies are suspiciously forceful with their recommendations that you use their app instead. Don't pretend Reddit isn't doing this; others do as well.
Are you kidding? I frequently stop what I'm already doing on my phone in frustration, and get out a laptop or turn on a computer to do it in a proper browser/screen/keyboard instead of an app/mobile browser.
Grocery stores are incentivized to sell as much food as possible, which does not align with keeping their customers as healthy as possible.
But, assuming altruistic grocers, it would be interesting to see how they decide what food to steer people towards. Would I have to share my medical records and height/weight/exercise routine or would they personalize based on something else?
Or otherwise generate the best possible margin. Either by volume or by price. They might optimize slightly differently, but never for the best of the consumer. That is they will aim to generate as much as possible in total sale value and on other hand have as high as possible margin with the that value. Think of health-insurance, not exactly great for consumer.
> Shoppers will be more connected with a mobile app when it comes to their grocery store experience, and those apps have the potential to steer you toward an optimal diet that saves money and improves health.
Apps silently tacking $0.10/lb onto produce because you own an iPhone and have a history of buying "premium" stuff...
The average grocery store carries 30,000+ items, I don't know how people will find new products in a world (decades from now) where dark grocery shopping is the norm. We all only have vast awareness because we know of the goods by walking the aisles.
The web apps for grocery shopping have carousels that might showcase to you two or three new items, but there simply is nothing analogous to aisle walking. You can't even really see the full inventory in these web apps either. To me, that's a huge discoverability issue that doesn't yet present because people have prior experience shopping IRL.
Since December, all of my grocery shopping has been done via Shipt.[0] What is available via the web site and app is fraction of what's available in the store. I've lucked out because they shop at the store I used to shop at; so, I can add a detailed special request. (Instead of just saying "pumpernickel bread," I can add that it's not in the main, prepackaged bread section; but, in the bakery section, on the left side, behind the bread slicing machine.)
[0] Not by choice, a combination of Necrotizing Fasciitis, Sepsis, and Gangrene left me in a wheelchair
I feel the same way about books: In terms of enjoyability and chance discovery, browsing through amazon.com or whatever just doesn't compare with browsing the shelves of an actual book store or library.
Anyone trying to personalize their optimal nutrition is already in the top 5% of Americans in regards to healthy eating. We are so, so, so far from even baseline semi-ok diets in the most generalized all-of-humanity guidelines.
> With the emergence of dark grocery stores, there will be major opportunity in the space of personalized nutrition. Shoppers will be more connected with a mobile app when it comes to their grocery store experience, and those apps have the potential to steer you toward an optimal diet that saves money and improves health.
What a rosy view of grocery stores. I used to work in grocery and later a "dark grocery" store. It ain't all puppies and sunshine, sonny. Grocery apps are engineered to hoover up your data and entice you to spend more money, especially on things you normally like to buy. Average ticket size is higher on pickup orders over in store shopping. These apps definitely enable junk food habits with targeted discounts and advertising. Trying to subsist on a diet? Here's a free gallon or $0.99 5-gallon tub of ice cream. Good luck with that diet.
Source: I worked for Kroger for over a decade in every department.
Opposite here: I dislike Trader Joe's. I call it "bougie safeway". Trader Joe's is great if you like boxed, prepared food, but it isn't much better for anything else. Their produce is meh and overly wrapped with packaging.
I concur. I can't find anything other than all purpose and wheat flour. No bread flour, or anything more obscure like rye, spelt, etc. Similarly, they sell a single sea salt, alongside tons of trendy mixed salts. Want iodized salt? Go find a big grocery store. I do find tons of snacks and TV dinners, which I enjoy. But if I'm stocking up on essentials, I'd rather go to a big store. And yes, I do find obscure flours at big stores, most recently 00 and rye.
It's not just food either, trader joes is lacking many of the non-food goods that other grocery stores almost universally have. Need aluminum foil or parchment paper? You can't buy those at trader joes.
> trader joes is lacking many of the non-food goods that other grocery stores almost universally have.
It's almost like their business model is “don’t devote lots of floor space to stuff you can get anywhere so price competition drives margins to zero”.
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This is indeed why Trader Joe's could never be my entire grocery shopping experience. Even staples like dry black beans are unavailable. God forbid you want to bake something...
They have a couple interesting products that I can't get elsewhere, and they don't have lots of products that I can get at literally any other grocery store.
Not OP, but the texture is different. Soak some black beans overnight then cook them, and compare them to rinsed canned beans. The latter are slipper and spongy, the former are lighter and have better texture.
They're cheaper, take up less space, no processed crap from all the goo in the can, you can cook them to whatever firmness you want...should I keep going?
I couldn't even find plain white sugar the last time I looked. They have small bags of "raw" sugar, which is fine for putting in coffee, but not good enough for many baking needs.
I had to adjust my hydration when switching from all-purpose to 00, but it is definitely a superior structure, especially with a 48-hour ferment and a little diastatic malt.
TJ's for us is "we need these specific store brand items" or "I need to restock my Blackthorn cider." And unfortunately TJ's has removed three store brand products in the past two years, so the number of reasons to go there is rapidly diminishing for our household.
On a side note: Purchase a bag of vital wheat gluten, a 2lb/1Kg bag will last a very long time. The difference between AP flour and bread flour is the gluten content. You can bring any regular AP flour up to the highest gluten level that a high gluten bread flour brand like King Arthur will produce. One tablespoon of vital wheat gluten exchanged for one tablespoon of AP flour for every two cups/240 grams/2.4oz of AP flour is a provides a good high gluten ratio. I use it regularly in my bread recipes and pizza dough recipes. I only keep bread flour on the shelf for those days when I am feeling lazy or need a very specific brand of bread flour for one specific recipe.
I'm not convinced that the value is better. Most of the stuff at TJ's is reasonable quality, but the prices are often lower only because there's less product in the package. I'd have to sit down and compare unit prices before I could be assured you were getting a better value for your money.
TJ’s may be lower margin on what they carry than Safeway would be on comparable items; they achieve that by avoiding carrying lots of the low-margin items every other grocery store spends lots of money devoting floor space to.
(But those are things people tend to also need a lot, so TJ’s ends up being an extra shopping trip, instead of a replacement.)
TJ's processed/frozen stuff is often better, and always way cheaper, than either the name brands or supermarket generic brands. So I get those things at TJ's (sometimes along with stuff like milk and eggs), and buy grains, produce, meat and everything else from Ralphs.
The local paper did comparison shopping and found Safeway to be about the same price for a weekly trip as Whole Foods. Trader Joes was significantly cheaper in the San Francisco Bay Area.
It's hit or miss, but usually just because the stuff I don't like their is not my taste, not that it is poor quality. Some of their products I think are really great, both in quality and bargain. Plus, they work on a space efficiency model: products that don't sell popularly won't be kept in stock. Sometimes that's what I'm optimizing for when I want to try new products: what are other people voting for with their dollars?
Well, I live in Berkeley, so I'm pretty damn spoiled when it comes to cheese shops. But I can see that being helpful if there are no cheese stores, import stores, or specialty foods stores in your town.
I think a lot of it is because it's novel to me. I'm in the Midwest, and I just don't have any close to the greater Springfield, MO area. I'm told it's just beyond their supply chain. You have to get around St.Louis before they show up.
I grocery shop with my toddlers first thing in Saturday morning and our first stop is TJs. I only buy about a dozen different products at TJs but they're all staples in our weekly meals / snacks. Checkout is never a problem early in the morning.
Their food is whatever, but their long, slow checkout lines that obstruct other shoppers and generally customer-hostile layout often pushes me to the border of rage. The only thing that keeps me level are those dark chocolate peanut butter cups.
If you go there when it's busy, the checkout lines can get pretty large (they don't have dedicated baggers) and crowd parts of the store. With that said, I've noticed a similar trend at bigger stores by me lately as they added more self-checkout lines.
I've generally found that checkout times at TJs are much less than the local supers.
Price- and quality-wise they totally win on cheese and pasta by a huge margin. Supermarket cheese is generally pretty awful (the only cheeses we get at the super are Mexican cheeses that TJs doesn't stock. I’ve occasionally bought, say cheddar at the super and it’s awful and costs more than TJs).
The big thing for me for the last two years is that the clientele and staff at my local TJs have done a much better job of taking Covid seriously than the same at Whole Foods¹ or any standard super.
⸻
1. I was in Whole Foods earlier today and was rather appalled to see a sign saying that customers are welcome [italics mine] to shop without a mask regardless of vaccination status. This while local Covid rates are on the rise. It seemed like they were encouraging people to go maskless.
It's the cookies and crackers and frozen food and hot sauce and candy and coffee aisle, of course! Next one over is the soap and pasta and canned goods and spices and dog food and olive oil.
There’s like 6 aisles, it’s not hard to remember which products are where. It’s not like one of those 20 aisle stores with unrelated endcaps. There are gas stations bigger than Trader Joe’s.
I've only been to a handful of their stores, but every single one just feels way too small. It also feels like the majority of the people there are employees restocking shelves and just generally being in the way. They are friendly and it's nice there's always someone I can ask if I need help finding someone, but it can be annoying to always have people in your way.
I'll also add their slowness is partly due to their clientele (moreso that standard stores) bringing their filthy reusable grocery sacks, which throw off the flow of the line.
The staff use these to communicate. There’s no intercoms so this is how they know when to open more registers, come to the front of the store, etc. Don’t ring the bells, they will not appreciate it.
Probably an unpopular opinion––and I love TJs––but I feel like the quality and type of things you can buy there is akin to a Dollar General. The produce is often covered in plastic and subpar quality. The selection isn't great. Honestly, its greatest perk is the frozen food section and snacks.
> Also in 1958, Rexall employee Joe Coulombe was asked to test the launch of Pronto Markets, a store brand to compete against 7-Eleven. After running six Pronto Markets in the Los Angeles area, Rexall asked Coulombe to close them down. Coulombe decided to buy them out instead, and eventually renamed the chain "Trader Joe's".
They have an interesting design principle where they only put stores in places where you feel like you're going to hit someone in the parking lot. I suppose it promotes biking to the store.
This seems like a very simplistic analysis, I'd expect more from the economist. They compare huge chains like Walmart, Aldi, and Whole Foods to Europe's Tesco. Yet we have lots of regional options in our small city and very rarely go to these big chains. Kind of disappointed I created an account just to read this tbh.
This tends to be a forum of financially advantaged people. The vast majority of Americans are shopping at Walmart, Aldi, Safeway, Kroger etc. (Maybe not Whole Foods). In that light, the comparisons are valid.
Like you, I shop at a local chain and the farmers market. I know I pay more for my groceries than my neighbors who shop at WinCo and I'm ok with that since I feel I get higher quality meats and produce along with those higher prices.
Interesting that is the case elsewhere. Our local stores are not always more expensive. We have one high end chain, one average chain, and one lower end chain all of which are local to the region. Walmart is usually on par or even slightly more expensive in some cases than the average option.
I don't get your comment. 1) Both Aldi and Tesco are European. 2) The point is that food shopping in the US is dominated by large stores like Wall Mart, Target etc, while in Europe stores more akin to Aldi, Tesco etc dominate.
I live in Norway but have lived in the US and Netherlands while visiting a lot of Europe on vacation naturally. There is most definitely a very different way in which food is sold in general. The article points out pretty much the same experiences I have had when comparing.
In fact this has been remarked on for years as a difference between Europe and the US: The US is about really large stores where land is cheap and you can store a lot of products. In Europe one tends to follow the opposite model: Smaller stores with more limited selection which has rapid replacement of products.
Automation is also quite different. I was also surprised by the kind of old fashion way checkout works in the US. Like how they meticulously pack your bags. I would say in Europe scanning is generally faster or one uses a more self automated systems where shoppers scan, pay and pack themselves.
Of course there are stores of all kinds of sizes in the US. The same applies to Europe. There are Wall-Mart style shopping Europe as well. It is just that there is a difference in what is more common in each region.
And of course saying "Europe" may be quite inaccurate as there are such large regional variations in Europe. Broadly speaking smaller stores in central areas is more common in Europe than in the US, but once you get into the details then each country tends to do things in quite different ways.
For instance I loved shopping groceries in the Netherlands but kind of hated doing it in Germany.
> I don't get your comment. 1) Both Aldi and Tesco are European. 2) The point is that food shopping in the US is dominated by large stores like Wall Mart, Target etc, while in Europe stores more akin to Aldi, Tesco etc dominate.
Aldi has a large presence in the U.S., as noted in the article. About 2100 stores, according to a search. That's nearly half as many as Walmart grocery stores.
> Like how they meticulously pack your bags. I would say in Europe scanning is generally faster or one uses a more self automated systems where shoppers scan, pay and pack themselves.
I dunno, having your shopping bags loaded for you is pretty nice. With respect to self-checkout, I haven't been in a chain grocery store in the U.S. in at least 10 years that didn't have it. They may exist, I dunno. Usually, you have a choice of both.
> And of course saying "Europe" may be quite inaccurate as there are such large regional variations in Europe. Broadly speaking smaller stores in central areas is more common in Europe than in the US, but once you get into the details then each country tends to do things in quite different ways.
Their milk is a deal, but hardly worth the 50¢ savings when you factor in the time it takes to park, go in, show card, walk to the back, wait in line, and go back home. Not when there's a Kroger right by me where I can get in and out in less time it takes to drive to Costco.
> but they do not have the size that European supermarkets have to resist price increases by suppliers.
Walmart bankrupted Vlassic by suckering them into a deal where they were stuck selling pickles at a loss. They are infamous for dictating price to their suppliers.
The article was referencing regional grocers. However, and to your point, Albertsons and Safeway may be "national" brands but Albertsons, Inc. (which is Albertsons/Safeway) actually has 22 "regional" banners that are all serviced by a single corporation, which I don't think this article actually takes into account.
I discovered a few years back when visiting OH, SoCal, and VT that my Safeway card works at Vons, Acme, and Shaw's.... and that the store layouts and much of the contents are basically identical as well.
The layouts are extremely purposeful. There are books written about how to lay out grocery stores. They do the same kind of A/B testing on store layouts that Amazon does on the “buy it now” button. It’s no accident that there are three different places in the grocery store to buy cheese, or that produce is at the front of the store and milk at the back, or that candy is next to the register and potato chips are on the end caps.
> My guess is some sales dude thought he could get a good deal with Walmart, couldn’t, took it anyways, then decided to blame Walmart.
WalMart deals always look good in the short term. The problem is the longer term.
What really happened is that some sales dude got a deal with WalMart, bumped his numbers, got a promotion, cashed his check, and cleared outta dodge. And then over the next few years WalMart squeezed Vlasic to death.
Yea, that seems totally bunk outside of double or single-digit store companies. Even the regional US chains like Publix or HEB or Fred Meyer are as large as many EU chains outside of Tesco, which may as well be the Walmart of Europe.
I'm just tired of so many articles whose whole premise is "the US isn't doing thing X that a smaller, denser, and massively older country has done." Yea, the US has issues and is responsible for a lot of its own problems, but it's also not the same as Germany or France or Spain on so many different levels. You can make the case that the US should actually be N different countries, but that's not really an option, so you deal with the world as it is.
Even the regional US chains like Publix or HEB or Fred Meyer are as large as many EU chains outside of Tesco, which may as well be the Walmart of Europe.
Tesco isn't the largest chain in Europe. Walmart is bigger than the large European chains, by a factor of (just?) about 5 to 10.
Ah fair. I mostly meant that in the sense that, Tesco is closer to Walmart's "we sell everything" offering. Your second link was talking about the largest grocer in Europe having 1300 stores across 8 countries, which is about the same size as Publix which only operates in 7 states and has 800 stores in Florida alone.
Schwarz group operates 1300 Kaufland stores. Kaufland is like a Walmart (as far as I understand), each store is huge and sells everything. They also operate around 10000 Lidl stores across 32 countries. Those are smaller and sell mostly groceries. I think Tesco exists in several sizes, from small urban stores to suburban super stores.
What exactly are the clear conclusions from this over-worded drivel?
Inflation aside, if you're paying too much for groceries, you don't know how to shop.
Part of the problem is people are willing to pay $6 for bananas at Whole Paycheck, and the obsession with organic foodstuffs. When the same products are available at Walmart or Costco for 1/3 the price. I think we have an entire generation of people who never learned how to shop efficiently, look for good deals, use coupons. Let's be honest, the clientele at Whole Foods generally wouldn't be caught dead at Walmart. It's mostly psychological; the food there is not necessarily higher quality. For example, Costco sells restaurant-quality meat; you can buy Wagyu steak there. But you need to consider that maybe paying $8 for a loaf of 'organic' bread is an irrational decision.
Whole Paycheck has certain products they can't find anywhere else easily. The higher price for the bananas is the price you pay for one stop shop convenience. The whole concept of the gas station convenience store is built on this concept. And you know what? Convenience had value. As for an $8 organic loaf of bread, that's easily the cost of a glass of cheap wine at a restaurant, or two ice cream cones. Seems like a good deal for a premium, healthier item.
> Whole Paycheck has certain products they can't find anywhere else easily.
[...]
> Seems like a good deal for a premium, healthier item.
Last time I shopped there I paid nearly $4 for a bottle of lemon juice that looked and tasted like sewer water. Down the drain it went, as did my money.
That store exudes an Apple-like reality distortion field, and it seems to be working pretty well.
If the greatest trick the devil ever played is convincing people he doesn't exist, his second-greatest trick is convincing Americans that eating well is for stuck-up elitist liberals. Yes, While Foods is mega-expensive and not that good for the price. But that's not because good food is a fake consumerist concept, it's because the American agricultural system has been gutted by perverse commercial and regulatory incentives. Go to almost any other developed nation (or many developing ones), get better food for less money
I think it's more that as Americans have evolved and more people seek white-collar occupations, and as women have taken more career (as opposed to domestic) paths as dual-income households become necessary to survive especially in places like SF, people have lost critical skills. Like how to cook healthy with a few basic ingredients. Most of the people I work with don't know how to use an oven. I don't think half of them know how to shop at a grocery store, either. If Uber Eats ceased to exist I'm concerned they would starve to death or be forced to survive on peanut butter and jelly.
When you convince enough people that $13 for a grilled cheese sandwich is acceptable, that becomes the norm. It's the milkshake scene in Pulp Fiction become reality.
Bad cooking habits are a problem for sure, but they are not the whole story. Good cooking can only do so much to redeem bad ingredients, and American ingredients are often simply terrible. Our meat is bland, tasteless, and stuffed with seed oils (American chicken especially is execrable compared to the what the rest of the world eats). Our fruits and vegetables are bred for size and productivity at the expense of variety, nutrition, and taste. The government reconmends, and in fact often mandates, consuming "low-fat" versions of foods that have had their calories replaced with sugar. And not even with real sugar, because Great Depression-era import quotas keep the price of real sugar high so high fructose corn syrup can be cheaper and big ag lobbies can be happy. Want a fresh tomato with a modicum of flavor? Where I live, all the tomatoes I can find are either ripened off the vine (and therefore worthless) or canned.
Yes, many consumers have terrible habits, but systemic forces aren't helping.
> Our meat is bland, tasteless, and stuffed with seed oils (American chicken especially is execrable compared to the what the rest of the world eats).
Think you have your conspiracies confused there. The chickens are different because of being washed in chlorine. The cows are fat because they eat soy. It's you who's fat and feminized from the seed oils.
…is the current alternative health food theory.
But you can easily get grass-feed beef, and people tend to dislike it compared to grain-fed beef, because it tastes grassier and has less fat.
When I say American meat sucks, I am not referring to what some random internet blog says, I am referring to my personal experience living outside the US. You don't need to listen to some obscure podcast to realize the difference, you can just taste your food.
Whole Foods isn't expensive anymore, this post is from like 6 years ago. Amazon lowered their prices on basic goods and keeps it higher on the packaged goods. Which are usually not especially healthy, they just have some superfood ingredients in them.
UK supermarkets are crap, and have got noticeably crapper in recent years. At even large mid-tier supermarkets you will find a paltry range of fruit and veg, and a maeger selection of almost entirely prepackaged meat and fish. I have noticed many things are routinely out of stock and it can be a lottery shopping for a specific recipe.
I recently visited Portugal, and in a small city supermarket there was a bakery, meat and a fish counters and a wide variety of produce, all labelled clearly by variety name. It put my local large supermarket to shame. The prices were cheaper too.
I find this every time I shop on the continent. Are our standards that much lower? Is it just Brexit? I yearn for a European supermarket experience in the UK.
UK supermarkets are far better in terms of fruit and veg selection than anything we have here in Germany. It can be much worse trust me. UK is also way cheaper
I like Aldi, just not for produce. For produce I usually go somewhere more premium like a Whole Foods, Fresh Market, or a local specialty grocery store. Or Costco, if I want a lot.
Not the grandparent, but I buy produce at Costco, local grocery chain, Whole Foods, and local natural foods co-op. Aldi is basically the worst produce available, second to Walmart/Target/convenience-store. I used to go there for bananas because they were a lot cheaper and acceptable (but lower) quality, but recently their banana prices haven't been lower.
Costco and specific midrange grocery stores like Kroger/Safeway/Publix etc. In Chicago there are many great independent grocery stores especially in the suburbs. Check out Village Market Place in Skokie.
I say specific because I found the quality varies greatly from store to store, and likely who the produce manager is. As much as I hate to say it, the stores in the more affluent neighborhoods carry higher quality produce.
Some of the highest quality produce I've found was at Costco, with a "picked/packed on" date of just 2-3 days prior to purchase. The downside is you have to buy in bulk, so be prepared to freeze or plan accordingly.
Honestly? Where are you shopping, what are you comparing to each other? I think the segmentation of stores in the UK and Germany are very different.
UK has Waitrose and (for some things) M&S for high quality fruit and veg. But they are also highly priced. Germany does not have a posh equivalent. However the common non-discounters (Rewe, Kaufland, Edeka, Globus), are really not bad.
I am not sure about the exact number of fruit and veg SKUs in Tescos and Sainsburys (UK) but I often find them of less quality than I remember them in Germany. I never had issues shopping fruit or veg in Germany nor the UK though.
I also noticed that the UK imports very aggressively non-seasonal products from afar. Like beans from Peru or blueberries from Morocco. I am not sure of that happens in Germany, too. So potentially you are noticing exotic fruit and veg having a different availability, which might be due to different customer awareness towards the impact on the climate of imported goods from afar.
Everything other than Waitrose in the UK is a “budget” brand. That’s why the selection is poor, and why the presence of a Waitrose makes house prices go up around it.
Rewe and EDEKA aren’t bad but are far more expensive than UK supermarkets and still have less selection. The quality is higher though. Lidl is about the same but far more expensive. Aldi Nord is far worse than Aldi Süd which is in the UK
Btw I would definitely say that most Germans consider Rewe to be the posh equivalent
Lived in Denmark for a while, it was worst than anything I experienced in Germany and much more expensive. Though I found smaller shops, asian and middle eastern run with great vegetables and tofu (hard to find for some reason). And this was in Copenhagen mind you.
What German supermarket are you comparing too? Rewe, Edeka, and Real have a very wide offering of fruits and vegetables. Are you comparing to discounters?
In my experience Germany has the best supermarkets I’ve ever encountered, with ridiculously aggressive prices.
ah I noticed as well. UK supermarkets are great for junk food or novelties (Marks & Spencer is fun), but it's hard to buy good, simple food. Italy has greats supermarket and grocery stores.
I think part of it is that UK standards are lower when it comes to food, yes. I know this might be offensive, but I think there's some truth to it. The reason I think there's truth to it is that it works in the opposite direction too. Standards for food are higher in Italy than in Portugal and guess what? Their grocery stores are better than the Portuguese ones.
Comparing meat specifically in Portugal vs UK, it's generally awful in the UK, but I've never heard anyone there complaining about it. Therefore, the standards must be lower, even if by simple virtue of people not knowing any better.
I think you're right. For example in EU supermarkets you will typically find, separately: white onions, brown onions, sweet onions etc. In the UK: onions. Maybe sometimes also 'large onions'. Same goes for most other produce.
It's chicken and egg, as the demand for this won't materialise without awareness and the awareness won't arise without the knowledge there even are different types of onions, I imagine most Brits are clueless.
Also as a British expat, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose in Bath had all of the types of onion you’d find in the US pre-pandemic - though I haven’t been back since. I’d imagine Brexit may have ruined that.
I haven’t been back in a few years, but the selection of onions in my local Kroger would be staggeringly exotic next to the offerings of Tescos of the north-east.
Yes, I suppose it doesn't really surprise me that the regional variation would be different. Bath didn't have a Tesco until recently, but it did have a Safeway/Morrisons which had a slightly worse selection than the "posher" two. It also had a farmers market though which was by far the best place to buy anything.
I am absolutely baffled by the local grocery store’s (Midwest US) supply of potatoes. They have something like five+ varieties of midsize ones, two types of big ones, bags of both, and an entire end cap dedicated to various little bags of tiny potatoes.
This is a ridiculous claim and entirely false (just go look at the online grocery sites e.g. https://www.ocado.com/browse/fresh-chilled-food-20002/vegeta... ). I have never experienced this in the UK. What kind of shops are you guys going to in the UK?
Red onions, brown onions, white onions (normal, large, bulk bags, loose or bagged, pre-chopped etc), shallots, echalions, spring onions, red spring onions, tropeas etc (them also organic + non-organic varieties of each) are all normal to see in UK super markets (at least in my local part of London). Even Tesco - a chain that many would say is the lowest of the low super market "for poor people" in the UK - carries these.
Depends where you are. Food deserts exist, even in relatively affluent countries. The range of goods at a supermarket is different in Bath (affluent) to Maerdy (poor).
> I think part of it is that UK standards are lower when it comes to food
This is patent nonsense. Current UK food standards for the moment are aligned with EU standards despite Brexit.
> Comparing meat specifically in Portugal vs UK, it's generally awful in the UK, but I've never heard anyone there complaining about it. Therefore, the standards must be lower, even if by simple virtue of people not knowing any better.
Yet more nonsense based on absolutely no evidence at all.
Maybe it's just a coincidence, but since Brexit I've noticed the shelf life of fruit and veg has gone through the floor (I suspect the time the produce takes to reach the shelf has increased). For things that have advisory "best by" dates on (e.g. strawberries), where you used to get a date a week in the future, now you need to take care to not buy something with tomorrow's date.
I have noticed the same thing with Christmas trees. They lose their "tiny green things" (name?) earlier.
Maybe picker/cutter shortages? Like instead of picking the strawberries or cutting trees with 10 people in one week 5 people do it in two weeks? To fill up one truck load.
I understand people here debating veggies and fruits or meat. But Christmas trees? How often does one buy one? Once a year? Might have been a fluke? Or do you have a compelling reason to relate this to Brexit?
I don't think it has anything to do with the EU or not. Rather I think there has been some industry wide "efficiency gain" in picking/harvesting/cutting stuff that make the product worse when you buy it.
Obviously the Christmas tree can be a fluke. But so was my mom's and my tree the year earlier. In my childhood they still had like moist resin and smelled alot. But the ones you buy nowadays are dull.
My parents are in Ireland and they're saying the same thing as we are - shelf life for fresh produce has dropped. Anecdotally, we've noticed that all our seasonal produce (e.g. strawberries right now) seems to have a decent 4-5 day shelf life.
One benefit of all the working from home has been a few commuter towns around me have revived their high streets.
E.g. i have two awesome butchers nearby, the fruit and veg shop is way better than 5 years ago in terms of selection - quality and price was always good there but selection is fantastic now. I’ve got lots of random little shops nearby now, e.g. a coffee roaster, a social food thingy etc etc
5 years ago this town mostly had just hairdressers on the Main Street.
I noticed that things got substantially worse in my local shops after Brexit. However, I don't think it's entirely that, or directly at least: if you find a "real" greengrocers (at a market stall or otherwise), you'll find a very much larger range of interesting veg than you normally see. I think that the big shops like standardising on things that sell very well, and fruit and veg are sort of the worst of worlds for them – readily perishable, wide range but low cost and low margins, and fussy customers who (famously) will leave "wonky" cucumbers on the shelves at the end of the day. The economic shit-show of the last few years has made supermarkets very price conscious and the first thing they can cut that actually has a meaningful impact on their bottom line, but is unlikely to be noticed, is their range of fresh goods.
If you're interested, in Denmark it's amazing to see the cultural differences – lots of lovely vegetables but with many different types of carrots, swede and turnips!
My daugther was born in Finland. She always loved to eat fruit. When she was 2 we went to Australia and suddenly she did not want to eat "the same" fruit anymore. Well, they really tasted like fruit and not like colored water.
The UK might be marginally better than Finland, but they also get a lot of imported watery taste from Spain etc.
>they also get a lot of imported watery taste from Spain etc.
A lot of this is just eating out of season fruit grown in greenhouses and picked early to be transported to be "ripe" on the shelves. Eating fresh Italian tomatoes in February is as poor an experience as eating UK tomatoes in February, but eating them in June is likely to be much better in both cases.
(Farmers allege and a Swiss supermarket chain actually confirms that for their supermarkets they prefer tomato varieties that "deliver a consistent taste all year round", so instead of mediocre tomatoes in winter and great tomatoes in summer instead you get mediocre-tasting tomatoes all year round…)
I have lived, worked, and paid taxes in 5 countries. And it was obvious to me that the food standards in England (and the US) was lower than most European countries. Sorry if that offends but I believe this to be true based on personal experience living there.
> I find this every time I shop on the continent. Are our standards that much lower? Is it just Brexit? I yearn for a European supermarket experience in the UK.
I think it’s an Anglo thing. Canada, the US, and Australia are all like this too.
Australian supermarkets have gotten much better in the last few years. The quality is still lower than what you can find in your local green grocer or butcher, but there is a wider variety of items and specific supermarkets will carry items for the local community that other locations won't have. And so long as you buy in season, the supermarket is usually fine.
Honestly I miss U.K. supermarkets now I live in the US. (I moved before Brexit so things are probably much worse there now.)
Tesco somehow always managed to have what I needed but my local Safeway in SF frequently has empty shelves (predating the pandemic.) And unless you go to Trader Joe’s (which is missing a bunch of other stuff) there’re no nice freshly preprepared meals available.
I moved from the UK to Canada and still miss UK supermarkets to a degree. That said, I went back for ~1 month last summer and often ended up needing to go to multiple supermarkets to find basic things such as chicken breasts... If Brexit isn't the cause I'd be very surprised.
Portugal is a difficult comparison because it has a great climate and very low wages. Compared to Northern France, Netherlands, Scandanavia etc British supermarkets are pretty decent.
>> At even large mid-tier supermarkets you will find a paltry range of fruit and veg
How much do you need? Is the problem that the supermarkets are crap or that your expectations are stupidly high? Any large Tesco/Sainsburys etc has every vegetable that I’ve ever tasted available all year round.
Booths (regional chain in the northwest) are outstanding; Waitrose are obviously good too. Our local co-op, Midcounties (the second biggest, I think) has a number of Food Market stores which have a really decent range. But if you go by Tesco and Asda you’ll be disappointed.
My greatest frustration with UK supermarkets is the illusion of choice. You'll find metres of shelving with the same product in different branding / price points. Went looking for Thai Jasmine rice, but the rice section is just 40 variants of Basmati, & one box of Arborio. There's 5 metres of fridges packed with fish but it's all Cod, Haddock and Salmon in various guises.
If you want any ingredient that's remotely off the beaten track (and I'm not talking super exotic stuff, basics herbs like Sage are hard to find) you've got to go Waitrose or specialty shops.
This fucks me off no end. As someone who eats vegemite, to find a full meter of shelving dedicated to Marmite in various formats almost everywhere is very frustrating. For long shelf life goods what's the downside of just providing more options?
Speak for yourself. I find I can never get everything on my list at just one store, so I end up having to shop through multiple stores to try and find what I'm looking for. Even then there are things I can't get at any store in town.
I'll agree with them being wonders of the modern age but they are far from fulfilling my needs.
The latter. (It wouldn't be fair to complain about stock shortages; everybody's suffering from those in some way or another.)
I live in a small city in a rural area of the midwest that has a handful of grocery stores. We had two locations of a pretty good regional chain that offered what I would consider a broad enough selection of items, but several years ago they were acquired by a national chain and the selection was greatly reduced. I've been to that chain's stores in larger cities and they had a much wider range. Honestly I think they just made some (IMO) unfortunate value decisions when scaling down for a smaller market.
Other grocery stores in the area each seem to have one thing they're really bad at: one is known for their terrible produce, another refuses to carry specific common items or brands, another is highly variable in what items they carry at any given point in time (regardless of recent shortages).
It's certainly a modern marvel that we can have access to all of this food concentrated in one convenient place, I don't mean to diminish that or the work involved in getting it there. But I do think it's a space in which most if not all of the players (in my area, at least) could use some improvement.
I've always wondering why Trader Joe's is so much cheaper than the big supermarkets, but I guess this article gives the simple explanation--they are smaller and have less variety. Kind of an eye opener for me (although it may be obvious to others).
I am not sure how this article got past any editorial checks. First they state prices are too low in the US to make any profit, then on the next paragraph goes on to talk about “yet” Americans getting served less. Finally reverting back complaining Americans are not getting a good deal.
author also use gross profit of Walmart, which sells everything from salt to guns, as a measure of profitability for “grocery” stores.
What are the “peddling” here - dark store as a concept ?
Right- I would love to see the numbers compared with something like Kroger, whose main business is groceries. Calling Walmart a grocery store is like calling Target a grocery store-- technically true, since they both sell groceries, but neither of them seems to be especially focused on food.
I certainly don't argue with the idea that our grocery stores suck, though I'm not convinced it's a solely american problem nor that the reasons are those given in the article.
Agreed, I too was surprised to see such a fact-deprived article from the Economist. While reading it I wondered if the Economist had started a public "blog" section or something, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
> author also use gross profit of Walmart, which sells everything from salt to guns, as a measure of profitability for “grocery” stores.
The article has an entire paragraph dedicated to this:
> Walmart’s shops are enormous, selling plenty besides groceries. Tesco operates over 4,000 shops, the bulk of which are its smallest. Walmart has only 4,700 shops in total, despite serving a population about five times larger. On average, its supermarkets are ten times larger by floor space than Tesco’s. Bigger stores increase consumer choice. A Walmart supercentre might stock 140,000 different items, compared with just 40,000 at Tesco’s biggest branches. But it also means they may be wasting a lot of space by stocking products that do not sell, adding to costs. American supermarkets sell far less per square foot of shop space than British supermarkets, notes Bryan Roberts, a consultant based in London.
Something about comparing the US to other rich nations rubs me the wrong way when, in my opinion, servicing a country as large as the US is very different from servicing a small island like the UK. The post talks about difference in margins and regional squeezing, etc. However, how much of the cost difference comes from transporting the goods? The post also mentions how large stores are, and how large of a selection there is, in US stores. That seems like it'd drive up the cost, but I don't hear Americans complaining about too many options. Honestly, I think it's an achievement that an American can eat as healthy for the same price as the French, they are very different countries geographically!
No mention of health food stores? I live in a small county and there are at least 6 health food stores that have abundant fresh vegetables, fruits, and dry goods.
HEB is loved in Texas (suspiciously absent from NE Texas), but has a pretty great line of private label foods, competitive prices that are usually at or below Walmart's prices. For example, when meat prices spiked because national meatpackers had problems, HEB's Texas meatpackers didn't have such high costs (less of a spike).
They have to be doing well financially with a decent markup, but the quality is pretty great and other chain grocers usually don't have the same draw that HEB does in markets where they compete.
HEB is sorely missed when I live in or visit other states and go grocery shopping.
Beside national brands, they source from quality local small businesses, farms and ranches, and even make a wide range of their own "generic" brand food - including fresh foods like meal-simples (a complete meal for one, ready for the oven w/cooking directions), or even a full bbq joint in some stores. Their Central Market food brand found in HEB's is usually cheaper, fresher and healthier than national brands. But if you want higher end organics in majors cities, their Central Market stores in Austin put the original Whole Foods to shame, IMO. The few times I would go to Randells or Walmart would be during larger holidays when HEB was closed and those stores were generally more expensive, had questionable produce and a disappointing selection of just about everything else in comparison.
I absolutely agree that Central Market far surpasses Whole Foods. I wanted to add that a major benefit of Central Market is their incredible bulk bin selection. I’m certain that it must be a loss leader, and I haven’t seen one so extensive in any other store. My girlfriend and I go there and pick up spices and tea for dirt cheap. 50¢ to refill a tin with “fancy cumin”, 30¢ to refill a tin with (very high quality, IMO) oregano. $2 to buy a cup (8 oz) of loose tea that lasts us three weeks (and the only other tea they have are expensive tea bags that cost >$6). $1 for some fancy finishing salt. You can shop for a recipe or shop for the pantry. From time to time, their self checkout flags the spices because we’re purchasing 7¢ of something got a recipe. They never complain, though.
They have almost every spice, spice blend, dried chili, dried mushroom, rice, bean, grain, tea, coffee, and flour you could want, in addition to baking odds and ends like powdered cheese, chocolate feves, and xantham gum.
Coming from New England, I find a lot of the dry goods at Central Market to be equivalent to a Big Y (not a Whole Foods competitor). This is because a lot of their “high end” product is just imported Italian food, which is very common in New England (particularly Connecticut). Their produce, meat, and cheese selection is great, albeit expensive. It can also be hard to find “normal” packaged stuff there.
Also, HEB/Central Market in general has been better at weathering supply shortages. During peak COVID, it was the only place in Austin with stuff still in stock.
> For example, when meat prices spiked because national meatpackers had problems, HEB's Texas meatpackers didn't have such high costs (less of a spike).
Yes, according to a GM I know this is due to them sourcing most of their products within a 100 miles. HEB has the best produce, meats, and food quality overall. Generally the best prices as well.
We go to Walmart only for the obscure brand name items or special edition things (as well as non groceries things that aren't practical for delivery)
I believe HEB is the or at least one of the largest private companies in the US. They recently bought the Favor delivery app which is the best of them all. You can write in any store and alcohol delivery from HEB is free.
Disclaimer: no affiliation with HEB, just one happy patron.
Farmer's markets are the way to go for produce if you have farms in your area. Some are overpriced and upscale, some are cheaper than your local chain grocery store. You can also buy grains/beans in bulk at lower prices, often direct from farmer's coops, and have it shipped to your door. Get a pressure cooker for beans, a rice cooker, save on the gas prices as they're electric, and use an induction electric stove. If you want meat, well, that's going to get more expensive. Eating less meat, but higher-quality, is going to be healthier anyway (boycott the factory farms, grass-fed beef is probably best).
However, you have to learn to cook. This is a barrier for some people. To me cooking is relaxing and I've got a lot of low-effort high-speed methods, but then I have a background as a wet lab researcher and that's about 100X as painstaking, where you're tracking every single thing you do in a lab notebook, mixing up solutions with precisely measured masses and volumes, adjusting pHs, running timers and working in this high-pressure environment where one screwup can waste a whole day's work if not a whole month's. Cooking in comparison, I don't use recipes, it's just pure fun. Get a decent collection of spices, that's important. Learn to clean as you go, and you can take most raw ingredients and go right to a great meal in half an hour.
If you've never done much cooking, a course isn't a bad idea. Indian cooking classes are great for teaching you how to cook a wide variety of grains/beans/veggies. Baking is more of a hassle as you have to measure stuff out and be more careful with temps and times, and tends to take a bit longer, but has the benefit of being able to make larger dishes for more people in one shot.
Indeed. I've seen bananas at the farmers market, and I don't live in Hawaii.
One local farmers market puts in significant effort verifying that the farmers are indeed local, including visiting the farm. People still show up with trucks full of identical pies, swearing they spent all day baking them.
I have never seen a cheap farmers market. Around here they seem to be exclusively for and patronized by wealthy older people, who don't blink at paying $7 for a head of lettuce.
Yes! There's a vegetable farmer here, does most of his profit at a farmer's market in a town across the valley, we would buy the box of whatever was left for $20. He would drop it off on his way home. Was a good deal for him, and we got amazing vegetables all summer.
The real farmers that drive in to urban areas tend to do the majority of their business with restaurants, often the rather better ones that want high-quality or unique produce (this is according to farmers I've talked to who referred to their farmer's market sales as 'nickel-and-dime'.)
Some of them do a half-off sale for everything they've got at the last half-hour of the market, that's good to know. Some are just buying from the wholesalers, too, that's something to watch out for as others note - but some of those run lower margins than the local grocery stores, so it's cheaper to buy from them.
I've seen tons. There are many in the Sacramento area where there are tons of farms, you can get produce and other items for pennies on the dollar compared to the grocery store.
Same, in area South of Seattle they have just become whole foods for the most part. I still go because at least the money goes to smaller scale businesses, but there is nothing inexpensive about them.
There used to be one at one of the Cow Palace parking lots in the 80's.
Even then, I was shocked at the low prices.
I stumbled on this Farmer's Market by accident.
I had this security job guarding the Cow Palace on the weekends. The insurance was less if they had a guy on the premises.
I remember seeing my boss (Bill. The nicest boss I ever had. Never forget this huge man walking towards me on a Sunday in complete darkness besides the emergency lights crying while holding a dead cat. He loved the abandoned cats that neighbors left on the property. The higher ups authorized poisoning the cats. I could feel his pain. When I saw the bait traps I disposed of the poison. I was the only one there during the day so I got no reprimands. I thought I'm fired, while carting my huge box of fruits/veggies, and honey, but he didn't care.
Since that day of shopping at that Farmer's market I was ruined I guess? Everone I have been to since was overpriced.
(Here's something to think about. There is a tiny model of the Cow Palace buried below the auditorium floor. Only a few people knew about it then. It was left there by the architects. I had keys to most rooms, and did my fair share of exploring. Seeing that model of the Cow Palace was something out of a Twillight Zone episode. They even put in tiny cars in the parking lots. It was all dusty, but an exact model of the Cow Palace in Daly City.)
In the US half of the farmer markets are basically expensive scams, but there’s always the legit ones with cheap products. For example, in SF there is Alemany farmer’s market, and that’s it.
I cook the same meal almost everyday. I have precooked a pot of white rice (trying to use brown) that sits in the fridge. I start cooking a chicken quarter or two and then microwave some mixed frozen vegetables (corn, green beans, carrots). Then I put some of the rice on top of that, microwave again, then the chicken is done (add some seasoning) and eat with salt. I listen to a podcast while cooking.
Otherwise I eat junk food (BK/TB/McDs or ramen shop). I do have a binge eating problem (bored or way to fight brain dead). But I can also fast eg. eat a meal a day for weeks to drop 10s of lbs. It's not easy to keep it consistent. Also I am more productive if I don't eat the entire day (except caffeine/water), eating induces tiredness.
The US in 2015 had an average household income 55% higher than the UK, which effectively negates most of the arguments this argument is trying to make, as well as the graph which shows daily costs in the US being 60% higher than the UK. The US is a richer country, costs are accordingly also higher. Not exactly surprising.
This is true, but it doesn't work to tell Europeans this because they seem convinced all Americans are poor due to being in medical debt. America is a very rich country and most Americans are globally well off.
Well due to Osama bin Laden's essentially successful terrorist attack two decades ago, America got like...a 20% pay cut. Impossible to measure, but that terrorist got America's economy into much wilder boom/bust swings (Trump being exceptional to this tendency), just a stupider economy and smaller and smaller profits. The country runs at a loss presently. It's being corroded from within and soon from without as well, its borders will begin collapsing, notably Taiwan this year.
So when everybody's poorer, everything's shittier, simple as that. Poverty sucks. For sure America has gotten poorer year after year this millennium. It's just presented from a more oblique angle, inflation statistics are of course manipulated, and worst of all the Fed now thinks left-shifting solves problems. So normally we'd be talking about multiplying by 10, but I'm not sure how the numbers are represented, I think binary coded decimal.
At any rate the era of actually printing money, actual paper money, pressing command-P and hitting enter and taking the money from the printer and then using it, is a bygone era much more beautiful than the present. Now the Fed just says "eh, here's some zeroes on the back of your account." Bernanke joked about this, thought there was no evil in fiscal easement because "they're just numbers in a computer." He even laughed. That tells you everything.
Well there's silver lining, so at least they retreated (or used sanctions according to the official press releases) from Russia so now there's two sets of numbers on computers, that's better. Or better still, concurrently with Bernanke, bitcoin was invented specifically to stop what is currently happening in America, everybody getting robbed by inflation that's way WAY higher than they're openly talking about. Not only that, but there's not just one person making money out of thin air, there's also North Korea printing dollars, they're minting money too, and I...divine the Fed doesn't have such a high integrity system protecting those numbers on the computer. Competitive left-shifting.
So that's why supermarkets seem crappy, it's because everything's crappier, everybody in the supermarket is not as skinny as before, everything's worse, why? Poverty.
I visited Barcelona in 2019. I was shocked at how much better grocery stores were, and how much cheaper, than in California. We are getting shafted in CA at the grocery store.
From the central point of the article, certainly prices are going up, but a lot of us think of quality dropping when we see the title. I'd be surprised if many people think Whole Foods has maintained its image since being bought out.
Swiss super markets are pretty great (although expensive). When i visited the US and went to stores like Target and Walmart that was kind of eye opening though... pretty terrible.
Anecdotal I guess but I’ve visited 15-20 countries across Europe and Asia in the last ~10 years and the supermarkets were largely not great relative to your average American Kroger.
Yeah I think the like lowest end bread at an Italian grocery store is going to be way better than the lowest end "bread" at an American grocery store, but the difference is at the American store there is literally (I shit you not) 50-100 varieties of bread and a lot of them are decent (actually by a lot I mean like 4-10).
Which I think generally means you have to be more savy on wha to buy. But tbf. specifically regarding bread, coming from German speaking region, I could never get happy in my (limited) US experience. The standard there seems to be adding sugar and that just straight up ruins bread for me.
That's all going to depend on where you are. Bread seems like a big division - shelf-stable bread is a lot less of a thing in Europe, likely because of a longer tradition of bakers. If you're in a major US city though, I've never had an issue finding French/German style breads, and usually at a normal grocer, if not at a specialty baker.
> shelf-stable bread is a lot less of a thing in Europe, likely because of a longer tradition of bakers.
I don’t think tradition of bakers has anything to do with it. In France going to buy a baguette every couple of days is the norm (or was when I lived there as a kid). In the US, we generally do one weekly grocery shopping trip, so shelf-stable bread becomes the convenient default.
But that's why bakers were relevant. When I was young there was bakery reachable by foot near anyone's home. Kids would get fresh bread on Sunday, the bakery was a place where you met people.
That changed. They all closed. But as you said people still consume their bread fresh here in central Europe.
It still matters what is the standard, even if you can find alternatives. It admittedly may matter more to a traveler who goes through airports and middle class hotels though, than to people living there.
For sure. I just hear the "I went to the US and there was no REAL bread to be found" and I'm always a little confused. Even the local grocer in my fairly poor neighborhood growing up had a section of bread loaves in various styles. I'm sure the selection is worse if you're in a more rural part of the US, but that's probably also towns that maybe never had an actual baker even when they were founded, assuming they were founded in an era that would have been reasonable.
In my experience almost none of the US supermarket breads are decent. They almost all have added sugar and don't taste good compared to UK/French/Italian bread. There is one brand called "The Rustic oven" that has come out recently that has no added sugar and isn't bad, but that's the exception.
Yeah, complaining that Americans on the whole prefer their bread sweeter is like being mad at the French for liking bread with big air pockets.
Like it’s a super weird thing where American food culture is almost universally shit on despite being just as rich, rooted in history, and varied as any other. Like if the story was that say Albanians preferred sweet breads the preference would be respected to the point of being mythologized but for American’s it’s just “oh those fat uncultured Americans with unrefined taste.”
If I place a 4 item order from walmart.com, they will do whatever they can to get it to me as quickly as possible... sometimes I get a $35 order in 4 different shipments (and the shipping was "free" because items cost the same as in-store)
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 279 ms ] thread1. Install uBlock
2. Click <Disable Javascript>
3. Re-load the webpage
Works on NYTimes and many other JS paywalled sites, too!
Early on I simply read comments if a site was blocked, then went to archives, and now i'm finding myself paying for sites I appreciate. I feel like this is an eventual outcome for many, but getting users to consume "long form" media is the trick. If it weren't for these free peaks at the content, I would never have come around to paying for it.
Then every publisher that is a member of the subscription service gets an amount of money proportionate to the number of subscribers that read their articles.
Seems so obvious to me but maybe there’s a reason why it wouldn’t (or hasn’t) worked.
I strongly believe personalized nutrition and shopping experiences will have major impact on non communicable diseases.
There's some interesting reporting on the various optimizations like all the isle being half width and one way to save floor space, or they don't put like items together so all the different ketchup brands (for example) are distrusted throughout the store so if it tells a picker to go to isle 5 shelf W and get heinz ketchup, there won't be any other similar items/brands near the heinz ketchup to confuse the picker with. They also arrange the stores in roughly descending weight so that heavy things go in first and light/fragile at the end.
A. Dark Stores / Fulfillment Centers Instant-Delivery Apps operate their own dark stores / fulfillment centers, typically one per neighborhood they operate in. Since these are not meant for consumers, space can be used more efficiently and typically the cost to operate these (at scale) as a percent of revenue is lower than rent space for grocery stores.
https://tanay.substack.com/p/understanding-the-instant-deliv...
Rather than thinking about tech solutions for the health epidemic surrounding foods, I think we need to reign in the prepackaged food industry who relies on unnatural recipes to cut costs and increase shelf life and who adds tons of sugar to everything for flavor.
It's like they search out for the least ripe or most bruised thing. Seems like it's because it's not for them so they don't care, or they don't know how to.
The other point against that theory is people will buy what they want to buy, that may be healthy food, it may not be.
Unless you're talking about taking away the choice and distributing food based on some sort of consortium which is authoritarian and assumes we have sound dietary science which is false.
On the money point, have you seen the fees these personal shopping services add? In no way is it cheaper to have someone else shop for you.
How bad is it when WalMart is treating its employees better than most?
I work with a number of people that have an irrational hate-boner for Walmart for the reasons stated yet they are all Prime members.
Frankly, unless I'm drunk, stoned, or sick, I can't see ever using a non-store delivery service.
What about all the poor people without smartphones? We have such an unequal distribution of wealth and technology in this county that (particularly on site like this with mostly digital natives) it is easy to loose sight of the fact that the poorest ~20% still don't have basic smart phones, or maybe even basic flip phones. Hell they might not even have email accounts.
One thing that has been made clear by all the social programs that were stood up during the pandemic is that landlines and snail mail are still the most common denominator of communication for the poor. Until we get to some simple "smartphones for all" program, I don't see this changing any time soon.
Poor people have smartphones. Even poor people in developing nations are likely to have smartphones. Basic smartphones are ultra cheap commodities.
Some poor people have smartphones. I guess some will get to eat. Also while there is penatration of smartphones into poorer countries, it is hardly 100%
>However, compared to other markets across the globe, India’s smartphone penetration rate is still relatively low. [1]
[1] https://www.statista.com/topics/4600/smartphone-market-in-in...
I have no idea how you got from "smartphone apps will affect how people shop for food" to "anyone without a smartphone will be starved."
But, assuming altruistic grocers, it would be interesting to see how they decide what food to steer people towards. Would I have to share my medical records and height/weight/exercise routine or would they personalize based on something else?
Apps silently tacking $0.10/lb onto produce because you own an iPhone and have a history of buying "premium" stuff...
The web apps for grocery shopping have carousels that might showcase to you two or three new items, but there simply is nothing analogous to aisle walking. You can't even really see the full inventory in these web apps either. To me, that's a huge discoverability issue that doesn't yet present because people have prior experience shopping IRL.
[0] Not by choice, a combination of Necrotizing Fasciitis, Sepsis, and Gangrene left me in a wheelchair
What a rosy view of grocery stores. I used to work in grocery and later a "dark grocery" store. It ain't all puppies and sunshine, sonny. Grocery apps are engineered to hoover up your data and entice you to spend more money, especially on things you normally like to buy. Average ticket size is higher on pickup orders over in store shopping. These apps definitely enable junk food habits with targeted discounts and advertising. Trying to subsist on a diet? Here's a free gallon or $0.99 5-gallon tub of ice cream. Good luck with that diet.
Source: I worked for Kroger for over a decade in every department.
Good? Apps are just extra margin places like Safeway tack on. Coupons are just taking things from fat margin to TJ-level margin.
It's almost like their business model is “don’t devote lots of floor space to stuff you can get anywhere so price competition drives margins to zero”. .
They have a couple interesting products that I can't get elsewhere, and they don't have lots of products that I can get at literally any other grocery store.
Safeway has everything I'd want from Trader Joe's at this point, and I don't have to do two trips.
(But those are things people tend to also need a lot, so TJ’s ends up being an extra shopping trip, instead of a replacement.)
We have HyVee though, and I quite enjoy it there.
Price- and quality-wise they totally win on cheese and pasta by a huge margin. Supermarket cheese is generally pretty awful (the only cheeses we get at the super are Mexican cheeses that TJs doesn't stock. I’ve occasionally bought, say cheddar at the super and it’s awful and costs more than TJs).
The big thing for me for the last two years is that the clientele and staff at my local TJs have done a much better job of taking Covid seriously than the same at Whole Foods¹ or any standard super.
⸻
1. I was in Whole Foods earlier today and was rather appalled to see a sign saying that customers are welcome [italics mine] to shop without a mask regardless of vaccination status. This while local Covid rates are on the rise. It seemed like they were encouraging people to go maskless.
What year is it!?
https://i0.wp.com/www.dailycal.org/assets/uploads/2021/09/TJ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbafXjG9ROA
I'll also add their slowness is partly due to their clientele (moreso that standard stores) bringing their filthy reusable grocery sacks, which throw off the flow of the line.
Source: past TJs employee
> Also in 1958, Rexall employee Joe Coulombe was asked to test the launch of Pronto Markets, a store brand to compete against 7-Eleven. After running six Pronto Markets in the Los Angeles area, Rexall asked Coulombe to close them down. Coulombe decided to buy them out instead, and eventually renamed the chain "Trader Joe's".
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rexall#Growth)
I realize they sell microwave boxed meals, but yuck. Thankfully they are right next to whole foods so it's not much harm to stop in.
Like you, I shop at a local chain and the farmers market. I know I pay more for my groceries than my neighbors who shop at WinCo and I'm ok with that since I feel I get higher quality meats and produce along with those higher prices.
I live in Norway but have lived in the US and Netherlands while visiting a lot of Europe on vacation naturally. There is most definitely a very different way in which food is sold in general. The article points out pretty much the same experiences I have had when comparing.
In fact this has been remarked on for years as a difference between Europe and the US: The US is about really large stores where land is cheap and you can store a lot of products. In Europe one tends to follow the opposite model: Smaller stores with more limited selection which has rapid replacement of products.
Automation is also quite different. I was also surprised by the kind of old fashion way checkout works in the US. Like how they meticulously pack your bags. I would say in Europe scanning is generally faster or one uses a more self automated systems where shoppers scan, pay and pack themselves.
Of course there are stores of all kinds of sizes in the US. The same applies to Europe. There are Wall-Mart style shopping Europe as well. It is just that there is a difference in what is more common in each region.
And of course saying "Europe" may be quite inaccurate as there are such large regional variations in Europe. Broadly speaking smaller stores in central areas is more common in Europe than in the US, but once you get into the details then each country tends to do things in quite different ways.
For instance I loved shopping groceries in the Netherlands but kind of hated doing it in Germany.
Aldi has a large presence in the U.S., as noted in the article. About 2100 stores, according to a search. That's nearly half as many as Walmart grocery stores.
> Like how they meticulously pack your bags. I would say in Europe scanning is generally faster or one uses a more self automated systems where shoppers scan, pay and pack themselves.
I dunno, having your shopping bags loaded for you is pretty nice. With respect to self-checkout, I haven't been in a chain grocery store in the U.S. in at least 10 years that didn't have it. They may exist, I dunno. Usually, you have a choice of both.
> And of course saying "Europe" may be quite inaccurate as there are such large regional variations in Europe. Broadly speaking smaller stores in central areas is more common in Europe than in the US, but once you get into the details then each country tends to do things in quite different ways.
This is the truth.
Their milk is a deal, but hardly worth the 50¢ savings when you factor in the time it takes to park, go in, show card, walk to the back, wait in line, and go back home. Not when there's a Kroger right by me where I can get in and out in less time it takes to drive to Costco.
Walmart bankrupted Vlassic by suckering them into a deal where they were stuck selling pickles at a loss. They are infamous for dictating price to their suppliers.
Two years later, Vlasic missed a debt payment to Campbell’s and had to go into bankruptcy.
https://www.fastcompany.com/47593/wal-mart-you-dont-know
I mean Vlasik could always say no? If they were dumb enough to enter into a deal with Walmart than was worse than no deal at all, that’s on them.
My guess is some sales dude thought he could get a good deal with Walmart, couldn’t, took it anyways, then decided to blame Walmart.
I mean if I need my house painted and some painter offers a deal where they lose money don’t blame me when I accept.
WalMart deals always look good in the short term. The problem is the longer term.
What really happened is that some sales dude got a deal with WalMart, bumped his numbers, got a promotion, cashed his check, and cleared outta dodge. And then over the next few years WalMart squeezed Vlasic to death.
Saying no doesn't always work out either. See: Snapper
https://www.fastcompany.com/54763/man-who-said-no-wal-mart
Snapper got bought by Briggs & Stratton and the Georgia plant was closed.
I'm just tired of so many articles whose whole premise is "the US isn't doing thing X that a smaller, denser, and massively older country has done." Yea, the US has issues and is responsible for a lot of its own problems, but it's also not the same as Germany or France or Spain on so many different levels. You can make the case that the US should actually be N different countries, but that's not really an option, so you deal with the world as it is.
Tesco isn't the largest chain in Europe. Walmart is bigger than the large European chains, by a factor of (just?) about 5 to 10.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1103223/leading-grocery-...
https://payspacemagazine.com/retail/top-7-supermarket-chains...
https://www.fastcompany.com/54763/man-who-said-no-wal-mart
Inflation aside, if you're paying too much for groceries, you don't know how to shop.
Part of the problem is people are willing to pay $6 for bananas at Whole Paycheck, and the obsession with organic foodstuffs. When the same products are available at Walmart or Costco for 1/3 the price. I think we have an entire generation of people who never learned how to shop efficiently, look for good deals, use coupons. Let's be honest, the clientele at Whole Foods generally wouldn't be caught dead at Walmart. It's mostly psychological; the food there is not necessarily higher quality. For example, Costco sells restaurant-quality meat; you can buy Wagyu steak there. But you need to consider that maybe paying $8 for a loaf of 'organic' bread is an irrational decision.
Their loss, I suppose.
[...]
> Seems like a good deal for a premium, healthier item.
Last time I shopped there I paid nearly $4 for a bottle of lemon juice that looked and tasted like sewer water. Down the drain it went, as did my money.
That store exudes an Apple-like reality distortion field, and it seems to be working pretty well.
When you convince enough people that $13 for a grilled cheese sandwich is acceptable, that becomes the norm. It's the milkshake scene in Pulp Fiction become reality.
Yes, many consumers have terrible habits, but systemic forces aren't helping.
Think you have your conspiracies confused there. The chickens are different because of being washed in chlorine. The cows are fat because they eat soy. It's you who's fat and feminized from the seed oils.
…is the current alternative health food theory.
But you can easily get grass-feed beef, and people tend to dislike it compared to grain-fed beef, because it tastes grassier and has less fat.
I recently visited Portugal, and in a small city supermarket there was a bakery, meat and a fish counters and a wide variety of produce, all labelled clearly by variety name. It put my local large supermarket to shame. The prices were cheaper too.
I find this every time I shop on the continent. Are our standards that much lower? Is it just Brexit? I yearn for a European supermarket experience in the UK.
Where do you go for produce? I'm in Chicago if that matters.
I say specific because I found the quality varies greatly from store to store, and likely who the produce manager is. As much as I hate to say it, the stores in the more affluent neighborhoods carry higher quality produce.
Some of the highest quality produce I've found was at Costco, with a "picked/packed on" date of just 2-3 days prior to purchase. The downside is you have to buy in bulk, so be prepared to freeze or plan accordingly.
I got a great deal on small cucumbers and mangos but next week they didn't have either.
UK has Waitrose and (for some things) M&S for high quality fruit and veg. But they are also highly priced. Germany does not have a posh equivalent. However the common non-discounters (Rewe, Kaufland, Edeka, Globus), are really not bad.
I am not sure about the exact number of fruit and veg SKUs in Tescos and Sainsburys (UK) but I often find them of less quality than I remember them in Germany. I never had issues shopping fruit or veg in Germany nor the UK though.
I also noticed that the UK imports very aggressively non-seasonal products from afar. Like beans from Peru or blueberries from Morocco. I am not sure of that happens in Germany, too. So potentially you are noticing exotic fruit and veg having a different availability, which might be due to different customer awareness towards the impact on the climate of imported goods from afar.
Btw I would definitely say that most Germans consider Rewe to be the posh equivalent
From my understanding the Netherlands is the same as Germany.
In my experience Germany has the best supermarkets I’ve ever encountered, with ridiculously aggressive prices.
Also Hungary has bad supermarkets, in my opinion.
Comparing meat specifically in Portugal vs UK, it's generally awful in the UK, but I've never heard anyone there complaining about it. Therefore, the standards must be lower, even if by simple virtue of people not knowing any better.
It's chicken and egg, as the demand for this won't materialise without awareness and the awareness won't arise without the knowledge there even are different types of onions, I imagine most Brits are clueless.
Red onions, brown onions, white onions (normal, large, bulk bags, loose or bagged, pre-chopped etc), shallots, echalions, spring onions, red spring onions, tropeas etc (them also organic + non-organic varieties of each) are all normal to see in UK super markets (at least in my local part of London). Even Tesco - a chain that many would say is the lowest of the low super market "for poor people" in the UK - carries these.
Bath, being a major city, has far more residents and visitors than Maerdy, a small rural village.
My guess in Maerdy is that the residents probably drive somewhere (Aberdare?) with a supermarket. I'm not sure I'd live there without a car...
This is patent nonsense. Current UK food standards for the moment are aligned with EU standards despite Brexit.
> Comparing meat specifically in Portugal vs UK, it's generally awful in the UK, but I've never heard anyone there complaining about it. Therefore, the standards must be lower, even if by simple virtue of people not knowing any better.
Yet more nonsense based on absolutely no evidence at all.
The food selection in Italy, in most areas, is unmatched anywhere else.
It's because of what Italians demand.
If UK citizens really wanted better food, it would appear.
'Health and Safety' standards and even 'grade certifications' etc. have nothing to do with it.
You can get top quality ingredients in Scotland and eat well here too (despite the "west coast" problem).
I'm sure Italy has its own fair share of shit-end supermarkets punting low quality produce as much as any other European country.
> You have misunderstood the comment.
Hardly my fault if the OP chooses to use a very specific phrase with a very specific meaning when it comes to food quality.
In semi-related news, The Independent ran a story yesterday about how Brexit is causing less British fruit and veg to be produced: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-britis...
Maybe picker/cutter shortages? Like instead of picking the strawberries or cutting trees with 10 people in one week 5 people do it in two weeks? To fill up one truck load.
I don't think it has anything to do with the EU or not. Rather I think there has been some industry wide "efficiency gain" in picking/harvesting/cutting stuff that make the product worse when you buy it.
Obviously the Christmas tree can be a fluke. But so was my mom's and my tree the year earlier. In my childhood they still had like moist resin and smelled alot. But the ones you buy nowadays are dull.
“Pine needles”, as we say in the business
E.g. i have two awesome butchers nearby, the fruit and veg shop is way better than 5 years ago in terms of selection - quality and price was always good there but selection is fantastic now. I’ve got lots of random little shops nearby now, e.g. a coffee roaster, a social food thingy etc etc
5 years ago this town mostly had just hairdressers on the Main Street.
If you're interested, in Denmark it's amazing to see the cultural differences – lots of lovely vegetables but with many different types of carrots, swede and turnips!
Also avocado and mangos taste good in Australia and are hard and tasteless in UK.
Most fruit is grown in Australia except out of season stuff that is easy to spot by it being triple the normal in season price.
The UK might be marginally better than Finland, but they also get a lot of imported watery taste from Spain etc.
A lot of this is just eating out of season fruit grown in greenhouses and picked early to be transported to be "ripe" on the shelves. Eating fresh Italian tomatoes in February is as poor an experience as eating UK tomatoes in February, but eating them in June is likely to be much better in both cases.
https://web.archive.org/web/20190601232951/https://www.tages...
(Farmers allege and a Swiss supermarket chain actually confirms that for their supermarkets they prefer tomato varieties that "deliver a consistent taste all year round", so instead of mediocre tomatoes in winter and great tomatoes in summer instead you get mediocre-tasting tomatoes all year round…)
I think it’s an Anglo thing. Canada, the US, and Australia are all like this too.
Tesco somehow always managed to have what I needed but my local Safeway in SF frequently has empty shelves (predating the pandemic.) And unless you go to Trader Joe’s (which is missing a bunch of other stuff) there’re no nice freshly preprepared meals available.
A lot of unavoidable staff sickness has caused major troubles in manufacturing and delivery of goods.
Plus some real stupidity relating to tax and licensing of lorry drivers. :-(
Yes, brexit has had an effect, but I think covid is more significant.
How much do you need? Is the problem that the supermarkets are crap or that your expectations are stupidly high? Any large Tesco/Sainsburys etc has every vegetable that I’ve ever tasted available all year round.
Although I remember waitrose in the UK not being bad
If you want any ingredient that's remotely off the beaten track (and I'm not talking super exotic stuff, basics herbs like Sage are hard to find) you've got to go Waitrose or specialty shops.
In all seriousness, having the massive variety of choice at reasonable (I grew up eating mainly plain grains) prices is a wonder.
I'll agree with them being wonders of the modern age but they are far from fulfilling my needs.
I live in a small city in a rural area of the midwest that has a handful of grocery stores. We had two locations of a pretty good regional chain that offered what I would consider a broad enough selection of items, but several years ago they were acquired by a national chain and the selection was greatly reduced. I've been to that chain's stores in larger cities and they had a much wider range. Honestly I think they just made some (IMO) unfortunate value decisions when scaling down for a smaller market.
Other grocery stores in the area each seem to have one thing they're really bad at: one is known for their terrible produce, another refuses to carry specific common items or brands, another is highly variable in what items they carry at any given point in time (regardless of recent shortages).
It's certainly a modern marvel that we can have access to all of this food concentrated in one convenient place, I don't mean to diminish that or the work involved in getting it there. But I do think it's a space in which most if not all of the players (in my area, at least) could use some improvement.
author also use gross profit of Walmart, which sells everything from salt to guns, as a measure of profitability for “grocery” stores.
What are the “peddling” here - dark store as a concept ?
I certainly don't argue with the idea that our grocery stores suck, though I'm not convinced it's a solely american problem nor that the reasons are those given in the article.
The article has an entire paragraph dedicated to this:
> Walmart’s shops are enormous, selling plenty besides groceries. Tesco operates over 4,000 shops, the bulk of which are its smallest. Walmart has only 4,700 shops in total, despite serving a population about five times larger. On average, its supermarkets are ten times larger by floor space than Tesco’s. Bigger stores increase consumer choice. A Walmart supercentre might stock 140,000 different items, compared with just 40,000 at Tesco’s biggest branches. But it also means they may be wasting a lot of space by stocking products that do not sell, adding to costs. American supermarkets sell far less per square foot of shop space than British supermarkets, notes Bryan Roberts, a consultant based in London.
They have to be doing well financially with a decent markup, but the quality is pretty great and other chain grocers usually don't have the same draw that HEB does in markets where they compete.
Beside national brands, they source from quality local small businesses, farms and ranches, and even make a wide range of their own "generic" brand food - including fresh foods like meal-simples (a complete meal for one, ready for the oven w/cooking directions), or even a full bbq joint in some stores. Their Central Market food brand found in HEB's is usually cheaper, fresher and healthier than national brands. But if you want higher end organics in majors cities, their Central Market stores in Austin put the original Whole Foods to shame, IMO. The few times I would go to Randells or Walmart would be during larger holidays when HEB was closed and those stores were generally more expensive, had questionable produce and a disappointing selection of just about everything else in comparison.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-E-B
My biggest complaint is that they don’t take Apple Pay, which I assume means they are doing something scummy with data collection.
They have almost every spice, spice blend, dried chili, dried mushroom, rice, bean, grain, tea, coffee, and flour you could want, in addition to baking odds and ends like powdered cheese, chocolate feves, and xantham gum.
Coming from New England, I find a lot of the dry goods at Central Market to be equivalent to a Big Y (not a Whole Foods competitor). This is because a lot of their “high end” product is just imported Italian food, which is very common in New England (particularly Connecticut). Their produce, meat, and cheese selection is great, albeit expensive. It can also be hard to find “normal” packaged stuff there.
Also, HEB/Central Market in general has been better at weathering supply shortages. During peak COVID, it was the only place in Austin with stuff still in stock.
Yes, according to a GM I know this is due to them sourcing most of their products within a 100 miles. HEB has the best produce, meats, and food quality overall. Generally the best prices as well.
We go to Walmart only for the obscure brand name items or special edition things (as well as non groceries things that aren't practical for delivery)
I believe HEB is the or at least one of the largest private companies in the US. They recently bought the Favor delivery app which is the best of them all. You can write in any store and alcohol delivery from HEB is free.
Disclaimer: no affiliation with HEB, just one happy patron.
However, you have to learn to cook. This is a barrier for some people. To me cooking is relaxing and I've got a lot of low-effort high-speed methods, but then I have a background as a wet lab researcher and that's about 100X as painstaking, where you're tracking every single thing you do in a lab notebook, mixing up solutions with precisely measured masses and volumes, adjusting pHs, running timers and working in this high-pressure environment where one screwup can waste a whole day's work if not a whole month's. Cooking in comparison, I don't use recipes, it's just pure fun. Get a decent collection of spices, that's important. Learn to clean as you go, and you can take most raw ingredients and go right to a great meal in half an hour.
If you've never done much cooking, a course isn't a bad idea. Indian cooking classes are great for teaching you how to cook a wide variety of grains/beans/veggies. Baking is more of a hassle as you have to measure stuff out and be more careful with temps and times, and tends to take a bit longer, but has the benefit of being able to make larger dishes for more people in one shot.
Some also sell imported fruits and veggies...
One local farmers market puts in significant effort verifying that the farmers are indeed local, including visiting the farm. People still show up with trucks full of identical pies, swearing they spent all day baking them.
If you find actual farms and coops you can get good deals.
There’s a local food coop that sells large boxes full of produce for $20 every Thursday - but you don’t get to choose what’s in the box.
Some of them do a half-off sale for everything they've got at the last half-hour of the market, that's good to know. Some are just buying from the wholesalers, too, that's something to watch out for as others note - but some of those run lower margins than the local grocery stores, so it's cheaper to buy from them.
Even then, I was shocked at the low prices.
I stumbled on this Farmer's Market by accident.
I had this security job guarding the Cow Palace on the weekends. The insurance was less if they had a guy on the premises.
I remember seeing my boss (Bill. The nicest boss I ever had. Never forget this huge man walking towards me on a Sunday in complete darkness besides the emergency lights crying while holding a dead cat. He loved the abandoned cats that neighbors left on the property. The higher ups authorized poisoning the cats. I could feel his pain. When I saw the bait traps I disposed of the poison. I was the only one there during the day so I got no reprimands. I thought I'm fired, while carting my huge box of fruits/veggies, and honey, but he didn't care.
Since that day of shopping at that Farmer's market I was ruined I guess? Everone I have been to since was overpriced.
(Here's something to think about. There is a tiny model of the Cow Palace buried below the auditorium floor. Only a few people knew about it then. It was left there by the architects. I had keys to most rooms, and did my fair share of exploring. Seeing that model of the Cow Palace was something out of a Twillight Zone episode. They even put in tiny cars in the parking lots. It was all dusty, but an exact model of the Cow Palace in Daly City.)
Whoa, your job is safe from the likes of me. I have undergone some tough times, but… that’s a bridge too far. Yikes.
I cook the same meal almost everyday. I have precooked a pot of white rice (trying to use brown) that sits in the fridge. I start cooking a chicken quarter or two and then microwave some mixed frozen vegetables (corn, green beans, carrots). Then I put some of the rice on top of that, microwave again, then the chicken is done (add some seasoning) and eat with salt. I listen to a podcast while cooking.
Otherwise I eat junk food (BK/TB/McDs or ramen shop). I do have a binge eating problem (bored or way to fight brain dead). But I can also fast eg. eat a meal a day for weeks to drop 10s of lbs. It's not easy to keep it consistent. Also I am more productive if I don't eat the entire day (except caffeine/water), eating induces tiredness.
So when everybody's poorer, everything's shittier, simple as that. Poverty sucks. For sure America has gotten poorer year after year this millennium. It's just presented from a more oblique angle, inflation statistics are of course manipulated, and worst of all the Fed now thinks left-shifting solves problems. So normally we'd be talking about multiplying by 10, but I'm not sure how the numbers are represented, I think binary coded decimal.
At any rate the era of actually printing money, actual paper money, pressing command-P and hitting enter and taking the money from the printer and then using it, is a bygone era much more beautiful than the present. Now the Fed just says "eh, here's some zeroes on the back of your account." Bernanke joked about this, thought there was no evil in fiscal easement because "they're just numbers in a computer." He even laughed. That tells you everything.
Well there's silver lining, so at least they retreated (or used sanctions according to the official press releases) from Russia so now there's two sets of numbers on computers, that's better. Or better still, concurrently with Bernanke, bitcoin was invented specifically to stop what is currently happening in America, everybody getting robbed by inflation that's way WAY higher than they're openly talking about. Not only that, but there's not just one person making money out of thin air, there's also North Korea printing dollars, they're minting money too, and I...divine the Fed doesn't have such a high integrity system protecting those numbers on the computer. Competitive left-shifting.
So that's why supermarkets seem crappy, it's because everything's crappier, everybody in the supermarket is not as skinny as before, everything's worse, why? Poverty.
I don’t think tradition of bakers has anything to do with it. In France going to buy a baguette every couple of days is the norm (or was when I lived there as a kid). In the US, we generally do one weekly grocery shopping trip, so shelf-stable bread becomes the convenient default.
That changed. They all closed. But as you said people still consume their bread fresh here in central Europe.
Like it’s a super weird thing where American food culture is almost universally shit on despite being just as rich, rooted in history, and varied as any other. Like if the story was that say Albanians preferred sweet breads the preference would be respected to the point of being mythologized but for American’s it’s just “oh those fat uncultured Americans with unrefined taste.”