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Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

economist.com

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Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#21

Post by lapetitejort »

sbf501 wrote: post #9
jordanmorgan10 wrote: post #4

Unless it's Trader Joes, in which case I leave noticeably happier than I was pre-grocery shopping.

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.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#22

Post by ok_dad »

algoatecorn wrote: post #3

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 c…

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.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#23

Post by hunterb123 »

algoatecorn wrote: post #3

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 c…

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.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#25

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

> 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.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#26

Post by kome »

caminante wrote: post #18
techietim wrote: post #2

https://archive.ph/Z6iLG

Alternatively, 1. Install uBlock 2. Click 3. Re-load the webpage Works on NYTimes and many other JS paywalled sites, too!

This extension for Firefox is super handy in those cases: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/disable-javas...

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#27

Post by bragr »

algoatecorn wrote: post #3

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 c…

>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.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#28

Post by assttoasstmgr »

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.

Their loss, I suppose.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#29

Post by colpabar »

sbf501 wrote: post #9
jordanmorgan10 wrote: post #4

Unless it's Trader Joes, in which case I leave noticeably happier than I was pre-grocery shopping.

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 agree that there's way too much plastic on the produce, but some of the boxed prepared food is really, really great.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#30

Post by reducesuffering »

sbf501 wrote: post #9
jordanmorgan10 wrote: post #4

Unless it's Trader Joes, in which case I leave noticeably happier than I was pre-grocery shopping.

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.

TJ's is significantly better value and less margin than Safeway. The opposite of "bougie."
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