Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores • Hacker News Board

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#481

Post by jkqwzsoo » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 3:11 PM UTC

random-human wrote: post #138

grendelt wrote: post #89

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…

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 f…

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.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#482

Post by bobthepanda » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 3:17 PM UTC

b112 wrote: post #414

bobthepanda wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corn starch in American sauces was probably introduced by Chinese immigrants, where starched based sauces are extremely common instead of flour-based ones, since wheat is historically less common in southern China (where most early Chinese immigrants came from) Starch also has the nice property of tenderizing meat and locking in juices when used in a marinade, in a process called “velveting.” https://www.bonappetit.c…

Corn is a new world thing, although I admit that early Chinese immigrants could have discovered it as a replacement for some Chinese starchy thing...

Corn shows up in China during the 1500s via the Phillipines. https://amp.goldthread2.com/food/how-corn-ended-china-americ...

The traditional starch is water chestnut, and you can still buy it, but corn is a lot easier to turn into a starch.

In general, a lot of things went via the Pacific as well during the Columbian Exchange. East, Southeast, and South Asian looks very different without chilis, tomatoes, or sweet potatoes to name a few.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#483

Post by eli_gottlieb » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 3:17 PM UTC

bradleyjg wrote: post #445

cbhl wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Appreciate" is, perhaps, not the right word. Maybe "worry"? Younger generations grew up on a message of climate change and it can be disconcerting to walk into a grocery store and find the entire produce department to be a geography lesson. This from Peru, that from Mexico, the other from Alaska, all flown and trucked in on a cold chain straight from some far-away monoculture farm. If anything I suspect the increase…

Younger generations are filled with self righteous tiresome scolds. I don’t know where we went wrong.

When the economy crashed, you told everyone it was a result of their culture and lifestyle choices rather than because of Wall Street. These idiot kids believed you.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#484

Post by jordanmorgan10 » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 3:23 PM UTC

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 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.

We have HyVee though, and I quite enjoy it there.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#485

Post by fny » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 3:24 PM UTC

WalterGR wrote: post #476

fny wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sending you articles pre 2022 from various sources just to make the point these effects were well understood and foreseen before the Ukraine war. While I include articles here about Biden's spending, it's worth noting Trump also spent a truckload of money. Use archive.ph to read anything paywalled. [0]: Energy and Food Security: Linkages through Price Volatility https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S…

How has Biden's stimulus differed from Trump's?

The nature of the stimulus itself doesn't matter. What matters is the total size. The money always ends up leaking into commodities until the economy chokes.

Trump spent way too much money, and then Biden spent even more. We had $1T of debt, Trump spent another $1T, Biden spent another $1T. This alone justifies a doubling/tripling of prices everywhere which is exactly what you're seeing.

Wheat has tripled. Natural gas has tripled. Oil has doubled. Copper has almost doubled. Corn has doubled. Soybean has doubled.

We need the government to take money back however it can right now to control inflation. The US government needs to use taxes to buy back its debt and drain liquidity from the market. But of course, they're just going to keep spending more in response to inflation (gas stimulus checks, tax cuts, home buying credits), which is even more inflationary.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#486

Post by InefficientRed » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 3:26 PM UTC

bradleyjg wrote: post #445

cbhl wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Appreciate" is, perhaps, not the right word. Maybe "worry"? Younger generations grew up on a message of climate change and it can be disconcerting to walk into a grocery store and find the entire produce department to be a geography lesson. This from Peru, that from Mexico, the other from Alaska, all flown and trucked in on a cold chain straight from some far-away monoculture farm. If anything I suspect the increase…

Younger generations are filled with self righteous tiresome scolds. I don’t know where we went wrong.

Where is the scold in the post to which you're replying?

Deglobalization of agriculture -- as a downstream result of trade policy, political instability, shifting weather patterns, or some combination thereof -- isn't exactly hard to imagine. Or even hypothetical! See: East Africa, right now: drought at home + major trading partner at war = starvation.

Looking at the shelves of a grocery store and thinking "the set of social and physical conditions required to make this possible might not be stable throughout my lifetime" is not "scolding". Hell, it's not even unreasonable, especially given that the very premise of the thread is that this is all quite new to begin with...

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#487

Post by InefficientRed » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 3:35 PM UTC

DubiousPusher wrote: post #172

I grew up in Montana so I am probably one of the few millennial Americans that probably recalls what life is like before supermarkets. They were just becoming a thing there as I was growing up. (Very, What's Eating Gilbert Grape.) We had an IGA in the small town I grew up in. The fresh food options there were borderline Soviet. We went to a butcher to get our meat when we didn't have meat from hunting. We got produce…

> when I unload my cart of fresh produce, meats, cheeses and baked goods it doesn't look like the carts around mine. They are full of canned foods, frozen foods, boxed foods, etc.

Canned, frozen, and boxed foods offer a much higher "calorie/dollar" ratio. Berries, in particular, are wildly expensive on this metric even in-season.

A family with 3 kids, 2 cars, and median earnings (one part-time, since working to pay for childcare often makes no financial sense) literally cannot afford to subsist primarily on "meat, cheese, and fresh produce".

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#488

Post by Zababa » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 3:39 PM UTC

bradleyjg wrote: post #445

cbhl wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Appreciate" is, perhaps, not the right word. Maybe "worry"? Younger generations grew up on a message of climate change and it can be disconcerting to walk into a grocery store and find the entire produce department to be a geography lesson. This from Peru, that from Mexico, the other from Alaska, all flown and trucked in on a cold chain straight from some far-away monoculture farm. If anything I suspect the increase…

Younger generations are filled with self righteous tiresome scolds. I don’t know where we went wrong.

As someone from the younger generation, it's probably linked to hearing about climate and ecology from 4th grade to now. Many people took the message seriously, which leads to questioning a lot what the people before us did. Basically the older generation not taling responsibility, first for climate stuff, and then for raising "self righteous tiresome scolds".

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#489

Post by morsch » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 4:13 PM UTC

noirbot wrote: post #469

morsch wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1103223/leading-grocery-... https://payspacemagazine.com/retail/top-7-supermarket-chains...

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.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#490

Post by vl » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 4:19 PM UTC

mgraczyk wrote: post #192

It would be hard for me to believe any generalizations about grocery stores in the US. In San Francisco where I live, there are ~5 grocery stores within walking distance that span an order of magnitude in price and markup. Some items are only available at the higher end stores, and items that overlap are sold for up to 10x the price at the smaller, more expensive stores. For example I can get a pint of heavy cream fo…

One interesting development in the last few years is that Whole Foods is working hard to become Safeway and Safeway is working hard to become Whole Foods.