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Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

economist.com

101–110 of 530 posts

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That explains the fruit and vegetables we have in the US in Aldi. I buy produce elsewhere.

Weird, I just moved to the US and Aldi is one of my favorite places. Where do you go for produce? I'm in Chicago if that matters.

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.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#102

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…

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.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#103

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 learn…

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 ince…

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.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#104
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.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#105

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 distrib…

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

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#106
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gen…

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 Brit…

What type of onions are the UK "onions"? I'd assume white onions because they're attractive and versatile?

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#107
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.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#109
post #32

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, me…

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.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#110
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Someone said that his favorite part of shopping at Trader Joe's is afterwards when you go to a supermarket to buy all the stuff you need.

Safeway has everything I'd want from Trader Joe's at this point, and I don't have to do two trips.

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