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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

#61

Post by kome »

fredley wrote: 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…

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.

Also Hungary has bad supermarkets, in my opinion.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#63

Post by floren »

lapetitejort wrote: post #21
sbf501 wrote: 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…

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.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#65

Post by ABeeSea »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #25

> 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.

Campbell’s soup spun Vlasic off as a separate company but they loaded them with debt owned back to Campbell’s.

Two years later, Vlasic missed a debt payment to Campbell’s and had to go into bankruptcy.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#66

Post by kube-system »

bowsamic wrote: post #47
fredley wrote: 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…

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

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

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#67

Post by bragr »

kongolongo wrote: post #16
fathyb wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are those the same as ghost kitchens?

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.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#68

Post by ajcp »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #25

> 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.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#69

Post by grendelt »

MangoCoffee wrote: post #14

meh, i shop at Costco.

...but I rarely need that much mayo or chips.

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.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#70

Post by lisper »

kome wrote: post #26
caminante wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Or you could buy a subscription.
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