10 ms·

That's actually how a lot of businesses in rural parts of Alaska work, even places that don't require a boat or plane to access. My dad lives right off the hig

by dx87 6y ago

That's actually how a lot of businesses in rural parts of Alaska work, even places that don't require a boat or plane to access. My dad lives right off the highway in a small town in Alaska, and the closest thing to a grocery store is an old airplane hanger that one of the locals runs a general store out of. The owner makes weekly trips to Costco, which is ~4 hours away, and buys as much as they can fit into a big U-Haul, then resells it at their store. The selection is pretty limited, but they take requests throughout the week and will try to fulfill them on the next trip.

Scoundreller 6y ago
Rural Croatia too, except it’s a truck that comes to all of the villages 3x/week with staple items. Plays ridiculously stereotypical Croatian music through a loudspeaker to announce his arrival. And then a meat truck once a week and a fish truck more irregularly. Took requests as well. I think of it like villages having Amazon Prime starting in the late 90s.
- koyote 6y ago
  That's interesting! I would have thought Croatia to be small enough to not need such a system; i.e. supermarkets not further than half an hour drive away. Or is it just a matter of convenience?
  - pinkorchid 6y ago
    A very similar system is also common in small towns (population in the low hundreds or fewer) in Spain. Every few days a baker will come driving their van and selling bread, or a truck with fruit, etc. Even doctors and priests follow a similar pattern. It's likely that one could drive for 30 minutes and find an even better selection. That assumes car ownership and the ability to drive, which is not widespread in the aging population in rural areas.
    - solotronics 6y ago
      My first reaction is that this is sad but that is incredibly biased based on my expectation of having anything on demand.
      - fxtentacle 6y ago
        On the contrary. When I lived in such a village on vacation, it was incredibly liberating. The bakery guy would have a promotion every week with something new for you to try, but apart from that you didn't have to make any decisions. I find choosing between 20 almost identical flavors of sandwich bread in your average supermarket to be much more mentally exhausting. And since you knew which weekly special everyone else was trying out these days, you had a shared easy conversation topic with anyone. Plus, to my big surprise the quality of frozen fish and vegetable packs was impeccable. Now, years later, I know that pretty much all "fresh" fish that you see in a supermarket is frozen for transport. So there's no difference.
        summm 6y ago
        In Germany most fish is anyway required to be frozen for food safety: correctly freezing kills most parasites.
      - distances 6y ago
        Heh, and my first reaction was that this is awesome. Different viewpoints I guess.
    - dirktheman 6y ago
      I used to work in a very small village in France. The bakery from the nearby city would bring a van full of bread to the campsite near the town, the reception would function as a 'depot de pain' for both tourists and villagers.
      - tasogare 6y ago
        In Northern France there is also the "baraque à frites" truck which comes to villages and sell French fries.
  - sandworm101 6y ago
    >> I would have thought Croatia to be small enough to not need such a system; i.e. supermarkets not further than half an hour drive away. I still think about the UK. I cannot imagine anywhere in the UK being more than an hour or two from anywhere else.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      Why? UK includes Scotland, and you can easily go 600+ miles from a point in northern Scotland to southern England. Even in England, Liverpool is 200+ miles from London, and there are farther places in England.
      - xeromal 6y ago
        Yeah, I think it's just someone from the US thinking in their terms. Florida is 447 miles itself.
      - irrational 6y ago
        600 miles? I had no idea Great Britain was that small. What is the widest distance West to East?
        dtparr 6y ago
        Per Encyclopedia Britannica[0], 300 miles is the widest, and no part is more than 75 miles from the sea. It's smaller in land mass than 10 US states, coming in just behind Oregon and just ahead of Idaho. 0 - https://www.britannica.com/place/United-Kingdom https://www.britannica.com/place/United-Kingdom
    - distantaidenn 6y ago
      I’m American but was living in Seoul at the time. A couple friends and I took an overnight trip to Busan. We were having lunch at a small restaurant, and my friend asks the staff if she can order takeout and have it sent back to her home in Seoul. Mind you Busan to Seoul is 325km. This was mind-boggling to me. I asked her, “How long is that gonna take to get there?!” She was puzzled, looked at me and said, “It’ll be there later tonight.” She then laughed and continued, “Hey, this is Korea!” The delivery network of small highly developed countries is simply amazing.
  - gshdg 6y ago
    In densely populated areas like much of Europe, a half hour drive is considered a pretty meaningful distance. Plus a lot fewer people have cars than in the US.
  - kungato 6y ago
    Many people don't own a car because they can't afford it or are too old to drive it. Owning a (registered) car costs with gas yearly about 1 net monthly salary. Croatia is small but even so very sparsely populated. 1/4 of population is in the capital metro area
    - tasuki 6y ago
      > very sparsely populated That's very relative. With 72 ppl/km^2, I wouldn't call Croatia "sparsely populated".
      - jon-wood 6y ago
        Looking at nationwide statistics can be misleading, often you'll find that while on average you get a figure like that, almost all of it is centred on a few large cities with anything outside those cities consisting of scattered small villages a few hundred people living in them.
        arethuza 6y ago
        Looking at land use in places like can be surprising - e.g. a great er percentage of the UK land area is peat bogs than is built on: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/land-cover-atlas-uk-1.744440 https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/land-cover-atlas-uk-1.74...
  - TooSmugToFail 6y ago
    It's true that a supermarket or a shop is about 30 min drive for most places, but those rural areas are typically poorer, and populated with the elderly, so driving is not an option.
    - Scoundreller 6y ago
      And the supermarkets and multi-good shops are usually the new and expensive places to shop. It’s the farmers markets and stalls (and maybe the baker) that have the good pricing, but fewer availability of hours. I hate how North American farmer markets in big cities are turning hipster and expensive unless you’re really careful. Direct from the farmer is supposed to be cheaper!
  - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    Twenty odd years ago, we had a system like that though, despite there being multiple grocery stores in walking distance. Some people have mobility issues meaning they can't walk / cycle to the shop, but a grocery store on wheels is fine. It was called the SRV Wagen, which stood for "sell rationally together" when the scheme was started in the 70's. There are still 100 of these vans active last year apparently. Anyway, think of it differently, instead of a need, why not a want? It's not that different from having groceries delivered to your home. Maybe not as scalable, but it's a valid buisiness model, especially in rural areas. Nowadays I think it's becoming more of a need again; with the migration of people out of the small towns, more and more grocery stores have decided to pack it up because they just don't get enough customers anymore. A mobile shop that frequents multiple towns every week is a valid replacements. And as another commenter mentioned, it's not limited to just groceries; we also had a fishmonger, and everyone remembers the ice cream truck. I don't see why hipster food trucks don't actually truck around either. A more recent example, an ice cream truck would park out front of office buildings and ring its bell. A tiny coffee trike would park in the train station in the morning, then do the rounds at the office buildings nearby throughout the day. The important thing with those services is that they consistently appear on the same day and roughly hour, and that they have some kind of audio cue.
  - madaxe_again 6y ago
    Small, but the transport network isn’t necessarily reliable. Mountains are a big obstacle. Croatia, like most of the balkans, is really mountainous. When it’s not mountains it’s islands. Nightmare for transport infrastructure development. A lot of rural Europe has laughably poor mountain infrastructure - dirt roads, often badly damaged, are sometimes the only way in or out of a village, and when it rains, the guy with the 4X4 truck is your only ticket in or out. I’ve lived in rural wales, three miles up a paved but steep and narrow lane - if you meet someone, you’re looking at ten minutes of reversing on a bad day - no passing places. I’ve been stuck in the middle of two opposing convoys and one person refusing to back up, and it’s just... well, it makes you not want to go out. Sometimes, someone gets a motorhome stuck on the bridge, and the village is cut off for a day or more. The nearest store is 30 minutes drive away, if the road is clear and the bridge is open. I’ve lived in rural Bosnia, in a village that you can only reach by a track that looks and drives worse than most river beds. It’s only 15km or so from Sarajevo, but it takes nearly 90 minutes to get there, and there’s little inbetween. Here in Portugal, a 15km line of sight is a 60km drive - it’s a mountainous region, and again, most of the roads are dirt, single track. The nearest village with a shop to me is 4km away by drone - 28km by road - two rivers in deep valleys between here and there, and only so many medieval bridges are passable by car. The nearest modern bridge is so far off it may as well be in Spain - oh wait, it is! For someone like me (young, strong, hands on) getting around is a pain in the ass. I never know which journey is going to turn into grappling with straps and jacks in mud. For someone elderly, going out is a daunting prospect. What if I don’t get home? What if I get stuck? What if I break down and nobody passes for two days? The importance of these services can’t be underestimated - I don’t think these places could continue to exist without them - their population is too low to support permanent stores.
    - Joe-Z 6y ago
      The places you choose to live in sound pretty interesting. And diverse! May I ask: Is this work-related that you live country-side in so many different places, or are you a restless soul? :)
      - madaxe_again 6y ago
- gkanai 6y ago
  Rural Italy also has the fish truck that comes 2X/week. They'll stop by pre-determined spaces for scheduled times so those who want fish know to be there at the scheduled time.
- vkou 6y ago
  That's also how groceries were distributed in rural areas of the Soviet Union, so this way pre-dates the 90s.
- LEARAX 6y ago
  Can I ask what "ridiculously stereotypical Croatian music" sounds like?
  - throwaway1777 6y ago
    I’m guessing turbofolk https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo-folk https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo-folk
    - TooSmugToFail 6y ago
      Turbofolk is more of a Serbian thing.
  - davidrm 6y ago
    depending on the region it could be something like Mišo Kovač (Dalmatia)[1] or any tamburaši band (Slavonia)[2]. Istria and Zagorje have their own horses in the race, but I cannot name any. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUiA1zP3tU4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUiA1zP3tU4 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4AYnl2TVKg&list=PL_YB4oZW18iuHBwmXd1vMlp2jCcpYnhQX&index=3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4AYnl2TVKg&list=PL_YB4oZW18...
  - madaxe_again 6y ago
    Imagine you’ve given an accordion amphetamines.
  - masonic 6y ago
    In the US, check your local cable access channels for the series "Croatian Magazine".
- tapland 6y ago
  To be fair we saw 1-4 car crashes every time we took a bus for 30+minutes in Croatia in the early 2000s so it was probably just to have some people left in the village ;)
  - Scoundreller 6y ago
    Ya, I found a lot of those paved but single track roads to be safer at night because you can at least see oncoming headlights.
- tiagoafpereira 6y ago
  Same thing in Portugal, but with ridiculously stereotypical Portuguese music.
- Bayart 6y ago
  That's not uncommon in (very) rural France. We had a bakery-grocecy truck where I grew up.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - _n_b_ 6y ago
    Baguette vending machines are one of my favorite parts of visiting remote places in France.
- adamcharnock 6y ago
  It’s the same here in rural Portugal. However, if you just go to the van and ask for some bread (for example), they look at you as though you’re mad. After all, you didn’t order it yesterday, therefore why on earth would they have bread for you today?! I get why it works that way, but I was bemused nonetheless.
  - yufeng66 6y ago
    Here in Maryland, there are trucks from New York Chinatown stop at local park and ride regularly to deliver specialty Chinese food. You order through an app.
    - tentboy 6y ago
      Marylander here - where is this? Sounds cool.
    - Breza 6y ago
      DC resident here, I'm really interested in learning more
- pacamara619 6y ago
  That's really interesting! I'd be curious as to what part of Croatia since I find it hard to believe.
PlainDishonesty 6y ago
Fascinating.
lonelappde 6y ago
Even in big cities, Costco is a restaurant and convenience store supplier. In remote areas the warehouse part is more emphasized.
- 205guy 6y ago
  Exactly, warehouse stores started off as wholesalers for commercial customers, and then gradually shifted towards retail. A few years ago, Costco used to open an hour earlier for commercial customers, but I’m not sure they do it anymore. A few aisles are more for businesses, for example takeout containers, cleaning supplies, etc. I’ve seen owners of food truck, small restaurants, and mom&pop convenience stores getting their bulk supplies there.
EE84M3i 6y ago
What causes a town not large enough to support a grocery store to have a U-Haul rental?
- elipsey 6y ago
  Juneau has U-Haul. Maybe they take it back after delivery.
- klipt 6y ago
  U-Hauls don't have to be rented, you can buy them: https://trucksales.uhaul.com https://trucksales.uhaul.com
  - njarboe 6y ago
    After you buy them with the logos removed, it is just a box van/truck.
    - toast0 6y ago
      I mean when you buy a Penske truck with the logos removed, it's just a yellow box truck. A u-haul is always going to have the distinctive shape, and they usually don't do a great job at removing the logos... They might have scraped off most of the logo, but they don't paint over it.
      - klipt 6y ago
        Not much incentive - the logo is essentially free advertising.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  Long-term rental? I'm sure you can get a good deal on it, and since they don't own it, they can swap it out every week for another model, and if it breaks down it's not their problem. Or well it is, but it won't cost them much.
- dx87 6y ago
  It's probably not actually a U-Haul, I just couldn't think of the name of the type of truck and figured enough people have seen big U-Haul trucks that they'd be able to picture the size of truck I'm talking about.
triyambakam 6y ago
Most of the restaurants on Kaua'i also do this. I've many times seen the restaurant owners while shopping and recognize the packaging or products in the restaurant.
chewz 6y ago
In Thailand and SE Asia there is a lot of retailers based on pick-up truck that is making slow rounds along country roads, through remote villages selling necessities like vegetables, food etc.

by dx87 6y ago

Scoundreller 6y ago

Rural Croatia too, except it’s a truck that comes to all of the villages 3x/week with staple items. Plays ridiculously stereotypical Croatian music through a loudspeaker to announce his arrival. And then a meat truck once a week and a fish truck more irregularly. Took requests as well. I think of it like villages having Amazon Prime starting in the late 90s.

koyote 6y ago
That's interesting! I would have thought Croatia to be small enough to not need such a system; i.e. supermarkets not further than half an hour drive away. Or is it just a matter of convenience?
- pinkorchid 6y ago
  A very similar system is also common in small towns (population in the low hundreds or fewer) in Spain. Every few days a baker will come driving their van and selling bread, or a truck with fruit, etc. Even doctors and priests follow a similar pattern. It's likely that one could drive for 30 minutes and find an even better selection. That assumes car ownership and the ability to drive, which is not widespread in the aging population in rural areas.
  - solotronics 6y ago
    My first reaction is that this is sad but that is incredibly biased based on my expectation of having anything on demand.
    - fxtentacle 6y ago
      On the contrary. When I lived in such a village on vacation, it was incredibly liberating. The bakery guy would have a promotion every week with something new for you to try, but apart from that you didn't have to make any decisions. I find choosing between 20 almost identical flavors of sandwich bread in your average supermarket to be much more mentally exhausting. And since you knew which weekly special everyone else was trying out these days, you had a shared easy conversation topic with anyone. Plus, to my big surprise the quality of frozen fish and vegetable packs was impeccable. Now, years later, I know that pretty much all "fresh" fish that you see in a supermarket is frozen for transport. So there's no difference.
      - summm 6y ago
        In Germany most fish is anyway required to be frozen for food safety: correctly freezing kills most parasites.
    - distances 6y ago
      Heh, and my first reaction was that this is awesome. Different viewpoints I guess.
  - dirktheman 6y ago
    I used to work in a very small village in France. The bakery from the nearby city would bring a van full of bread to the campsite near the town, the reception would function as a 'depot de pain' for both tourists and villagers.
    - tasogare 6y ago
      In Northern France there is also the "baraque à frites" truck which comes to villages and sell French fries.
- sandworm101 6y ago
  >> I would have thought Croatia to be small enough to not need such a system; i.e. supermarkets not further than half an hour drive away. I still think about the UK. I cannot imagine anywhere in the UK being more than an hour or two from anywhere else.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    Why? UK includes Scotland, and you can easily go 600+ miles from a point in northern Scotland to southern England. Even in England, Liverpool is 200+ miles from London, and there are farther places in England.
    - xeromal 6y ago
      Yeah, I think it's just someone from the US thinking in their terms. Florida is 447 miles itself.
    - irrational 6y ago
      600 miles? I had no idea Great Britain was that small. What is the widest distance West to East?
      - dtparr 6y ago
        Per Encyclopedia Britannica[0], 300 miles is the widest, and no part is more than 75 miles from the sea. It's smaller in land mass than 10 US states, coming in just behind Oregon and just ahead of Idaho. 0 - https://www.britannica.com/place/United-Kingdom https://www.britannica.com/place/United-Kingdom
  - distantaidenn 6y ago
    I’m American but was living in Seoul at the time. A couple friends and I took an overnight trip to Busan. We were having lunch at a small restaurant, and my friend asks the staff if she can order takeout and have it sent back to her home in Seoul. Mind you Busan to Seoul is 325km. This was mind-boggling to me. I asked her, “How long is that gonna take to get there?!” She was puzzled, looked at me and said, “It’ll be there later tonight.” She then laughed and continued, “Hey, this is Korea!” The delivery network of small highly developed countries is simply amazing.
- gshdg 6y ago
  In densely populated areas like much of Europe, a half hour drive is considered a pretty meaningful distance. Plus a lot fewer people have cars than in the US.
- kungato 6y ago
  Many people don't own a car because they can't afford it or are too old to drive it. Owning a (registered) car costs with gas yearly about 1 net monthly salary. Croatia is small but even so very sparsely populated. 1/4 of population is in the capital metro area
  - tasuki 6y ago
    > very sparsely populated That's very relative. With 72 ppl/km^2, I wouldn't call Croatia "sparsely populated".
    - jon-wood 6y ago
      Looking at nationwide statistics can be misleading, often you'll find that while on average you get a figure like that, almost all of it is centred on a few large cities with anything outside those cities consisting of scattered small villages a few hundred people living in them.
      - arethuza 6y ago
        Looking at land use in places like can be surprising - e.g. a great er percentage of the UK land area is peat bogs than is built on: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/land-cover-atlas-uk-1.744440 https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/land-cover-atlas-uk-1.74...
- TooSmugToFail 6y ago
  It's true that a supermarket or a shop is about 30 min drive for most places, but those rural areas are typically poorer, and populated with the elderly, so driving is not an option.
  - Scoundreller 6y ago
    And the supermarkets and multi-good shops are usually the new and expensive places to shop. It’s the farmers markets and stalls (and maybe the baker) that have the good pricing, but fewer availability of hours. I hate how North American farmer markets in big cities are turning hipster and expensive unless you’re really careful. Direct from the farmer is supposed to be cheaper!
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  Twenty odd years ago, we had a system like that though, despite there being multiple grocery stores in walking distance. Some people have mobility issues meaning they can't walk / cycle to the shop, but a grocery store on wheels is fine. It was called the SRV Wagen, which stood for "sell rationally together" when the scheme was started in the 70's. There are still 100 of these vans active last year apparently. Anyway, think of it differently, instead of a need, why not a want? It's not that different from having groceries delivered to your home. Maybe not as scalable, but it's a valid buisiness model, especially in rural areas. Nowadays I think it's becoming more of a need again; with the migration of people out of the small towns, more and more grocery stores have decided to pack it up because they just don't get enough customers anymore. A mobile shop that frequents multiple towns every week is a valid replacements. And as another commenter mentioned, it's not limited to just groceries; we also had a fishmonger, and everyone remembers the ice cream truck. I don't see why hipster food trucks don't actually truck around either. A more recent example, an ice cream truck would park out front of office buildings and ring its bell. A tiny coffee trike would park in the train station in the morning, then do the rounds at the office buildings nearby throughout the day. The important thing with those services is that they consistently appear on the same day and roughly hour, and that they have some kind of audio cue.
- madaxe_again 6y ago
  Small, but the transport network isn’t necessarily reliable. Mountains are a big obstacle. Croatia, like most of the balkans, is really mountainous. When it’s not mountains it’s islands. Nightmare for transport infrastructure development. A lot of rural Europe has laughably poor mountain infrastructure - dirt roads, often badly damaged, are sometimes the only way in or out of a village, and when it rains, the guy with the 4X4 truck is your only ticket in or out. I’ve lived in rural wales, three miles up a paved but steep and narrow lane - if you meet someone, you’re looking at ten minutes of reversing on a bad day - no passing places. I’ve been stuck in the middle of two opposing convoys and one person refusing to back up, and it’s just... well, it makes you not want to go out. Sometimes, someone gets a motorhome stuck on the bridge, and the village is cut off for a day or more. The nearest store is 30 minutes drive away, if the road is clear and the bridge is open. I’ve lived in rural Bosnia, in a village that you can only reach by a track that looks and drives worse than most river beds. It’s only 15km or so from Sarajevo, but it takes nearly 90 minutes to get there, and there’s little inbetween. Here in Portugal, a 15km line of sight is a 60km drive - it’s a mountainous region, and again, most of the roads are dirt, single track. The nearest village with a shop to me is 4km away by drone - 28km by road - two rivers in deep valleys between here and there, and only so many medieval bridges are passable by car. The nearest modern bridge is so far off it may as well be in Spain - oh wait, it is! For someone like me (young, strong, hands on) getting around is a pain in the ass. I never know which journey is going to turn into grappling with straps and jacks in mud. For someone elderly, going out is a daunting prospect. What if I don’t get home? What if I get stuck? What if I break down and nobody passes for two days? The importance of these services can’t be underestimated - I don’t think these places could continue to exist without them - their population is too low to support permanent stores.
  - Joe-Z 6y ago
    The places you choose to live in sound pretty interesting. And diverse! May I ask: Is this work-related that you live country-side in so many different places, or are you a restless soul? :)
    - madaxe_again 6y ago
gkanai 6y ago
Rural Italy also has the fish truck that comes 2X/week. They'll stop by pre-determined spaces for scheduled times so those who want fish know to be there at the scheduled time.
vkou 6y ago
That's also how groceries were distributed in rural areas of the Soviet Union, so this way pre-dates the 90s.
LEARAX 6y ago
Can I ask what "ridiculously stereotypical Croatian music" sounds like?
- throwaway1777 6y ago
  I’m guessing turbofolk https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo-folk https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo-folk
  - TooSmugToFail 6y ago
    Turbofolk is more of a Serbian thing.
- davidrm 6y ago
  depending on the region it could be something like Mišo Kovač (Dalmatia)[1] or any tamburaši band (Slavonia)[2]. Istria and Zagorje have their own horses in the race, but I cannot name any. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUiA1zP3tU4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUiA1zP3tU4 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4AYnl2TVKg&list=PL_YB4oZW18iuHBwmXd1vMlp2jCcpYnhQX&index=3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4AYnl2TVKg&list=PL_YB4oZW18...
- madaxe_again 6y ago
  Imagine you’ve given an accordion amphetamines.
- masonic 6y ago
  In the US, check your local cable access channels for the series "Croatian Magazine".
tapland 6y ago
To be fair we saw 1-4 car crashes every time we took a bus for 30+minutes in Croatia in the early 2000s so it was probably just to have some people left in the village ;)
- Scoundreller 6y ago
  Ya, I found a lot of those paved but single track roads to be safer at night because you can at least see oncoming headlights.
tiagoafpereira 6y ago
Same thing in Portugal, but with ridiculously stereotypical Portuguese music.
Bayart 6y ago
That's not uncommon in (very) rural France. We had a bakery-grocecy truck where I grew up.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- _n_b_ 6y ago
  Baguette vending machines are one of my favorite parts of visiting remote places in France.
adamcharnock 6y ago
It’s the same here in rural Portugal. However, if you just go to the van and ask for some bread (for example), they look at you as though you’re mad. After all, you didn’t order it yesterday, therefore why on earth would they have bread for you today?! I get why it works that way, but I was bemused nonetheless.
- yufeng66 6y ago
  Here in Maryland, there are trucks from New York Chinatown stop at local park and ride regularly to deliver specialty Chinese food. You order through an app.
  - tentboy 6y ago
    Marylander here - where is this? Sounds cool.
  - Breza 6y ago
    DC resident here, I'm really interested in learning more
pacamara619 6y ago
That's really interesting! I'd be curious as to what part of Croatia since I find it hard to believe.

PlainDishonesty 6y ago

Fascinating.

lonelappde 6y ago

Even in big cities, Costco is a restaurant and convenience store supplier. In remote areas the warehouse part is more emphasized.

205guy 6y ago
Exactly, warehouse stores started off as wholesalers for commercial customers, and then gradually shifted towards retail. A few years ago, Costco used to open an hour earlier for commercial customers, but I’m not sure they do it anymore. A few aisles are more for businesses, for example takeout containers, cleaning supplies, etc. I’ve seen owners of food truck, small restaurants, and mom&pop convenience stores getting their bulk supplies there.

EE84M3i 6y ago

What causes a town not large enough to support a grocery store to have a U-Haul rental?

elipsey 6y ago
Juneau has U-Haul. Maybe they take it back after delivery.
klipt 6y ago
U-Hauls don't have to be rented, you can buy them: https://trucksales.uhaul.com https://trucksales.uhaul.com
- njarboe 6y ago
  After you buy them with the logos removed, it is just a box van/truck.
  - toast0 6y ago
    I mean when you buy a Penske truck with the logos removed, it's just a yellow box truck. A u-haul is always going to have the distinctive shape, and they usually don't do a great job at removing the logos... They might have scraped off most of the logo, but they don't paint over it.
    - klipt 6y ago
      Not much incentive - the logo is essentially free advertising.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
Long-term rental? I'm sure you can get a good deal on it, and since they don't own it, they can swap it out every week for another model, and if it breaks down it's not their problem. Or well it is, but it won't cost them much.
dx87 6y ago
It's probably not actually a U-Haul, I just couldn't think of the name of the type of truck and figured enough people have seen big U-Haul trucks that they'd be able to picture the size of truck I'm talking about.

triyambakam 6y ago

Most of the restaurants on Kaua'i also do this. I've many times seen the restaurant owners while shopping and recognize the packaging or products in the restaurant.

chewz 6y ago

In Thailand and SE Asia there is a lot of retailers based on pick-up truck that is making slow rounds along country roads, through remote villages selling necessities like vegetables, food etc.