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Someone once described the general difference between European and U.S. grocery stores: They said that in Europe, a store would have every kind of product, but
by teddyh 5y ago
Someone once described the general difference between European and U.S. grocery stores: They said that in Europe, a store would have every kind of product, but not very many brands of any particular thing, maybe two or three for most non-staple products. But in the U.S., a store would either have like 20 brands of something or have none of them; i.e. not carry that kind of product at all. It seems to me like this points to “choice” being an important scale by which stores are measured in the U.S., but no, or little, negative associations are made with no products of a particular kind being available at all.
- fencepost 5y agoThere's some of that European approach creeping into US markets thanks to Aldi Nord and Aldi Sud - we now have both Aldi and Trader Joe's which primarily have their own versions of products and carry only that brand (or occasionally a second 'mainstream' brand as special items). Costco is similar as well in typically having only a single brand of any given type of product.