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Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores
- zeroonetwothree 4y agoI've always wondering why Trader Joe's is so much cheaper than the big supermarkets, but I guess this article gives the simple explanation--they are smaller and have less variety. Kind of an eye opener for me (although it may be obvious to others).
- techietim 4y agohttps://archive.ph/Z6iLG https://archive.ph/Z6iLG
- caminante 4y agoAlternatively, 1. Install uBlock 2. Click <Disable Javascript> 3. Re-load the webpage Works on NYTimes and many other JS paywalled sites, too!
- kome 4y agoThis extension for Firefox is super handy in those cases: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/disable-javascript/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/disable-javas...
- lisper 4y agoOr you could buy a subscription.
- gwill 4y agoi've been reading HN for the last 4 years or so. over that time ive slowly gotten rid of social media; first by uninstalling apps, then by deleting accounts. Lately I decided to get rid of reddit, which had had a huge impact on my media consumption. I've found myself taking the time to read articles posted on here, and as such Ive found a few sites that I favor for content. Early on I simply read comments if a site was blocked, then went to archives, and now i'm finding myself paying for sites I appreciate. I feel like this is an eventual outcome for many, but getting users to consume "long form" media is the trick. If it weren't for these free peaks at the content, I would never have come around to paying for it.
- Gunnerhead 4y agoHonestly, with the amount of paywalled sites posted on HN, it's impossible to have a subscription for each one.
- lisper 4y agoYou keep using that word, "impossible". I do no think it means what you think it means.
- bitlax 4y agoNot impossible; just foolish.
- 300bps 4y agoMaybe all these paywalled sites could start a subscription service where you pay one low monthly fee and get access to X sites with it. Then every publisher that is a member of the subscription service gets an amount of money proportionate to the number of subscribers that read their articles. Seems so obvious to me but maybe there’s a reason why it wouldn’t (or hasn’t) worked.
- algoatecorn 4y agoWith 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 communicable diseases.
- maerF0x0 4y agoWhat's a dark grocery store?
- mattl 4y agoI believe a grocery store that only serves deliveries. You can’t actually go and buy things in person.
- rainpl 4y agoNo shopping floor, just a warehouse. You order online.
- maerF0x0 4y agoThis is interesting because https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumers_Distributing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumers_Distributing went bankrupt and afaik never came back. Sometimes I wonder if capitalism has any memory.
- fathyb 4y agoDark 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.
- kongolongo 4y agoAre those the same as ghost kitchens?
- jordanmorgan10 4y agoUnless it's Trader Joes, in which case I leave noticeably happier than I was pre-grocery shopping.
- tuckerpo 4y agoI'd attribute that to the selection of choices for any individual item being very low there. There aren't 48 brands of meatballs to choose from.
- mattl 4y agoThey also do not want self checkouts, coupons, apps, etc.
- reducesuffering 4y ago> coupons, apps Good? Apps are just extra margin places like Safeway tack on. Coupons are just taking things from fat margin to TJ-level margin.
- mattl 4y agoOh I love it. I try to buy almost everything at TJs.
- sbf501 4y agoOpposite 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.
- spicybright 4y agoAgreed. But to be fair, I've yet to see somewhere with a better cheese selection.
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- nightski 4y agoThis seems like a very simplistic analysis, I'd expect more from the economist. They compare huge chains like Walmart, Aldi, and Whole Foods to Europe's Tesco. Yet we have lots of regional options in our small city and very rarely go to these big chains. Kind of disappointed I created an account just to read this tbh.
- brewdad 4y agoThis tends to be a forum of financially advantaged people. The vast majority of Americans are shopping at Walmart, Aldi, Safeway, Kroger etc. (Maybe not Whole Foods). In that light, the comparisons are valid. Like you, I shop at a local chain and the farmers market. I know I pay more for my groceries than my neighbors who shop at WinCo and I'm ok with that since I feel I get higher quality meats and produce along with those higher prices.
- nightski 4y agoInteresting that is the case elsewhere. Our local stores are not always more expensive. We have one high end chain, one average chain, and one lower end chain all of which are local to the region. Walmart is usually on par or even slightly more expensive in some cases than the average option.
- socialdemocrat 4y agoI don't get your comment. 1) Both Aldi and Tesco are European. 2) The point is that food shopping in the US is dominated by large stores like Wall Mart, Target etc, while in Europe stores more akin to Aldi, Tesco etc dominate. I live in Norway but have lived in the US and Netherlands while visiting a lot of Europe on vacation naturally. There is most definitely a very different way in which food is sold in general. The article points out pretty much the same experiences I have had when comparing. In fact this has been remarked on for years as a difference between Europe and the US: The US is about really large stores where land is cheap and you can store a lot of products. In Europe one tends to follow the opposite model: Smaller stores with more limited selection which has rapid replacement of products. Automation is also quite different. I was also surprised by the kind of old fashion way checkout works in the US. Like how they meticulously pack your bags. I would say in Europe scanning is generally faster or one uses a more self automated systems where shoppers scan, pay and pack themselves. Of course there are stores of all kinds of sizes in the US. The same applies to Europe. There are Wall-Mart style shopping Europe as well. It is just that there is a difference in what is more common in each region. And of course saying "Europe" may be quite inaccurate as there are such large regional variations in Europe. Broadly speaking smaller stores in central areas is more common in Europe than in the US, but once you get into the details then each country tends to do things in quite different ways. For instance I loved shopping groceries in the Netherlands but kind of hated doing it in Germany.
- MangoCoffee 4y agomeh, i shop at Costco.
- grendelt 4y ago...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.
- ww520 4y agoAre they? In my experience, grocery shopping is not really a pain point.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago> 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.
- ABeeSea 4y agoCampbell’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.
- ajcp 4y agoThe 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.
- QuercusMax 4y agoI discovered a few years back when visiting OH, SoCal, and VT that my Safeway card works at Vons, Acme, and Shaw's.... and that the store layouts and much of the contents are basically identical as well.
- klodolph 4y agoThe layouts are extremely purposeful. There are books written about how to lay out grocery stores. They do the same kind of A/B testing on store layouts that Amazon does on the “buy it now” button. It’s no accident that there are three different places in the grocery store to buy cheese, or that produce is at the front of the store and milk at the back, or that candy is next to the register and potato chips are on the end caps.
- latchkey 4y ago> Walmart bankrupted Vlassic https://www.fastcompany.com/47593/wal-mart-you-dont-know https://www.fastcompany.com/47593/wal-mart-you-dont-know
- assttoasstmgr 4y agoWhat 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 learned how to shop efficiently, look for good deals, use coupons. Let's be honest, the clientele at Whole Foods generally wouldn't be caught dead at Walmart. It's mostly psychological; the food there is not necessarily higher quality. For example, Costco sells restaurant-quality meat; you can buy Wagyu steak there. But you need to consider that maybe paying $8 for a loaf of 'organic' bread is an irrational decision. Their loss, I suppose.
- lr4444lr 4y agoWhole Paycheck has certain products they can't find anywhere else easily. The higher price for the bananas is the price you pay for one stop shop convenience. The whole concept of the gas station convenience store is built on this concept. And you know what? Convenience had value. As for an $8 organic loaf of bread, that's easily the cost of a glass of cheap wine at a restaurant, or two ice cream cones. Seems like a good deal for a premium, healthier item.
- assttoasstmgr 4y ago> Whole Paycheck has certain products they can't find anywhere else easily. [...] > Seems like a good deal for a premium, healthier item. Last time I shopped there I paid nearly $4 for a bottle of lemon juice that looked and tasted like sewer water. Down the drain it went, as did my money. That store exudes an Apple-like reality distortion field, and it seems to be working pretty well.
- Georgelemental 4y agoIf 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 incentives. Go to almost any other developed nation (or many developing ones), get better food for less money
- fredley 4y agoUK 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, meat and a fish counters and a wide variety of produce, all labelled clearly by variety name. It put my local large supermarket to shame. The prices were cheaper too. I find this every time I shop on the continent. Are our standards that much lower? Is it just Brexit? I yearn for a European supermarket experience in the UK.
- Doctor_Fegg 4y agoBooths (regional chain in the northwest) are outstanding; Waitrose are obviously good too. Our local co-op, Midcounties (the second biggest, I think) has a number of Food Market stores which have a really decent range. But if you go by Tesco and Asda you’ll be disappointed.
- bowsamic 4y agoUK 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
- kube-system 4y agoThat explains the fruit and vegetables we have in the US in Aldi. I buy produce elsewhere.
- sdfhdhjdw3 4y agoWeird, 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.
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- beastman82 4y agoThis is anecdotal data but I think our grocery stores are amazing wonders of the modern age and fulfill every need I could dream of.
- netizen-936824 4y agoAs long as you have the money and live in an area served by a decent grocer
- rufus_foreman 4y agoI love our grocery stores too. But you need bigger dreams.
- j-bos 4y agoBeastman82, you're dreams are good enough :) In all seriousness, having the massive variety of choice at reasonable (I grew up eating mainly plain grains) prices is a wonder.
- drewzero1 4y agoSpeak for yourself. I find I can never get everything on my list at just one store, so I end up having to shop through multiple stores to try and find what I'm looking for. Even then there are things I can't get at any store in town. I'll agree with them being wonders of the modern age but they are far from fulfilling my needs.
- KoftaBob 4y agoAre the items you can't find in the one store out of stock, or that store simply doesn't sell them to begin with?
- drewzero1 4y agoThe latter. (It wouldn't be fair to complain about stock shortages; everybody's suffering from those in some way or another.) I live in a small city in a rural area of the midwest that has a handful of grocery stores. We had two locations of a pretty good regional chain that offered what I would consider a broad enough selection of items, but several years ago they were acquired by a national chain and the selection was greatly reduced. I've been to that chain's stores in larger cities and they had a much wider range. Honestly I think they just made some (IMO) unfortunate value decisions when scaling down for a smaller market. Other grocery stores in the area each seem to have one thing they're really bad at: one is known for their terrible produce, another refuses to carry specific common items or brands, another is highly variable in what items they carry at any given point in time (regardless of recent shortages). It's certainly a modern marvel that we can have access to all of this food concentrated in one convenient place, I don't mean to diminish that or the work involved in getting it there. But I do think it's a space in which most if not all of the players (in my area, at least) could use some improvement.
- collinc777 4y agoHEB is hands down the best grocery shopping experience imaginable.
- tthun 4y agoI am not sure how this article got past any editorial checks. First they state prices are too low in the US to make any profit, then on the next paragraph goes on to talk about “yet” Americans getting served less. Finally reverting back complaining Americans are not getting a good deal. author also use gross profit of Walmart, which sells everything from salt to guns, as a measure of profitability for “grocery” stores. What are the “peddling” here - dark store as a concept ?
- drewzero1 4y agoRight- I would love to see the numbers compared with something like Kroger, whose main business is groceries. Calling Walmart a grocery store is like calling Target a grocery store-- technically true, since they both sell groceries, but neither of them seems to be especially focused on food. I certainly don't argue with the idea that our grocery stores suck, though I'm not convinced it's a solely american problem nor that the reasons are those given in the article.
- sieabahlpark 4y agoThe purpose of this article is to serve as propaganda. It purposely diverts the blame from the government to the "big bad stores"
- zugi 4y agoAgreed, I too was surprised to see such a fact-deprived article from the Economist. While reading it I wondered if the Economist had started a public "blog" section or something, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
- runeks 4y ago> author also use gross profit of Walmart, which sells everything from salt to guns, as a measure of profitability for “grocery” stores. The article has an entire paragraph dedicated to this: > Walmart’s shops are enormous, selling plenty besides groceries. Tesco operates over 4,000 shops, the bulk of which are its smallest. Walmart has only 4,700 shops in total, despite serving a population about five times larger. On average, its supermarkets are ten times larger by floor space than Tesco’s. Bigger stores increase consumer choice. A Walmart supercentre might stock 140,000 different items, compared with just 40,000 at Tesco’s biggest branches. But it also means they may be wasting a lot of space by stocking products that do not sell, adding to costs. American supermarkets sell far less per square foot of shop space than British supermarkets, notes Bryan Roberts, a consultant based in London.
- sdrabing 4y agoSomething about comparing the US to other rich nations rubs me the wrong way when, in my opinion, servicing a country as large as the US is very different from servicing a small island like the UK. The post talks about difference in margins and regional squeezing, etc. However, how much of the cost difference comes from transporting the goods? The post also mentions how large stores are, and how large of a selection there is, in US stores. That seems like it'd drive up the cost, but I don't hear Americans complaining about too many options. Honestly, I think it's an achievement that an American can eat as healthy for the same price as the French, they are very different countries geographically!
- triyambakam 4y agoNo mention of health food stores? I live in a small county and there are at least 6 health food stores that have abundant fresh vegetables, fruits, and dry goods.
- grendelt 4y agoHEB 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 and other chain grocers usually don't have the same draw that HEB does in markets where they compete.
- random-human 4y agoHEB 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 found in HEB's is usually cheaper, fresher and healthier than national brands. But if you want higher end organics in majors cities, their Central Market stores in Austin put the original Whole Foods to shame, IMO. The few times I would go to Randells or Walmart would be during larger holidays when HEB was closed and those stores were generally more expensive, had questionable produce and a disappointing selection of just about everything else in comparison. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-E-B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-E-B
- jen20 4y agoCentral Market is also in Houston and maybe other places - definitely not just an Austin thing. My biggest complaint is that they don’t take Apple Pay, which I assume means they are doing something scummy with data collection.
- jkqwzsoo 4y agoI 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.
- zozin 4y agoThe 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.
- astrange 4y agoThis is true, but it doesn't work to tell Europeans this because they seem convinced all Americans are poor due to being in medical debt. America is a very rich country and most Americans are globally well off.
- photochemsyn 4y agoFarmer's markets are the way to go for produce if you have farms in your area. Some are overpriced and upscale, some are cheaper than your local chain grocery store. You can also buy grains/beans in bulk at lower prices, often direct from farmer's coops, and have it shipped to your door. Get a pressure cooker for beans, a rice cooker, save on the gas prices as they're electric, and use an induction electric stove. If you want meat, well, that's going to get more expensive. Eating less meat, but higher-quality, is going to be healthier anyway (boycott the factory farms, grass-fed beef is probably best). However, you have to learn to cook. This is a barrier for some people. To me cooking is relaxing and I've got a lot of low-effort high-speed methods, but then I have a background as a wet lab researcher and that's about 100X as painstaking, where you're tracking every single thing you do in a lab notebook, mixing up solutions with precisely measured masses and volumes, adjusting pHs, running timers and working in this high-pressure environment where one screwup can waste a whole day's work if not a whole month's. Cooking in comparison, I don't use recipes, it's just pure fun. Get a decent collection of spices, that's important. Learn to clean as you go, and you can take most raw ingredients and go right to a great meal in half an hour. If you've never done much cooking, a course isn't a bad idea. Indian cooking classes are great for teaching you how to cook a wide variety of grains/beans/veggies. Baking is more of a hassle as you have to measure stuff out and be more careful with temps and times, and tends to take a bit longer, but has the benefit of being able to make larger dishes for more people in one shot.
- Vladimof 4y ago> Some are overpriced and upscale, some are cheaper than your local chain grocery store Some also sell imported fruits and veggies...
- jfengel 4y agoIndeed. I've seen bananas at the farmers market, and I don't live in Hawaii. One local farmers market puts in significant effort verifying that the farmers are indeed local, including visiting the farm. People still show up with trucks full of identical pies, swearing they spent all day baking them.
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- daniel-cussen 4y agoWell 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.
- annoyingnoob 4y agoI visited Barcelona in 2019. I was shocked at how much better grocery stores were, and how much cheaper, than in California. We are getting shafted in CA at the grocery store.
- ComputerGuru 4y agoDid you get yelled at by an old lady for touching the produce with your hands?
- annoyingnoob 4y agoNope. I did get some funny looks for buying peanut butter.
- havblue 4y agoFrom the central point of the article, certainly prices are going up, but a lot of us think of quality dropping when we see the title. I'd be surprised if many people think Whole Foods has maintained its image since being bought out.
- sureglymop 4y agoSwiss super markets are pretty great (although expensive). When i visited the US and went to stores like Target and Walmart that was kind of eye opening though... pretty terrible.
- rco8786 4y agoAnecdotal I guess but I’ve visited 15-20 countries across Europe and Asia in the last ~10 years and the supermarkets were largely not great relative to your average American Kroger.
- Vladimof 4y agoKroger has some good deals, but the Kroger brand is often inferior in quality when compared to Walmart's brand...
- istorical 4y agoYeah I think the like lowest end bread at an Italian grocery store is going to be way better than the lowest end "bread" at an American grocery store, but the difference is at the American store there is literally (I shit you not) 50-100 varieties of bread and a lot of them are decent (actually by a lot I mean like 4-10).
- m_mueller 4y agoWhich I think generally means you have to be more savy on wha to buy. But tbf. specifically regarding bread, coming from German speaking region, I could never get happy in my (limited) US experience. The standard there seems to be adding sugar and that just straight up ruins bread for me.
- noirbot 4y agoThat's all going to depend on where you are. Bread seems like a big division - shelf-stable bread is a lot less of a thing in Europe, likely because of a longer tradition of bakers. If you're in a major US city though, I've never had an issue finding French/German style breads, and usually at a normal grocer, if not at a specialty baker.
- GiorgioG 4y ago> shelf-stable bread is a lot less of a thing in Europe, likely because of a longer tradition of bakers. I don’t think tradition of bakers has anything to do with it. In France going to buy a baguette every couple of days is the norm (or was when I lived there as a kid). In the US, we generally do one weekly grocery shopping trip, so shelf-stable bread becomes the convenient default.
- Vladimof 4y agoIf I place a 4 item order from walmart.com, they will do whatever they can to get it to me as quickly as possible... sometimes I get a $35 order in 4 different shipments (and the shipping was "free" because items cost the same as in-store)
- Overtonwindow 4y agoRelated, and an outstanding read: ”The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket” by Benjamin Lorr
- TYPE_FASTER 4y agoI've had good luck shopping at local co-ops. Here are a couple maps: * https://grocerystory.coop/food-co-op-directory https://grocerystory.coop/food-co-op-directory * https://foodforchange.coop/featured/u-s-food-co-op-map/ https://foodforchange.coop/featured/u-s-food-co-op-map/
- treeman79 4y agoIn some ways the American supermarket ended communism. Boris Yeltsin was shocked by full stores. https://www.nhregister.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When-Boris-Yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-Clear-5759129.php https://www.nhregister.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article...
- chiefalchemist 4y ago> Today Americans spend a smaller share of their income on food to be cooked at home—about 6%—than people in almost any other rich country... Well then, where is that windfall going? Or do Americans not cook at home all that often?
- istorical 4y agoProbably due to eating out way more often and eating shitty cheap processed foods for the meals they do cook.
- formerkrogemp 4y agoPrior to the pandemic most people in cities would eat out more often. Now with the rise of the hobby baker, lockdowns and remote work killing restaurants and commuting, homemade cooks, and inflation tightening budgets more people are cooking at home. Also, British grocery stores are just sad mate. Aldi is lovely for its low prices however.
- bluedino 4y agoWhy cook at home when you can have overpriced takeout delivered?
- throwaway892238 4y agoI guess people have forgotten the world before supermarkets (the replacement for traditional 'grocery stores'). You could not buy a pineapple or a banana or an orange. It was impossible. What made it possible were the literal overthrow of governments by corporations that acted like pirates with a monopoly on a given crop, in combination with technical and logistical revolutions. It's also amazing to see supermarkets getting the blame. Food prices are almost entirely based on trade deals and exploitation by food producers. Supermarkets are just the last mile in a long chain that includes not just food producers and transporters and sellers, but competing markets with politically-influenced tariffs and government subsidies. The price you pay for food has almost nothing to do with the supermarket, unless said supermarket has such a stranglehold on its markets that it can dictate prices up the food chain (Walmart is the only one in the US like this afaik). Yes, America, your food is more expensive now. Because for the past 70 years, your food prices have been artificially lowered as a result of anticompetitive market manipulations, government subsidies, backroom trade deals, and changing global environments. The majority of fresh produce you get in a US supermarket isn't even from this country! And let's not even talk about the sizeable portion of this country that doesn't even have access to fresh produce, regardless of cost. Your ability to "eat healthy" is more of a political act than a gastronomic or commercial one.
- fny 4y agoThis true, but it's actually not the proximate cause for higher food prices: excess stimulus and higher energy prices are. 1. Government spent $1T. 2. Fed made it stupidly cheap to borrow money. 3. We have under invested in the oil and gas industry for years, further industry consolidation after the COVID crash has led to high natural gas and diesel prices. We lack the equipment, manpower, and capital to expand. 4. Fertilizer is made using natural gas for feedstock. Diesel is used to transport food. 5. Ethanol is made from sugar cane and corn. It's used as a fuel additive too. This puts further pressure on food prices. 6. Toss in Ukraine/Russia, it gets even worse.
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- 1270018080 4y agoGrocery stores are amazing? They're the ultimate feat of human engineering. I'd trade the internet for the modern grocery store.
- MonaroVXR 4y agoAgree, well, if I didn't agree I have no food.
- DubiousPusher 4y agoI 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 direct from growers, at various markets and from our garden. I would get strawberries once a year when they were plentiful enough to be affordable in a pallete from a local bulk market. Baked goods were what you got from home, otherwise you could have generic branded spongelike bread loaf. American supermarkets blow my mind. I can get strawberries, blackberries and blueberries year round. There is a butcher in the store selling fresh high quality meats. There is a bakery producing French roundloaves, donuts and cookies, most produced in the last 24-48 hours. It's incredible. And yet, 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. I'm not judging. You can't beat a frozen pizza for satisfaction/effort, especially when you weren't expecting to feed anyone. But I can never get over the variety in my local produce section. When I see people share "fast" recipes on YouTube they involve jarred sauces, spaghettiOs and raisins. (Fuck raisins.) You can make a great meal fast with few ingredients. If you take the time to have brown sauce or demi glace on hand. Even with the aid of the supermarket and all it can provide, good food takes time. And that requires sacrifice. One parent has to come home after 8 hours working and cook. The kids can't do extracurriculars every week of the night. If you want to enjoy food culture, both cars have to be in the driveway a couple nights a week. And IMO that's why class and America's work culture have a lot more to do with our poor food culture than our grocery stores.
- Thorentis 4y agoAustralia has the best supermarkets in the world, hands down. Why? Because we grow and produce almost all of our fresh produce, dairy, meat, and seafood. There are some exceptions for seasonal things, but the Australian climate allows for almost everything we eat to be grown here. The solution to this problem in the US and the UK is less globalism, not more.
- noirbot 4y agoIs that true? I feel like most of the stuff I see in stores in the US is from the US or Mexico. Maybe South America to deal with seasonal changes.
- nmfisher 4y agoI can't tell if you're joking or not, because the quality of fresh fruit, vegetables, meat and poultry at Australian supermarkets is incredibly mediocre (and even that's being generous). I'd rank Australia near-bottom of the dozen or so countries I've lived in/visited when it comes to supermarket quality[0]. Homogenized, bland food pumped full of water, optimized for profitability, shelf-life and appearance rather than nutrition or flavour. [0] to be fair, the USA is even worse.
- thundergolfer 4y agoTo add some context to your comment, which country has the best, and what’s the name of the best chain in that country?
- nmfisher 4y agoFor me, Spain or Italy probably competing for top spot, with one of Carrefour/Mercadona/Esselunga being best for standard (non high-end) weekly fresh shopping. I even rate Vanguard and Carrefour in China, and Fairprice/Cold Storage in Singapore, above Australia.
- morsch 4y agoAustralia is so large that that's not very meaningful. Early in the year and throughout, a lot of fresh fruit sold in Germany is grown in Spain. That's 2000 km, around half the distance between Perth and Sidney. If I consider that as Australian-local, food from the entire Mediterranean is locally grown.
- mgraczyk 4y agoIt 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 for ~$2 at the cheap store, or I can get an organic fancy one for $15 at Whole Foods. I can also get a normal brand name (Horizon) for either $3 or $6, depending on where I buy it. Finally, Safeway has a unique ultra-pasteurized product that is way better for me (lasts for months) for ~$4. Very difficult to make any generalizations about service or value.
- sydthrowaway 4y agoYou are clearly ultra-wealthy, so don’t speak for the majority of Americans
- jessaustin 4y agoEven paupers deserve some cream in their diet.
- yaomtc 4y agoThis reads like sarcasm, but I don't know. I wouldn't assume someone is ultra-wealthy because they live in SF.
- jfoutz 4y agoI lived around Geary and 7th. Similar experience. So many grocery stores. They're all tiny, and heavily focused on different ethnicities of food. The halal butcher was great. Meraki permanently closed, but it was great for fancy food. The thing that was most mind blowing was the corner liquor store having fruits and vegetables. Not much, and different every week - but something. I was living in that area for the lockdown. A few different places I regularly visited offered toilet paper. They let me know if I needed some they would help me out. I grew up in a small town, I moved to the "big city" for school. San Francisco is really special in regard to food. I don't know, but I'd guess old parts of all major cities have a pretty spectacular grocery stores. Let me assure you, you're in a special situation, that most folks aren't. Old cities aren't enough, they need that daily foot traffic, consistently, forever.
- tonymet 4y agoconsumers bear some responsibility for demanding low quality convenient instant prep food. most of the shelf space is wasted on junk food . if consumers cooked even simple meals, then market would be 2/3 smaller . an entire isle for breakfast cereal, one for cookies, and half an isle for canned beans ? that means everything had to cost 10x as much .
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- hedora 4y agoSo, the article claims the average price for a day of nutritious food in the US is $3. How is that possible? Is anyone here close to spending $21/week for all the food they eat (ignoring luxury items, etc)? That hasn't been possible for me for at least 20 years, and when travelling to cheaper places (pre covid), it doesn't seem possible there either. Where are these average food prices?
- slang800 4y agoI couldn't find the UN report that they got their chart from. However, they only said "providing adequate calories and nutrients", which is a low bar. I'm guessing 1.5kg of dry white rice can be found for around $1, and that covers the "calorie" needs. The rest of the budget can be spent on vegetables, nuts, beans, lentils, etc. to cover the "nutrients". It would be a pretty sad diet, but I think you could hit the numbers they're looking for.
- hedora 4y agoI see. I was assuming it would be a balanced diet, at least. In that case, I'm having difficulty getting worked up over rice and beans (a tiny percentage of my grocery bill) having a small markup on average in the US.
- jandrewrogers 4y agoI could easily live on that much per day if I chose to, cooking simple (and delicious) country food from my childhood, made from fresh ingredients. Or being a bit selective about the partially prepared food I buy. That's paying big city grocery prices. Anything else is more an unwillingness to cook or lack of imagination. To put it another way, I am perplexed by the idea that it needs to cost much more than $3/day to feed yourself healthy food in the US, whether or not you have that as your budget. I'm not sure how it wouldn't be obvious that this is eminently achievable without sacrificing a good eating experience. A bit less meat, a little more legumes, and you're done.
- presentation 4y agoThis article is mostly about costs but being a Japan resident while most things are more expensive and productd are mostly only around in season, produce tastes so much better than what I bought in the USA so I’m not complaining.
- jessaustin 4y ago...and our hospitals, and our police, and our schools, and our military, and... The problems may run deeper than initially thought.
- j7ake 4y agoComparing grocery stores in USA and Europe (let’s say Italy), one big difference is that USA has a much larger variability in quality of products. In usa, You can buy the cheapest meats to the most expensive. While in italy the lower bound of meat quality is capped: a low end meat in Italy is medium to high end in USA. It makes grocery shopping in Italy much more pleasant than in USA. You go into any grocery store in Italy and you are assured that you will get good quality products no matter what price range you pay.
- wreath 4y agoI wouldnt compare meat in the US to all of Europe. No idea about quality of meat in Italy but in German supermarkets even high end beef tastes like shit compared to what you would get (non high end) in the US.
- j7ake 4y agoEurope splits into the “olive oil / Mediterranean” countries and “butter” countries. Usually the Mediterranean countries have better grocery stores compared to the butter countries.
- jillesvangurp 4y agoMuch of the Mediterranean has amazing produce. The few times I was in a US supermarket, I was amazed at how pricey the food was and not that impressed with the variety of food. I mean, you'd expect to be impressed in e.g, San Francisco by the local produce. For that I had to go to the Farmer's Market, which charges an arm and a leg for nice produce that I would get at a quarter of the price in my local super market. IMHO, US supermarkets have very little on e.g. French supermarkets. I'm originally from the Netherlands, which has a pretty competitive range of supermarkets. But there's nothing like the French ones. They are huge and well stocked. The French obviously love food and don't really tolerate bad food. So their supermarkets are well stocked with amazingly good quality fish, meat, bread, cheese, fruit, vegetables, etc. I'm less familiar with Italian supermarkets but I'd expect they are even more fanatical about good quality food. I've been to supermarkets in Spain and Portugal as well; same deal. I currently live in Germany, home of Aldi and Lidl, which are big here obviously. My local supermarket is a Rewe. They are alright. 300 meters from my front door, I treat it like my walk in fridge. Convenience is key for me. I think Walmart actually tried to expand to Europe and more or less failed. It seems like European supermarkets are doing better in the US.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y agoOne simple thing that I find hard to find in American stores is loose leaf tea. There are 100s of bagged tea varieties, but only a couple of leaf tea packs, something hipstery organic soulful at 3x times the price.
- unixhero 4y agoSafeway in the SFO Marina is absolutely awesome. That is also the only datapoint I have from the rest of the US.
- herbst 4y agoAnyone else basically stopped using supermarkets? I buy my diaries from my neighbors (there are fridges with pay qr codes everywhere), meat in big packages directly from organic farmers via postal service, fruits and vegs from farmer markets (mostly digital ones these days) and every day things like oil, flour, sugar whatever directly from a local organic distributor. Buying this way, and buying enough for a month I literally pay less (mostly) for organic/directly from farm than the cheapest supermarket option. Maybe thats just a Swiss thing however. And I don't have to waste time & petrol shopping anymore.
- mark_l_watson 4y agoI can’t really agree with most of the article. I think that while there is some price gouging, mostly food price increases are simply an effect of inflation. I like the generality of super markets. I like to cook so I buy whole grains/rice, lots of fresh produce, a variety of foreign/exotic spices and prepared sauces, and occasional free range/no feed lot beef. On the other hand, I know people who don’t have as much free time as I have and they can get frozen/canned, etc. food that is fast to prepare. Everyone gets what they want or need. That said, my wife and I also frequent the weekly farmers’ market, and I go to a tiny store where I see local producers unloading locally grown produce from their pickup trucks. I wonder if a byproduct of inflation might be more people cooking healthier meals from bulk/cheaper staples.
- 2Gkashmiri 4y agoi live in Kashmir valley which has historically survived on rice as a staple diet. even today, due to political, historical and social reasons, everyone (actually everyone) has a stock of 100-400 Kgs of rice at anytime during the year. this "stock" is religiously followed by every household. This also means for a small family, "survival" in case of trouble is much more reasonable because like rice, historically every family just "adjusts" whatever family needs are. families do not "move out" unless there is a house ready to move into. that means, for the most part, a family in difficult times has only daily milk and something to have with rice to survive. i have done that, every kashmiri has been there so its pretty much normal. About grocery stores, we still have an informal system of agriculture. there are no big chains, a farmer can bring his/her produce to a market and have small retailers who buy in small quantities (5-50kgs, depending) and sell that produce on their small shops. your "farmers market" is "the" market so the prices do not fluctuate much or like, there is no corporation that can influence prices
- mark_l_watson 4y agoThanks for your comments, very interesting.
- methuselah_im 4y ago
- euroderf 4y agoNo matter where you shop, it will be absolutely impossible to figure out where the eggs are. They fall into no typical aisle category. Someone please create a crowdsourced website wheresthedamneggs.com
- kkfx 4y agoI can't talk about level of mass-food distribution in USA, being European living in EU having only visited very few parts of USA for a very little time but in general terms: transports was and are the key to have much, much more, since the model of a self-contained starship able to produce locally 99% of it's crews needs and desire exists, unfortunately, so far, only in the fantasy domain: we made many things around the world but never all in the same place. However the mass distribution of food have also very nasty side effects: pushing agriculture toward large and specialized enterprises scattered across the globe *apparently* have raised the overall output but in practice have lowered the efficiency and resilience of agriculture. The push toward standard sizes and varieties is equally harmful: we have create a seed monopoly with hybrid varieties *explicitly* made to keep their characteristics just for one generation (one year) tie farmers to the monopoly itself EVEN WITH LAWS making hard to sell different/non-standard varieties/calibers. Similar nasty things have happen for animal farming: artificial insemination done by very few and very large entities have crushed the genetic variability of animals, surely cows produce more milk etc, but are far more fragile and so on. Long story short: exaggeration in the name of business have create a short-term hyper-abundance and now we are in trouble to keep the food production at sustainable level FOR NOW, not really knowing what to do for the future. We can't right now "coming back to the old school", but we must do our best to annihilate modern mass-distribution as it is because we are already in a mess, and the future is far nightmarish. I do not know how we can evolve, local scale farms might be self-sufficient for low dense areas, but not on scale, so not enough even to nourish the industry we need behind to have all needed gears and tools.
- wly_cdgr 4y agoLol, what. American supermarkets and grocery stores are probably literally the best shopping experiences of any kind in the world. This is some lobby ass hit piece ass bullshit. Par for the course for this rag
- SNEKmount 4y agoMy contribution, the over-the-shoulder cellphone holder, is just one recent innovation helping groceries and personal shoppers to reduce costs, save time and enhance revenues and so on (https://SNEKmount.com https://SNEKmount.com) Amazon, as well as owning Whole Foods, an upmarket grocer, now runs 29 “Fresh” supermarkets, mostly in suburbs of large cities. At these stores shoppers need not use a till at all, instead being automatically charged as they pick items off the shelves and walk out. Until recently, home delivery of groceries in America (unlike Europe) has often relied on gig-economy workers walking round ordinary supermarkets—a costly model. But that is also changing. Walmart’s head of e-commerce, Tom Ward, is British and has brought ideas pioneered in Britain, such as “dark stores”, where goods are packed exclusively for delivery. In Arkansas, Walmart has even experimented with dispatching groceries by drone. On May 24th it announced that the programme is expanding to five more states. How much these ideas will change how Americans shop is unclear. Cutting product lines is often unpopular; big cars and big fridges still support a model of big grocery stores with surprisingly high prices. Still, as consumers fret about inflation, the pressure on American supermarkets to innovate and cut costs is bound to grow.■