I'm not sure of all the reasons but you absolutely do have a lot of smaller supermarkets in Europe with chains like Sainsbury, Tesco, Waitrose, and so forth (mo

I'm not sure of all the reasons but you absolutely do have a lot of smaller supermarkets in Europe with chains like Sainsbury, Tesco, Waitrose, and so forth (most familiar with UK) which are certainly smaller than most US supermarkets but pretty price competitive with decent products. As you say, in the US you have convenience stores which are pretty crappy for anything other than junk food or buying a coke. Even in NYC, I'm not sure bodegas are much better.