I realize @retrospek posted this months ago but I thought I’d share my experience. I am a yacht delivery skipper and may be shopping to feed five people for two or three weeks (plus margin for delays). It is unusual for a two person shopping expedition to lead to four carts full of food and other supplies. Sometimes there are language issues (my French is poor and my Creole is non-existant). sigh My approach is to call ahead and tell store management we are coming, check in when we arrive, and do whatever we are told. That may mean running through a regular checkout line (places like Riteway in the British Virgin Islands, where yacht provisioning is a regular thing) and sometimes they shuffle us off to the side and open a register to get us through and out of the way (a grocery in Martinique comes to mind).
At home when I’m behind someone with a full cart or two I have been known to slide forward and start bagging. The days of supermarket baggers are gone, at least where I live. So either the customer bags or the cashier does. I might as well step up and help to get myself through the line more quickly.
Also, why are Dr. Prager’s products located in that middle of the store area? Are they Kosher and that’s the difference? They aren’t with the regular veggie burgers or regular burgers.
Drives me nuts!
meatn3
(equal opportunity eater in the NC Triangle)
284
(A bit behind on the thread)
The grocery is not where you will find good boiled peanuts. Good boiled peanuts are found by the roadside. Sometimes by a produce stand, more often just off on their own. It’s a random thing - you find good boiled peanuts on a crisp fall day when you are driving back roads in the country.
I have to say, as a kid shopping with my mother, I had no idea you should put your cart somewhere. I always made sure it wouldn’t take off and hit a car, but until I was in my 40s, I didn’t realize the importance of cart corrals. Just sayin’.
ChristinaM
(Hungry in Asheville, NC (still plenty to offer tourists post Hurricane))
288
I went shopping last evening. More things split up. Three different places for cheese so I have to go back and forth. Four places for crackers. Why is the ladies’ shaving gel in a different place than the men’s shaving cream? Why are sausages in three places in the store? Who the heck thought it was a good idea to put sauerkraut in three different places?
Yup… Curious to see exactly what sorts of cooking oils my supermarket carries (even though I rarely buy any there, except the gallons of soybean oil I buy when they’re on sale to use for occasional deep-frying), I discovered that I had to check four separate areas in four different aisles: (a) the “cooking oil” section, (b) the “organic” aisle, (c) the “Goya” section, and (d) the “kosher” section. And I’m not at all sure I covered all the bases… Four places for flour, too (five, if you include gluten-free replacements): there was no flour in the Goya section, but end caps took its place. Bread is everywhere, from the “bread aisle”, to the “bakery section”, to the deli area, to free-standing displays in random spots all the hell all over the store. Tortillas, on the other hand, are found in a paltry four spots (that I know of…)
As for "why is X in a different place than X’ ", I guess it makes sense that yogurt has its own “section” - since the damned thing is about 30 feet long - but I still haven’t figured out why butter is next to the pre-packaged, refrigerated cookie and roll dough (which is next to the 15-20 feet of orange juice, which is past the aforementioned 30 feet of yogurt), a-l-l the way at the far end of a long aisle away from the mass-market cheese, sour cream, cottage cheese, eggs, and dairy cases…
I get it, but where I am, not all the markets are the same. “Ethnic” is a pretty fluid concept here, and I’m curious about the brands that get identified as “ethnic” vs those that do not. “Salsa” is a great example.
In addition to the shelf stable salsas, none of which I which think are in the “ethnic” section, are two separate refrigerated salsa sections, one with two or three specific brands, the other with other refrigerated items. Do the two or three specific brands identified as “Mexican” , that also have crema and other dairy, Mexican chorizo, etc, pay for that separate refrigerated section?
I figure I get my walking workout looking for items. Back and forth . Isle to isle . I should have known the canned chicken stock was on the bottom shelf below the jams and jellies
Nah, this stuff isn’t important enough to actually “stir me up”… Mostly I find it curious/entertaining in a “does it really get (most/many) people to buy more stuff?” sorta way, which I can only assume is the motivation behind it all…
And why are the “Mexican” dairy products (and salsas??) in their own section in some stores?
I think it’s like the kosher sections here - I suspect the idea is that where there’s a big enough customer base to warrant carrying the sort of stuff that hasn’t really “crossed over” into mainstream “American” consciousness (like 4 varieties of crema and some of the less well-known Mexican/Central American cheeses), those customers are more likely to look for/notice them if they’re all in one place, and maybe also so as to not to take up space in the more mainstream sections where “most people” wouldn’t be interested in them, and that space can be filled with other stuff to catch those customers’ eyes.
The sorts of food in the kosher sections are fairly specific, and just a small percentage of all the “food that is kosher” that NYC area supermarkets sell (most of it would frankly be better labeled “traditional modern Ashkenazi Jewish food” if that weren’t so woefully politically incorrect). A lot of mainstream American stuff “happens to be” kosher, and kosher-keepers know that and look for it in the appropriate sections (stuff like breakfast cereal, condiments, canned vegs, pasta sauces, etc) , but most non-kosher keepers aren’t likely to be looking for things like matzoh meal, the myriad Manischewitz soup mixes, Kedem grape juices, and the many specific-kosher-brand “duplicate” products like ketchup, spices, and flour, not to mention imported Israeli candy and snacks… So those are what go in the kosher section. Much the way things like Goya brand rices are in the “rice” section, while most everything else is in its own “Goya” section (which I assume Goya does pay for, as many brands pay for specific placement in large supermarkets), even if that’s immediately adjacent to the rest of the “Latin/Hispanic-ethnic” products…
At smaller grocery stores, I suspect it’s more an issue of where the store managers think or notice that people look for things rather than the more complex marketing arrangements involved at chain supermarkets, though at those places, I have noticed a greater tendency to put all the “similar” things in one general area, breaking them up on the shelves into smaller groupings by “ethnicity” or nationality. (I see this a lot at stores that cater to former-Soviet immigrant groups - and now their offspring - most of whom speak Russian as a second language/lingua franca if not as a first language, but have distinctly different culinary traditions or “national” loyalties when it comes to food brands…)
Bread is everywhere, from the “bread aisle”, to the “bakery section”, to the deli area, to free-standing displays in random spots all the hell all over the store. Tortillas, on the other hand, are found in a paltry four spots (that I know of…)
