There's a YouTube channel[1] explaining the difference between North American cities and European ones. As a resident of Amsterdam he covers this city a lot.
I'm from Zurich, Switzerland. I don't own a car because everything I need is either in walking/cycling distance or reachable by public transport. While I've been well aware of the car dependency situation in North America, watching a few episodes from the mentioned YouTube channel, made me realize that this is a self-inflicted problem because of car centric zoning and development rules. The often cited "greater distances" are in fact the result of these, not the cause.
I'm in Chicago in Rogers Park and own no car. Everything I need is walking distance and I get to work via commuter rail that is a block from me. It's awesome.
Very interesting link (@Not Just Bikes), didn't think it's so bad in the US with pedestrian walkways.
I mean like I live in the Romanian suburb and it's not great, but supermarkets everywhere and walkways alongside car roads is the norm. What we still try to catch up is Netherland-ish bike lanes, problem's when they do it at all, "they" (city roadworks) implement it in a very Balkan way: they made a bike lane allright but every 10 meters there's a crossing with a 10 cm bump, makes biking on the lane rather impractical if not impossible.
After having a look at the picture, it's obvious that bump is not by design, if you take the height of the asphalt layer into account, which is visible to the right side, but not there yet, where the bike lane is crossing the layer of compacted gravel.
So you are complaining about what is essentially an unfinished construction site ;-)
That aside, I tend to fly over such obstacles by jumping, since I can't remember anymore exactly. Early childhood, or such.
ottawa, canada. no car for 9 years, i live downtown but yeah everything is spread out pretty far outside the core dt area. Worst part though is the culture expects a car more than you actually need one in my exp.
After spending a few weeks back in Europe (after 8 years in the US), it quickly came back to me how much easier it is to live a healthy daily pattern of life there than it is here. In particular: Shopping for food in the US is almost always a separate trip in a car or a bus or on foot. Whereas in Spain it's common to go meet friends, pick up some bread and veg from the store, meet more friends and pick up things from a butcher on the way home, then you start cooking and go out again later. Ane you can do this every day. In Amerca... you have to plan a trip with a car to buy more than you want to spend and stock it away, and at the end you want to go out and you don't even want to cook
In the UK, the supermarkets, the Internet, and modern 'town planning' have largely caused the demise of the UK high street.
In the 70s towns were smaller, fewer people had cars, and there were hardly any supermarkets, so people walked into the town centres and did their grocery shopping there.
Then in 80s we started getting the first out-of-town supermarkets with free parking. You have always had to pay for parking in UK town centres since I can remember.
And the UK government relaxed Sunday trading laws. Many family owned stores stayed closed on a Sunday - having 1 day a week off.
Then supermarkets started offering more 'range', to the point now where many UK supermarkets are like mini-shopping malls. Clothes, music, opticians, locksmiths, pharmacy, and so on. And they started closing their town centre supermarkets and moving everything to the new out-of-town ones.
At the same time UK planning laws now favour developers building 1-2000 homes with a couple of small shops, no High St. or Main St., and as many houses as possible built on all the remaining space for profit. These developments are unsurprisingly nowhere near town centres, so people need to drive. And they don't want to go into a town centre where there's no supermarket, and you have to pay to park. I don't really understand what we're trying to build over here.
Towns that have prevented mainstream chains (Sainsbury, Tesco, Starbuck, MacDonalds) from setting up, have faired far better. Butchers, bakers and greengrocers, small convenience stores (mom+pop groceries) all still exist in those towns, unlike those towns with nearby supermarkets.
So in part, we're not as bad as the US, but we love our cars, and just blindly go to supermarkets now.
On average this saved people a lot of time and money.
One thing to remember is that most women were stay-at-home mums and were grocery shopping every day. But once you have a car and a fridge (1970s) you can go to the supermarket once a week only, which saves a massive amount of time, especially when you now also have a job.
High streets need to be attractive. Old, dodgy shops are dead, clothing shops have a hard time. That's the way it is and best to go with the flow than trying to put things back "the way they were".
New housing developments are awful, though. The price gap between nice neighbourhoods with "old houses" and those will just keep growing.
It's not so much 'the way they were', rather, I'd prefer to live in a small town with a butchers, bakers, and grocers, so that I'm spending my money in the local economy, and that I'm getting higher quality produce, and back to the original post, shops that are within reasonable walking distance. The number of towns or villages in my area that have this are vanishingly small.
In fact, my medium sized town (20-30,000 people) has no butchers or bakers left. It also does not have a town centre supermarket. It does however have McDonalds, Burger King, Starbucks, Costa, kebab shops, and so on. You can probably guess correctly, that my local town centre is like ghost town.
It is extremely depressing that the UK is becoming like this, whilst at the same time planning rules and regulations (or lack thereof) are encouraging the centralization of shopping habits into large supermarkets in the chase for profits by the house builders.
Well, McDonalds, Costa, etc. provide jobs to locals, especially young people. That's the local economy as much as other shops.
Independent butchers and grocers have mostly disappeared because they are expensive and less convenient. Places were you can still find some are usually either 'posh' or where the local demographics has special meat/dietary requirements, shall we say...
The advantage of an independent butcher is that you can order in advance or ask them to source/prepare special things (in my experience that's the only way to find fresh lamb kidneys, for instance). But that is less and less the case, and people are less and less interested. And, again, it is much more expensive.
> Well, McDonalds, Costa, etc. provide jobs to locals, especially young people. That's the local economy as much as other shops.
McDonald's and the rest provide very low wage jobs to locals while leveraging their economies of scale to undercut local competitors on price, while all the profits go into the balance sheet of a company that's headquartered far away, sometimes in a different country.
They are precisely not the local economy as much as those other shops for that reason.
> McDonald's and the rest provide very low wage jobs to locals
I know this is about the UK, but just as an FYI, in the US, small service sector employers provide an even lower wage because they rarely offer tax advantaged benefits that big businesses can offer, such as subsidized health insurance premiums paid with pre tax income, and paying for retirement savings/public transit/daycare/life insurance/etc with pre tax income.
It is amazing the advantages big businesses have that can afford the time and money expenses of the paperwork for providing those tax advantaged benefits.
Interesting. In my country (Poland), pretty much most of the benefits and perks are taxed as income, so there is no tax advantage in paying employees with them instead of cash.
We weren't always like that, the laws started changing in this direction maybe 10 years ago. Before that, everyone with a decent job was getting a company car, an now company cars are only given for people who actually travel a lot on the job, and everyone else prefers the extra cash instead of the company car.
BTW the laws weren't changed to level the playing field for small companies, it was just our equivalent of IRS fixing loopholes to bring in more tax money.
> McDonald's and the rest provide very low wage jobs to locals
They don't provide lower wages than independent shops for similar positions, it's all above board, and they are happy to hire students. I am not convince that they price competitors out, either.
The industry is hard and opening a restaurant or coffeeshop is very hard. I think the thing is that the like of McDonald's and Costa are expert and know how it works, while the person who "always dreamed of opening their own coffeeshop" might not be realistic about what's required.
Also, these days people work far away for customers that are possibly all over the world. They use their money to buy products that come from all over the world. So what does 'local economy' mean? Providing local jobs is good whoever does it.
I think McDonald's are often franchises so they are local busineses even if of course they have to pay to the "mothership".
Those big chains drain money from the local economy though. Small independent stores only send the cost of supplies/restocking out of the local economy. Chains mean there is continuously less money circulating in the town and requires people who import money from other local economies. Having chains in your town means that within a generation or two, the town will be effectively dead and hardly ever grow.
> Those big chains drain money from the local economy though
Exactly, all revenue goes back to HQ, and then off to somewhere else.
In some cases being part of a large company means the smaller branches that don't barely break even stay open and it's "good" for those towns in boom years.
But as soon as there's an economic downturn, they are the first stores to be closed.
This is true for suburbs because the money comes from outside of the local economy since those people mostly commute to work. For actual small towns, nowhere near a large city, it's quite a different story, almost reminiscent of a 3rd world country.
I must be fortunate then, as my closest local butcher that have to drive to, is generally cheaper than my regular supermarket.
Supermarkets aren't exactly strangers to price fixing and ripping off customers. Once you've driven off the local competition, you can set your prices to whatever you want. My area is known for high petrol prices, controlled by guess who? Local supermarkets. Drive a few miles and it's 5p per litre cheaper.
McDonald's jobs are dead end and low pay, suitable only for kids. Butcher, baker, etc. are skilled life-long careers.
France has really got it right, in my opinion. I don't know how much they subsidize local business, or what their incentives are for training, or if it's just their cultural attachment to good food, but I've traveled across France and never seen a village of over 300 people that didn't have a butcher, a green grocery / dairy shop and at least two kinds of bakeries. Of course there's always a huge Carrefour within driving distance, but even that is stunningly high quality compared with even supermarkets in other countries in Europe (let alone the wretched quality of counter service at supermarkets in the US).
Well, actually France is one of the most successful markets for McDonald's.
France does not subsidise local business. In fact France is not business-friendly at all.
The French like quality food (and they also like McDonald's) and thus there is a viable market for it. That's all. It's the same in Spain or Italy, for instance.
Looking forward or Amazon deliveries to my lounge, and generative AI TV shows that go forever. Also AI generated events such has the superbowl. Everyday!
The UK puts plenty of supermarkets in/near town centres too, though, so if you live near a town centre you don’t typically have to drive out of town (or drive at all) to buy food.
It’s nothing like the US where the distances are huge and a car is all but mandatory in many/most areas.
Your rant is from a decade ago. Everything is delivered nowadays. Sure in the 70s the average housewife wouldn’t work and would walk to to the local shops during the week. Nowadays everyone works, so shops need to be open more hours.
The restrictions on Sunday trading are the worst things - the one time I do actually go to a shop is when I’m doing something like DIY and find that I need something at 4pm on a Sunday and a redox is closed, or when I’ve been away for the weekend and can’t stop at the normal local Morrisons as it had to close early.
If you want a town centre to be appealing then make it worth going to.
I live in one of the cities the Netherlands which for the large part gets around this problem because of a luxury(population density). We have both walkable shops and boutique stores, and if you’re the kind that prefers to drive to a big store that has it all, then they are in the outer rings of the city. Still bikable with a cargo bike to give you some context. But they have big free parking.
The thing that irks me is - I love shopping at these boutique specialty shops. But man they want to be open 9- 5 on weekdays and mostly are closed when I can actually go there to spend my money. This is just wildly illogical to me. Sure, the people who work there needs their evenings and weekends too.. but, who cares if they are at the shop on a Tuesday at 1 PM?
Looking at the next generation, I don’t have much optimism that such special shops would stay on for long. Some perhaps will cater to the niches and those that can afford very expensive shops. But, the largest parts of stuff is going to be delivered to home from industrial warehouses outside the cities.
Groceries (veggies, milk, meat and stuff) are probably going to be the o lot ones one has to walk into a neighbourhood shop for.
Need DIY stuff? Electronics? Clothing? Toys? Paper towel? Detergent? Anything non-perishable? You’re probably going to need to get online.
And a dutiful wife cooking that freshly bought food, with my pipe and slippers ready for when I get in, kids ready for evening inspection and off to bed, yeah sounds delightful.
This is also why I think and hope electric vehicle is not the global solution to the too much ICE cars problem, nor is archieving self driving on those cars. A popular solution doesn't make it the best one, it is just the best solution under certain circumstances. Yes I'm talking about tesla.
Absolutely, design of cities dictates behaviour. The secondary effects of this are interesting too. For example, european kitchens can be smaller because they don’t need to store as much.
Indeed! I was in SF for a few months. Finding affordable food was insanely hard. Fast food was both really cheap and everywhere. Fresh produce and basics like bread were expensive or hard to find, a long bus / tube drive away. Of course it's much easier to fall into that trap of shitty and cheap food.
Where I live the balance is much easier. Vegetables, fruit, meat, ... it's all relatively cheap and easy to get, there's supermarkets and bakeries everywhere. Fast food is relatively expensive, so you get something to think about: (expensive+unhealthy but easy) || (cheap+healthy but you need to cook)
Curious to know where in SF you lived. Generally there’s bodegas all over the place and you can find fresh produce there. Not to mention, the city has good bakeries everywhere. Fast food (the well known chains) are quite hard to find in most neighborhoods.
Is this just an urban vs outer suburb thing, tho? My experience of the US is largely limited to San Francisco and Seattle, but there did seem to be supermarkets within walking distance most places in the city.
I suppose you're talking about one certain life style where this kind of pattern fits well. I used to follow this exact description for many years when I was younger and did in fact live right in the center of a small city. It worked great for me. I remember one weekend where I suddenly craved a boiled egg and so just had to walk 5 minutes from my door to a farmer's market to buy a single egg which I carried home holding it in my hand. (The guy selling the eggs gave me a surprised look, but hey, I was single back then, one egg was enough...)
But later in life, with three little children, I just simply couldn't imagine a trip to the grocery store every day. Having moved out to the suburbs, public transport or walking wasn't an option any more, and I was already doing enough driving around what with the kids going to school and all kinds of afternoon activities.
I would have actually loved the more car-centric design of North American cities where at least the driving is made easy. No squeezing through small alleys, tiny parking lots (if any) and 3+ stops to get all the things you need for the week.
The reason the North American car centric design works (too) is that it optimizes for convenience rather than environmental concerns (and it's not like European cities optimized for the latter either, they were simply built in pre-car times). Even if the driving distances are further, that doesn't necessarily mean that the overall shopping trip is much longer in practice. And even in cases where it is, I just find it much less stressful to drive in North America. Of course, your mileage may vary.
When I lived in the city center many years ago, there was one larger grocery store about 5 minutes away from me on foot and a couple of smaller stores specialized in one thing or another in the same area. And while that was very convenient for me, it also meant that there was constant traffic in front of my house from people driving to these stores. There wasn't much zoning rules, apparently, the stores where all just mixed in among the residental houses.
I'm in London and there are larger stores with parking lots. That's how my parents shopped when they had multiple kids at home. The difference is that they aren't the only option. The car centric design pushes every journey, every person and every need into a car. Convenient if you meet the requirements (age, wealth, ability) and massively inconvenient if you don't.
This describes to a T my experience. The insane hassle of packing up a temperamental 1 or 2 year old, who will probably spend half the time screeching while everyone gives you nasty glares, and their bag of goodies to go anywhere really kills the desire to do anything but a megabulk run in a bulky McAmerican car every couple weeks.
American zoning laws have made anything else illegal to build, so yeah, you are kinda suggesting we should design our country for a specific way of life.
From what I've seen in recent years, we don't have school buses in a lot of the US anymore, either. Now every school-aged kid has to be transported back and forth in a personal vehicle.
Even if supermarket is in walking distance, the limiting factor is ability to take all the purchase with me. Using a car i could fill half the car with the purchase, so i do not need to visit it again for several weeks.
> “It's the same in most large cities. Of course this is paid for at the till...”
I think it can actually save you money.
I’ve lived in London flats where there were multiple large supermarket brands (Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, ASDA) all within easy walking distance. And smaller corner convenience stores like Tesco Express and Co-op and even Amazon’s one. And also some of the discounters (Iceland, Aldi) only slightly further afield.
If you want to save money you just go to whatever supermarket(s) have the best offers on whatever you want to buy. Waitrose, for example, would often have good deals on olive oil and coffee beans but tended to be expensive for fruit & veg. So I’d buy my olive oil and coffee there but go elsewhere for my apples and tomatoes etc… easy to do when all the shops are close together and you’re walking by them anyway!
Besides, you’d be mad to drive to a supermarket in London anyway, waste of time even if you’re buying more than you can carry: just order online, free delivery is usually available (with a minimum order value).
Coming from an American perspective, this seems nuts:
> So I’d buy my olive oil and coffee there but go elsewhere for my apples and tomatoes etc… easy to do when all the shops are close together and you’re walking by them anyway!
You're just walking into a supermarket carrying bags from other stores? Do that here and you'll quickly have "personal security" in the form of loss prevention following you around the store - if they don't stop you at the door.
> ”You're just walking into a supermarket carrying bags from other stores?”
Yes. This is 100% not a problem in any place I’ve ever lived. What else are you going to do with your bags? It’s not like you can check them at the door!
Some UK supermarkets now let you just walk around and self-scan your purchases using an app, skipping the check out. So I just pack the things straight into my bag or backpack as I go (no basket or cart), pay, and walk out.
Very occasionally it gets flagged up for a random security check when you go to pay, which just means an employee scans 3 random items from your bag to make sure they match what you scanned. But usually I just walk out straight past the security station and they don’t raise an eyebrow.
(Besides, if security are suspicious about you, they can just keep an eye on you from the back office CCTV anyhow. No need to follow you around the store!)
It's not a problem where I live (Poland). If you're worried about it, you can show the content of your bag to security as you enter the store, and also carry receipt from the previous store.
That’s not why it’s seen as suspicious, though. Shoplifters use large bags to conceal their stolen merchandise.
I drive a Jeep, and therefore don’t have a secure place to keep valuables. I’ve been followed in stores many times because of that, even though I make sure that it’s zipped up and worn over both shoulders in an attempt to reduce suspicion.
Seems weird to me that they actually physically follow people around in this age of CCTV, though. Firstly you’re going to be annoying / intimidating / insulting a lot of legitimate customers, who will shop elsewhere if they don’t feel welcome. And secondly because it must waste a lot of staff time?
In busy UK supermarkets (and malls) there will usually be security guard(s) near the exit. Sometimes they have a little security station where they can monitor the cctv themselves, or otherwise a radio in their ear connected to a back office.
If something suspicious is seen they’ll stop people as they leave and ask to have a look in bags etc.
Part of it is that they are intending to be intimidating - they want to be seen, to let the person know they're watching.
Ironically, at least for large retailers like Walmart, if they suspect you're actually stealing things they won't physically follow you. Instead, they will monitor CCTV and intercept you at the door. In fact, it goes further than that - they'll allow you to leave if the amount you stole is less than the threshold for a felony. They'll build a profile on you, using facial recognition, and intercept you in the future when the aggregate theft amount reaches the threshold.
This is all very variable, depending on the state, region, city, or even neighborhood. Some Walmarts have no visible security presence while others have multiple uniformed police officers (hired via private contract) at the entrances.
> "Part of it is that they are intending to be intimidating - they want to be seen, to let the person know they're watching."
Yes, but what's the point of this? Why risk intimidating legitimate customers? You're just going to offend them and they'll shop elsewhere next time, so you lost revenue.
And if they are a thief, don't you want to actually catch them doing it so you can ban them from the store, or prosecute?
The most successful shoplifters are probably the ones who blend in and don't look suspicious anyway.
If you stick to the offers at Waitrose it can be surprisingly cheap! (And the fish counter after 9pm on a Friday can be a gold mine of delicious deals for seafood lovers!)
Of course once they have you in the store they’re relying on you buying all the other overpriced (and highly profitable) items…
I’m not sure how true this is everywhere. Within walking distance (inner suburb of Dublin on the edge of the city center) I have two Tesco Superstores and about eight Tesco Expresses and Metros (Tesco splits its shop types into broad categories). The ‘superstores’ have the same pricing as each other and as suburban ones, the Expresses and Metros have the same pricing within each category, which is sometimes slightly higher than the Superstores. There’s also an Aldi and a Lidl; both are priced the same as any other Aldi or Lidl, as far as I can see.
If anything it’s more rural areas where you may see higher prices, in that your local ‘supermarket’ may be essentially a jumped-up chain convenience store.
The elevation in price is less location and more whether you're able to buy in bulk. With careful rotation discipline and a handcart it's achievable on foot though, although clearly more convenient with a car and a nice wide lot.
How heavy are your bulk purchases that you need a handcart? And how much do you save compared to just buying a kilogram of everything you ran out of this week?
For dry goods I don't even look at total price, I look at price per weight (wet goods, same but volume). It's almost always lower the more I buy. I'll buy the largest quantity I can consume before it spoils.
Off the cuff I'd say I save about 20%, and buy a few hundred pounds per trip. Probably saves us amongst a family in the vicinity of $1000/yr. This same concept extended to all other non-food consumables.
Not really. Where I live, big box supermarkeds are often more expensive, at least for non store-brand items. Also I buy less when shopping using my bike or walking. When I drive, it's so easy to just throw in a fridge pack I don't need etc.
I remember I had 5 supermarkets between 5 to 10 minutes walking distance from my home when I was living in Milan. 100 meters in 1 minute is 6 km per hour which is a brisk pace so the closest supermarket was at about 400 meters. Of course I never drove to them, I always walked and came home with a couple of bags two or three times per week, usually at 2 PM when the supermarkets are almost empty. Water weights a lot and could be a reason to go shopping by car but 1) I always drank water from the pipe in the kitchen since I was little 2) I would have to walk to my home from where I found a parking place on the street and that was often as much as walking from the supermarket.
As somebody who's lived in both Amsterdam and the Bay Area, the list of things that Bay Area car advocates say are impossible that I've seen work with my own eyes is endless.
I mean, when I’ve visited San Francisco, it seems to have supermarkets all over the place too (albeit rather expensive, not-very-good ones), so they even have a local model.
When I visited SF I found that to be the case in some neighbourhoods, but in others like... everything West of the downtown, e.g. towards Golden Gate Park, Richmond, Sunset, Twin Peaks, etc. was extremely barren from anything other than single family houses, with the occasional street with restaurants and shops.
Pop 200k city in Germany. Historical city center is roughly 2 km²
We have one Aldi, one organic supermarket, 4 REWE, 1 Edeka, and one Penny. Everything but Penny is less than 1 km away from where I live, the closest REWE is 300 meters.
This density falls off when you leave the center, but you still usually have at least one within walking distance.
in india, that is your local grocery store. every street has them. of all kinds, stocking different things, sometimes similar things.
these give employment to a huge number of people who are simple passive shopkeepers, they do not do any advertising, do not have to raise loans (though some do) or "invest" in anything exotic. just their stock in hand.
since the "concentration" of power is distributed, everyone owns their own shop and nothing more.
majority of the shops don't even have an employee. the owner/family does the whole thing. (mom and pop store)
what this does is, there are no shareholders to satisfy, no shoplifting at the scale it becomes a problem for corps and employees don't care.
this model should be adopted elsewhere too, the opposite of going hyperscale
Sri Lanka chiming in: this was the case when I was growing up. Two corner stores within 50 meters of my home. Personal relationship with both owners (they set aside my favourite paper, advised me on razors when I started shaving). Now that has been lost with supermarkets. It's all very convenient with a lot of choice, but something has been lost. Something experiential that can't be boiled down to KPIs.
I live near Green Lanes in London. Have a massive Sainsbury's (supermarket, nudging hypermarket as sells clothes), an Aldi, and then all up Green Lanes is a never ending stream of grocers in various med flavours (Turkish, Italian, Cypriot etc). It's chaotic, but I love being able to get anything I want from nice people any time. Only sad bit is the good Butcher closed (English style. There's still at least 4 Turkish ones, but they don't do pork, sausages, fancy aged steak etc.).
In the Netherlands this still exists, but mostly in the form of shops "from foreign people". So you have some Turkish stores, a Bengal store, a Polish store, an Afro-Carribean store. They are often run by one person or a family. The customers know where to find these stores without advertising.
Recently, in my town at least, there are a few larger Turkish supermarkets. I don't see the smaller shops take a hit yet, not sure if things will change.
I think on the contrary. Some Turkish and Egyptian small grocery stores in the Dutch town I live in sell better quality meat and vegetables than most chain supermarkets, for a lower price often.
> model should be adopted elsewhere too, the opposite of going hyperscale
So you are saying there were no grocery stores in the US before Piggly Wiggly opened up?
It was the model that preceded the current one throughout the western world. It clearly failed because it couldn’t compete with the efficiency (and much better customer experience and prices) provided by supermarkets.
It wouldn’t work without imposing some artificial limitations (as is the case in quite a few European cities) which have a significant productivity cost.
Last place I lived in the US still had corner markets (in the 1990s), because the neighbourhood predated cars.
OTOH I once worked in a city there that was younger than I was, and it was a disaster: nothing but drives to franchise "concepts", and had there been anyplace to walk to, there weren't even any sidewalks.
Now I live in a village dating to the 14th century, and don't even need to walk to the store, let alone drive: my groceries get delivered to my doorstep.
As far as I'm concerned, the traditional "supermarket" model is one in which the customer is used as an ersatz employee: you do your own delivery driving, you do your own stock picking, and these days you even do your own checkout scanning.
At first thought I'd see this in similar ways, with the exception of anything that is (or should be) fresh, like fruits, vegetables, meat & fish/sea-fruits.
How is your delivery experience with those?
At second thought I'd miss the haptics/olfactorics of smelling/tasting new kinds(or so far unknown to me) of cheeses, or the general discoverability of other items in store, like soaps, deodorants, shower-gels, shaving-stuff, etc.
Searching and ordering these online is a bad substitute for me.
At third thought all of this delivery-hype should be shunned, because it's just cementing in a class of low-wage workers, ready to be exploited, for the fucking convenience of all the the tasteless assholes giving a shit about such things.
Fruits and veggies are fresh[0]. We don't cook meat & fish ourselves. Refrigerated stuff comes in a special cold bag with ice; frozen stuff comes in a special box with insulation and dry ice.
We're old, so discovery is not a big issue — we explore other things; weekly shopping is much more about exploitation[1]. (being able to start from last week's baseline online is a big win over manual shopping, and to some degree we get exploration anyway, as the store always adds in freebies of items they'd like us to try)
Finally, we're not in an anglophone country, so delivery (and removal of the special containers afterwards) is done by a combination of (a) the postal service, (b) transport companies, and (c) employees of the store. All covered by at least union-negotiated baselines; all with insurance and much more than 2 weeks paid vacation; all paid decently[2]. No "independent contractors".
[0] if we cared more, we'd get them at the Friday farmers' market.
[1] we are eating to live, not living to eat
[2] just looked it up: transport employees are USD ~60k/yr, postal carriers ~67k/yr, so the store is probably in that range.
I would gladly take small, diverse stores who sell local products over big supermarket chains. Unfortunately, in most big cities in EU this is not an option, anymore.
Mom and pop grocery stores hardly ever sell different products from the supermarket. They will have less product diversity, higher prices and less fresh stock of perishables (vegetables, etc).
They work out best if they specialise in less in-demand items, like asian stores or fruit stores (where freshness of produce is their sole goal). But at the same time these simply can't exist every few blocks or so by the nature of being specialised.
Except the user in the comment above is describing stores which sell the same products as supermarkets just at higher prices and less inventory.
> small, diverse stores who sell local products over big supermarket chains. Unfortunately, in most big cities in EU
I guess it depends but where I am more upscale areas are full of such shops. Even right next to large supermarkets. They do fine because they offer niche/specialized products at much higher prices, to people who are willing to pay X times more for grass feed ultra organic beef raised in a “small farm” with the deceased cow’s former exact former address on the packaging than for factory processed anonymous beef imported from some “inferior” country..
However while superficially these might seem similar to family owned corner grocery in economically less developed countries they are almost nothing alike.
This model also means using of lots and lots of labor because sales volume of those shops is very small and it keeps entire family occupied. It means those people are unavailable for other productive activities.
The world is entering labor shortage zone that will last for as long as we don't figure how to fix reproduction without abandoning human rights (which isn't an option anyway because there are many countries and people can vote with their feet).
Economic models that are as efficient as possible and above all, labor efficient, are thus highly preferrable.
It's very likely we will see totally unmanned chain convenience stores soon.
Countries have a labor shortage while simultaneously having overemployment with people doing pointless jobs, or people desperately searching for jobs and hundreds of people applying to the same positions. People who "graduate" from working at a grocery store and putting money in their own pockets often end up sitting at a computer doing nothing but scrolling through the internet and putting money in their employer's pockets.
The real question is not whether they are a problem but why such wildly inefficient systems exist, and the answer is likely a factor in the desperation.
It seems they mean grocery store, rather than supermarket. Also take into account that in the Netherlands it's more common to go grocery shopping daily or every few days.
Is it more common to go daily because there are so many grocery stores? I'm not in Amsterdam, but Switzerland, where I am, there's supermarkets for every neighbourhood, I took to buying groceries nearly every day because it's so easy to pick them up on the way home, I can just go in and see what's on sale to make dinner.
I'd qualify the most popular chains here (like Albert Hein) as super markets. You can buy not only food, but also all the basic home supplies (cleaning products etc), large choice of drinks and sweets and so on. Basically all you need on daily basis as long as you're not too picky about the brands. But not home _equipment_. In years of living here in few places I've been only going to the store by feet. Indeed it's every few days as apartments are mostly small and you have no space for storing/freezing a lot of food. And there are mice everywhere.
It's probably because they are so close. I would imagine many americans would do the same if their neighbourhood was in walkable distance. I live in Germany and I do the same I go shopping everyday for 10 minutes for the things I need for the day.
In the Netherlands you have supermarkets, some big, some small and sometimes smaller mom and pop stores that sell the basics. They are outcompeted by supermarkets that tend to be very close as well. There are no supermarkets that sell everything, like you might find in France (Hyper Marche, Carrefour) or the US (Walmart).
What is the difference? In Europe we call basically everything a supermarket and its a synonym for grocery store. The only exceptions would be minimarket which are extremely tiny and hypermarket which is your US Walmart-style extremely large store that also sells electronics and clothes etc.
Not exactly true. There’s the notion of a corner store, in different languages. But these things don’t really exist anymore since supermarket chains have taken over, some in really small spaces. Btw, the chain stores are often franchises, so owner operated like in the old days, but with scale, brand and prices of big chains.
> There’s the notion of a corner store, in different languages. But these things don’t really exist anymore since supermarket chains have taken over, some in really small spaces.
They still exist, you just need to know where to find them.
Your corner bakery, butcher & vegetable store are still around, but they tend to serve an upmarket / luxury customer segment these days.
In most big(ger) cities there's "night stores", often run by people of Arab origin (like Lebanese), "toko" (Indonesian grocery store), and Turkish supermarkets (my go-to for dried legumes like lentils, chickpeas, mung beans etc).
Relatively new are organic / "bio" focussed supermarkets. Usually expensive... But they sell many products that regular supermarket chains don't.
> There’s the notion of a corner store, in different languages
The person you're responding to mentioned them as "minimarkets which are really small". They still exist and are very important as a last resort thing, or for exotic stuff.
In France sometimes they're called "arab stores" or something along those lines, because they're often held by people of visibly foreign origin (tbf I've seen more Indian/Pakistani/Sri Lankan/Bangladeshi than Arab-held ones), and are great for emergency shopping on Sunday/late at night when you realise you're missing something, but also for exotic products you wouldn't find in a regular supermarket like exotic spices or even high quantities of rice.
That means "things required for daily life". They definitely mean supermarket. It's about the same in Rotterdam. I'm an eight minute walk away from four different big supermarket chains. If I walk 10 minutes I can get to the second most distant Albert Heijn.
In Berlin, there is within the block of my apartment 6 supermarkets. There is even two of the same brand one of them on one corner and the other on the other corner.
I live in an American city, population ~250,000 in the city center; 2.5 million if you include the suburbs. Nearest grocery store to me is ~2 miles away.
Living in the US and within walking distance (5-10 min walk) of a grocery store, I'd much rather drive because I can buy more things, thus making fewer trips over the month. It's the same 5 min by car, but it's just a lot more convenient. I have plenty of exercise, so I prefer to not carry a bunch of bags to stay fit...
I'm in similar situation. I much prefer to walk, because it's healthier, cheaper, less stressful an more pleasant than driving. Also, since it doubles down as excercise, I don't have to do as much of it.
I carry the groceries in a large-ish (35 L) backpack.
Yeah it seems like a cultural thing whereas some people want to shop a little bit every day and driving is a hassle, others (like me) want to shop once a week or two and be done with it. Driving is not an issue, as I work and exercise from home.
In the centre of Amsterdam, most Albert Heijn stores (they are the most common supermarket in Amsterdam) are relatively small and only sell the more popular products. These are the places with lots of tourists, while real estate is expensive, so it makes sense. More outside the center where the living neighbourhoods are most Albert Heijn stores are on the larger side and have their full stock. Though some smaller malls have also smaller supermarkets.
In other cities in the Netherlands you see a likewise pattern.
Where I live (in Germany) there are 8 or 9 supermarkets within half a mile distance, two of which organic and one a "center" (i.e. big). I find that the inventory is limited only in 1 or 2 of the smallest ones. In all the others I typically find everything I need.
Amsterdam is not extremely big but almost 1 million people is not extremely tiny. And even then size little to do with these stats unless you are talking about places with less than a handful of supermarkets.
Flatness is nice (but weather is bad). However, the main thing is infrastructure and mixed zoning. When you build bike lanes, walkable streets and lots of shops, a livable city will follow, not the other way around. Build for the traffic you want rather than the traffic you have.
These stats on supermarkets will be similar in many European cities btw. Many cities in the US are also relatively flat, and you don't see the same thing generally.
I'm from Zurich, Switzerland. I don't own a car because everything I need is either in walking/cycling distance or reachable by public transport. While I've been well aware of the car dependency situation in North America, watching a few episodes from the mentioned YouTube channel, made me realize that this is a self-inflicted problem because of car centric zoning and development rules. The often cited "greater distances" are in fact the result of these, not the cause.
[1] https://youtube.com/@NotJustBikes