Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] grocery wars (waaaay off topic)

[Jonathan King <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Wed, 1 Aug 2001, Neil Bradshaw wrote:

> We had a Hy-Vee in Liberty. All the yuppies flocked to it. It even became
> a place where high school kids hung out. If anyone ever wonders why
> Liberty High School students drink so much...I mean seriously, hanging out
> at a grocery store is LAME.

OK, I can agree with that: hanging out at grocery stores is prima facie
evidence for lameness.  On the other hand, if Hy-Vee is a place that
yuppies flock to, I guess you can assume it will be a raging success here
on the west side of Columbia. :-)

> Hy-Vee is a disease, a cancer of this planet. You'll see.

But it sounds so wholesome...a product of Iowa and everything.
 
> What ever happened to the small grocery store on the corner run by people
> you know? Oh wait, Sam Walton happened. Nevermind.

OK, so while you can certainly blame Sam Walton for a lot of things, he
certainly didn't invent the idea of a supermarket.  The supermarket really
comes into its own when two things happen:  1) people buy more prepared
foods, and 2) people drive everywhere.  

For (1), when you think about it, if a supermarket were "just"
produce+bakery+butcher+dairy+necessary dry goods, then there's a definite
limit to how large one could get.  But then you start stocking pop tarts
and TV dinners, and it's all over.  Why?  There might be N basic food
stuffs most people use, but then the number of prepared foods goes up as
N^2 or worse.  Plus, prepared foods are more likely to be brandable, so
you only carry one brand of cucumber, but a dozen brands of pickles...

Now think of (2).  If people drive to your store, they have to park
somewhere.  So you have to build them a parking lot.  That's okay, except
that it probably means you have to build a new store on a larger lot, so
your costs are higher and you have to do more business...so you sell more
kinds of stuff.  The good news is that cars mean that people can buy more
stuff (they ain't lugging it home), but it also means that they will want
shopping carts, and then you're going to have to have an internal highway
system for shopping carts, which makes the store even bigger, and...

...and grocery shopping becomes a major production compared to the "pick
up a quart of milk and some beans on your way home" trips of yore. Because
it is a major production, its appealing to combine groceries with other
goods under one roof, since driving hither and yon is a bore. Especially
if you have kids to haul around with you.  Then you reach the point when
you're as likely to meet people you know in the grocery store as anywhere
else, and so are your kids.  So when *they* grow up, they know that the
place to meet people is this cool (air-conditioned, even) store where they
sell everything small you could want including magazines, music and food,
hence they hang out at the HyVee.

Fortunately, I've already developed a plan for how our family is going to
avoid that particular fate: we'll I'll just hang out at Barnes and Noble
instead.  Too bad they really don't have any produce there, though. :-)

jking



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