Apparently
most of the world hates my friendly neighborhood grocery store, and I'm still not entirely sure why. (Yes, I'm aware of the bias where people only post reviews on places like yelp if they only have extremely positive or negative experiences, but I've heard this opinion expressed by friends in person too
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I say this from the perspective of "a young white person who has lived in and shopped at many nicer places", which is doubtless not the perspective of many of Fresh Grocer or Supreme's regulars and is, by and large, how they stay in business. (Well, Supreme has only been there about three years. But Fresh Grocer has been there forever.)
Supreme caters to immigrants and the Hispanic/Latino population. Fresh Grocer caters to nobody in particular as best I can tell because until very recently they had a monopoly on the area and could afford not to care.
ETA: Hence Fresh Grocer has high prices and poor layout and somewhat dodgy quality, and a strangely hostile attitude towards its customers because it assumes that many of them are "poor and hence dodgy customers (though as a young white person this assumption by store check-out security may not extend to you as visibly)" or "rich and annoying and neighborhood-destroying Penn students (which as a young white person they will assume you are)" and Supreme while it offers a tremendous selection of nifty variety not seen in many places has unfortunately dodgy quality as well in their fresh foods as they seem to put most of their efforts into stocking unusual (to us young white people) items. This means that they can be a great place to shop for some things, though really, the corner market at ... 47th & Chester?... is a way better place to get all your Mexican staples and odds-and-ends, and Rice & Spice at 42nd and Chestnut is way better for everything Indian. (I should note that having recently been pointed to "Stuff White People Like", I am far more conscious of being White and full of self-deprecating awareness at the moment than normal.)
Many West Philly "young white people" (such as myself) took the trolley to 22nd St and went to Trader Joe's, which really is objectively both far cheaper and better laid out (far more navigable) than Fresh Grocer for everything except produce and bought all produce at the Clark Park Farmer's Market for the half-year it exists (like, right now!) because it's a great market twice a week. At the very least, I totally recommend the market, but I also heavily dis-recommend the two supermarkets.
Also, join west_philly. It's a fun group. I never did much in-real-life socializing with them, but they do have meet-ups and it's a nice online community as well (unlike many physical-locale-based LJ communities).
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It's interesting that you bring up Trad Joe's, because that's why this post is called Grocery Anthropology Part 1. I stopped by there on the way home last week and was...distinctly underwhelmed. First, as I mentioned before, the crowding. Fresh Grocer is legitimately crowded, but anyone who's gonna complain about their crowding and then suggest TJ's as a viable alternative on that front better be kidding me. Even though it's way better organized (I'll give it that much), I kept feeling like I was gonna knock ten people over with my basket if I so much as turned a corner. (And this was at 8:30 on a Tuesday night.)
I also had a lot of trouble finding my most boring of boring staples--lentils, grains (in decent quantities) and baking things--there between all the prepared food, but I'll let that slide since I wasn't actively looking for those things and thus may have missed them. Still, I get the feeling that Trader Joe's does snacks and prepared food really well but skimps on the boring-but-necessary stuff. Sure I'll be back for dried blueberries and meringue cookies as a treat once I get a paycheck, but that's clearly not a good everyday diet.
The real amateur anthropology though, was the time I spent discreetly looking at other people's carts while I waited at the checkout. What I saw is a lot of my young-white-people demographic (plus a few families) with carts full to the top with mostly frozen and pre-packaged things. Now, even though I'm cheap and a cooking snob, I know people's reasons for eating prepared stuff instead of cooking are diverse, so not going to judge people simply for having it. What does weird me out, though, is my gut feeling that,if I were to interview a lot of these people about their purchases, they'd turn up their nose at the idea of buying prepared stuff at a non TJ's/Whole Foods kind of place. (Even though Fresh Grocer appears to stock a good number of organic prepared foods as well. The Stuff White People Like entry about organic food actually sums up my ambivalence about this sort of buying pattern pretty well.
Short version--Trader Joe's snack food is definitely superior, but that's not something I'm shopping for on an everyday basis. For staples, I can't shake the feeling that I'm braving the crowds just for a fancy name and the illusion of being a more responsible shopper, and that bugs me.
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