Grocery Anthropology Part 1

[areyououtthere]

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

Comments

[areyououtthere]

I already get most or all of my produce and sometimes eggs and bread from the Clark Park market. Whichever grocery store I go to is primarily for dry goods.

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.

[fiddledragon]

At least in the grocery stores here, I find that Trader Joe's is a better value for similar products. It's still organic/gourmet, and I could definitely get lower-quality/more boring similar things cheaper elsewhere, but if you want the kinds of things Trader Joe's does well, it's usually less expensive to buy them there. And no, it's not a good place to get staples, unless you do a lot of cooking with unusual ingredients and don't have a health food/co-op/ethnic grocery or something like that close by.