American Grocery Stores

I always go into grocery stores when I travel -- whether in other parts of the US or in other countries. I find it fascinating and I think you can learn a lot about the place you're visiting by doing so.

[quote] What are your favourite American grocery stores and why?

Aldi is the official grocery store of DL, so not much of a change for you.

Not a supermarket, but there is NOTHING in the US that compares to Harrod's food halls.

I live in Southern Calif. and we have nothing like Wegman's or Central Market. We either have very expensive elite places like Gelson's or Whole Foods, mid-market chains like Vons and Ralphs, or ethnic (Mexican or Asian) markets.

I picture OP as Yakov Smirnoff.

Whenever I am in America, I will probably spend 5 hours in a Whole Foods, buying four overpriced products.

Bump

Most American grocery stores are shithole and the aisles are too narrow for your massively fat body, GermanGayGranny.

Piggly Wiggly is the Harrod's of Alabama

The food is all genetically mutated and flavorless.

KaDeWe has better.

I used to say that the variety of products in American grocery stores satisfied any urge I might otherwise have had to spend an hour with a psychiatrist. Understanding the order of the chaos and variety could have a calming effect. Wegman's was the best of the chains, with it's own mood lighting and shops within shops approach, and an emphasis on quality and good service.

In Europe I stop at a grocery store almost daily: the big one, the luxury one, the import shop, the everyday grocery, the shops for fruit and vegetables, seafood, meats, bread, other baked goods, or one of a number of small family-owned shops that have lesser selection overall but have a strength or two, maybe in prepared foods or cheese selection. There's nothing I can't find, but what I want determines where I go. Choices are fewer within any one store, size and packaging choices are typically fewer, but I prefer here. The food is better quality, more value is placed on high quality control standards, freshness is key (not shelf life), the packaging is minimal, the prices are good, the stores are sparkling clean, the staff are very pleasant even during the work of the Covid lockdown.

The breakfast cereal aisle in a big American grocery grocery store is maybe like Las Vegas: interesting to see once.

Lol I love this queen geeking out over the grocery stores.

I've read online that people who come to America from troubled countries always remark at just how much FOOD we have at decent prices in the stores. Shelves STOCKED! COMPLETELY!

Lol I wouldn't consider Whole Foods "elite" although I did recently have a great experience at their Hudson Yards location.

I'm partial to "the Fairway" with Trader Joe's a close second. OP I'd take you on a date in their cafeteria and let you shop. I've always said I feel wealthiest when my cupboards are full so I completely understand your sentiment.

ShopRite/Walmart/Associates/CTown are the low class ones, with often great products! I would recommend these OP for an experience, although watch the neighborhood!! I've been to Aldi, but frankly disappointed I've never stopped in foreign grocery stores myself.

R11, interesting. I'm curious to hear more about the European ones. The thought of having to go various places would drive me nuts! Although I suppose if you know the lay of the land, you adjust. I really like the concept of a one-stop shop that we have here in the US.

@OP, I forgot to mention. Yes, our grocery stories are like that because of capitalism. It's actually a great example of capitalism gone well (ignoring all the food processing to fill those shelves). Corporations own our food chains and they are competing for our dollars in the grocery stores. All the competition makes for fairly priced goods, with abundance of substitutes! Very price elastic (working on an econ course, sorry!). One of the reasons people shop at Farmer's Markets is because you get local, less processed food. With a shorter shelf life like R11 mentions.

Names like Tyson, General Mills, Kellogg's, Coca-Cola, Nestlé (European) etc....

R5 "What a country"

R12 i wouldn't consider Germany a "troubled country".

R4 How dare you forget Bristol Farms! Not a day goes by when I don’t miss that beautiful, wonderful store and all that it had to offer. The video will be a little slice of heavenly grocery store porn for OP.

Actually, I think American grocery stores were terribly homogenized until they started borrowing from more European marketplaces. A store like Eataly far surpasses anything homegrown.

I remember going to the original Whole Foods in Austin Texas for the first time and being blown away by the wall of olives—maybe a hundred or more barrels of every variety. My favorite food shopping is the Reading Market in Philly, though. Every kind of wonderful delicacy from Italian cannoli to sushi. There are Amish families and their pickles, sausages and pies. It’s like a walk through America itself.

I love going to the grocery store - it is definitely the biggest expenditure in my budget. I usually go every day and shop for a meal or two. I'm not particularly loyal to any one store and don't mind going to a couple or more for different things when I'm out running errands.

[quote]I'm curious to hear more about the European ones. The thought of having to go various places would drive me nuts! Although I suppose if you know the lay of the land, you adjust. I really like the concept of a one-stop shop that we have here in the US.

R13: The stores I mentioned at R11 are all within one block of my house: a small independent grocer two doors to the left with excellent breads and cheese and a counter of prepared foods; two doors to the right a medium-sized grocery part of a regional chain; at the end of a long block a large two-story national chain store with a reputation for profit sharing and excellent treatment of employees and for selection products of exceptional quality produced within the country; in between are fruit and vegetable stores, bakers, and other food shops, including some that sell only home-made prepared foods to serve at home. Lots of stores and none of them are fully one-stop for anything, but the convenience factor isn't really a problem; it's just a matter of picking the right store for what you want. If you shop every day or two you pick the right shop (or two if you want a special bread, or fresh shrimp, or the best tomatoes) and you're in and out of the shopping mode in far less time than it takes to traverse the key aisles of a huge American grocery store and wait in lines. One day the big grocery store is the answer, the next it's the independent grocer and a stop at the fruit and vegetable shop.

If you wanted to lay in a week worth of food and supplies, I can see you would favor driving to one huge store and buying everything in a fell swoop, but I'm better at buying the things I need one or two days, one or two bags at a time and it's usually just part of stepping outside to do something else.

Non-food items are not so much a part of grocery shopping. A store might offer six types of shampoo and 4 types of conditioner in a piece of shelf real estate not bigger than the door of an American oven. There are not fifteen choices of Colgate, there are only five choices of toothpaste all told, and all the same size package. Toilet paper: two types, two package sizes. Paper towels" one size, one basic brand. If you think of an American store with a large aisle devoted to toilet paper and paper towels, another to diapers and sanitary products, another to toothpaste and mouthwash and toothbrushes, another two aisles to cleaning supplies, and more for dishwashers and laundry detergents and associated, all those separate aisles are combined as one. I don't know of anyone who bemoans not having more choice of non-bleach laundry whitening products, or who regrets not having more shapes of sponge/nylon scrubby things to wash the dishes. Generally, there are not a hundred brand choices for any one product type, it's a smaller, select group. Where is there is much more variety is in seasonal foods, fruits, vegetables, meats, breads, etc.

I saw this thread earlier this morning and found it quaint, like most other GGG threads. Then I read this article and felt a bit sad.

I was in CVS last week, in the toothpaste aisle. An entire aisle and all they had was 1) Crest and 2) Colgate. For sure they had *infinite* varieties of Crest and Colgate: whitening, brightening, enamel strengthening, blah, blah, sparkle kids. Then there was a tiny section of Sensodyne. I’ll have to look in the supermarket drug store aisle and hope they have Arm&Hammer, which I don’t think is especially esoteric.

Yes, I do go to supermarkets and grocery stores in every country when I’m visiting. I remember one particularly annoying store, I was looking for shampoo. Wanted to compare different types because most were formulated for (local) people who had a very different type of hair than I have. Instead, the shelves were organized vertically by brand. So instead of having all the shampoo in one place, I had to walk around all the aisles in the toiletry section, looking for shampoo in each brand. Fortunately I knew enough of the language to be able to read the label and not buy conditioner by mistake.

Don’t get me started on the soap. It was not possible to buy one bar of soap. You had to buy three.

Thanks, R20. Looks interesting.

[quote]“You could consume the right food as an exemplar of your materialism, and exemplar of your moral virtue, as opposed to having the ostentatious Rolex,”

R19 Where do you live?

@buteverysongislike Very interesting post. I find Whole Foods very expensive. Why do you think it isn't high-class? And letting me shop sounds very hot. In exchange I'd let you sample my wares afterwards :P

Why didn't you like Aldi?

I lived in Berlin for 8 years, and it's true that the shopping experience there wasn't as pleasant as some American grocery stores. There is more variety here, both in products offered and in price. You have the giant warehouse type stores with cheap prices and no frills, or you have more upscale and expensive stores with soft lighting, etc., the natural/organic stores, and in large metro areas there are usually big ethnic supermarkets catering to Asians, Mexicans, etc. Some of them are very nice, with food courts and bakeries.

Yes, affluent areas in the U.S. have amazing grocery stores. My sister used to live in an area that had a depressing produce section. All I remember was iceberg lettuce and maybe some bananas.

I went to an amazing grocery stores in Paris.

I heard that German grocery stores close at ~ 6:00 p.m. Is that true?

Haven’t lived anywhere near a Wegman’s in ages. Was the design concept to make an entire store look like a Burger King bathroom? Do they still use brown and orange as the primary colors? I remember pink highlights at the butchers counter? Is any of this real?

I'm embarrassed by Whole Foods. It's obscene and it's not necessary if you know how to cook.

Maybe in the past, R26? But I only discovered them in the last decade.

As grocery stores go, Wegman's is attractive. I think their stores typically have 70,000 products where a large grocery store usually has 40,000, so they take some care with zoning the huge spaces into well organized sections. The lighting especially is good, the effect of warm incandescent lights in a domestic setting, not the usual harsh fluorescents. The produce and adjacent meat and delicatessen departments are put forward as the stars, a sort of suggestion of the informal arrangement you might find at a roadside farm produce stand, but on a huge scale and with nothing left to chance. Imagine a warehouse refitted for a deep-pocketed boutique brewery then filled out with fresh produce and lots more. They invest a lot into making the physical experience pleasant, and in having really excellent staff as well.

I'm sure some of you will find this tacky/weird/cheap, but when I travel, I like to buy the branded reusable shopping bags from different stores that we don't have in my area. (This is especially fun to do when in a different country.) Then you have a souvenir that is (1) cheap, (2) useful, both while on your trip and at home, and (3) a conversation starter when you use it at home.

Although there are some American grocery stores I like (Wegman's, Whole Foods), none that I have ever been in compare to stores in England. Everything you can imagine, every variety, fresh, amazing. Grocery in France can be pretty nice, Portugal, Italy, Spain, Greece - cramped, dirty, expensive, smelly, no thanks.

In Bavaria, grocery chains such as Aldi open usually Monday to Saturday from 7:00 to 20:00 and are closed on Sunday. Fifteen to Twenty years ago they closed on Saturday at 14:00, then later at 18:00. Today is a national holiday in Germany, so stores are closed the whole weekend.

R28, I may be a little older, but I look 25. The lady at the liquor store agrees with me, and it’s 10am.

Is Wegs the only grocery store you have been to? I think most chains have adopted this faux outdoor market feel. The incomprehensible space, bevvvy of food stuffs, and corrugated metal shining down on us!

I miss it when I could get an education in Spanish sausage, and a red weirdo.

Wow - stores closed the whole weekend! Whole Foods is closed exactly two days per year: one is Christmas, and I believe the other is Thanksgiving.

Id like to think of GermanGayGuy visiting an American grocery store in his Sunday best, smart hat, and white gloves just like Joan.

Spanish sausage.

"promotional" videos posted by the stores don't count! At least you should check user uploaded videos like those on youtube, tiktok and ig etc to get a better idea, but even for those, they don't always tell the whole story, some were posted for their entertaining or shocking values.

Yes I remember living in Germany when *all* the stores and shops closed at noon on Saturday. Downtown was like a ghost town.

[quote] Wow - stores closed the whole weekend! Whole Foods is closed exactly two days per year: one is Christmas, and I believe the other is Thanksgiving.

There are grocery stores in large German train stations that stay open on Sundays and holidays. However, they can be hellishly crowded at those times, for obvious reasons.

Who of you will be my American Daddy taking me shopping at a Piggly Wiggly's? Or at Gelson's?

There are 24-hour supermarkets in the US, although I think it's becoming less and less common (except for convenience stores like 7-11.) Aldi in the US is open from 9AM-9PM seven days a week. (At least in my area.) Many mainstream markets are open longer -- like 6AM-midnight, but I don't know of any major supermarkets that close on Sunday. Some states have restrictions on what can be sold on certain days or times of day, however.

It's strange that we always hear that Europe is less religious than the US (and becoming more so all the time) yet they cling to those Sunday closure laws. I guess they're just not as greedy as Americans.

Wegman's IS nice. I think it's a bit overpraised now - but 20 years ago it was the only one doing many of the things more common in grocery stores in the US today. It was probably the commercial force that pushed more standard markets to start selling better quality deli meats, for example.....and offering to slice it a particular way, put sheets between, etc.

Same for Bristol Farms......nice enough and definitely produce, deli, imported items are of a cut above.

I do miss Woodman's which was a chain in Chicago and southern Wisconsin. It was the opposite - no frills, but a huge store, bigger than a Wal-mart, all groceries and the cheapest grocery store I will ever shop at in my life. They had two aisles for cereal. If a cereal was made in North America, they had it!

Instead of 24 hours, the stores in my urban neighborhood close between roughly midnight and 6AM probably due to low demand and higher shoplifting rates then.

Sorry, OP. but if you want to visit an American Grocery Store...don't go to all the supermarkets mentioned here...they are not grocery stores in the traditional sense. You still have some left in towns across America and you may have the small Asian-American owned and operated grocery store in New York City, but you missed it by about 40 years.

I can remember growing up in New York, and upstate you would see local farmers selling their produce on the side of the road during the summer. The farmer (usually his wife and/or kids) would have corn, tomatoes, squash, and other vegetables on a hay wagon or flat wagon. It was great. You still have Framers' Markets in towns (and cities), vegetable stands, and what not across America.

In the small towns in upstate New York and in NYC of my youth, there were still grocery stores that might have a butcher in the back of the store. Most have disappeared.

[quote] There are 24-hour supermarkets in the US, although I think it's becoming less and less common (except for convenience stores like 7-11.)

The supermarkets in my small town are open 24 hours.

I hate it when stores close early and are closed on Sundays. I was in Salt Lake City on a Sunday and it sucked, super boring.

We still have the in-store butchers in Long Island. They don't have Wegman's (I don't think) but I went to visit family in Buffalo and was surprised by how huge it was. We have Stop N Shop which is just okay, and chains like Costco where you have to pay a membership fee. I love fruit and produce and have never tasted anything as good as when I went to visit family in Europe in a village up in the mountains. There was a traveling farmer's market that came to town and I bought everything I could. Everything tasted like it's SUPPOSED to taste, much better than even the local market's "organic" stuff.

[quote] In Bavaria, grocery chains such as Aldi open usually Monday to Saturday from 7:00 to 20:00 and are closed on Sunday. Fifteen to Twenty years ago they closed on Saturday at 14:00, then later at 18:00. Today is a national holiday in Germany, so stores are closed the whole weekend.

Thanks, R31. That sounds terrible. Closed at 8:00 p.m. and closed on Sundays. Germany must not have that much of a food culture.

R46 Which country? R47 What does that have to do with having a food culture?

I just had a bowl of ice cream with whipped cream, toppings and alcohol and now I feel fat!! Help!

[quote]Aldi is the official grocery store of DL

I don't recall voting on that.

[quote]Don’t get me started on the soap. It was not possible to buy one bar of soap. You had to buy three.

Who still uses bar soap?

[quote]An entire aisle and all they had was 1) Crest and 2) Colgate

P&G and Colgate pay big bucks for that kind of placement. Everything at eye level means the store got premium incentives to place that product in that location.

Whole Foods was awesome until Bezos got a hold of it. It's still better than most, but it lost it's magic. The best stores that I've been to are , Wegman's, Bristol Farms, Fresh Market, and Gelson's.

I am one of those dorks who visits supermarkets when I'm traveling to other areas. I had no idea that Entermann's has a much bigger line of products than what is offered where I am. I also learned that Helmann's is Best Foods out West and that Kroger is everywhere, but they have different names. For instance Ralph's is Kroger.

Besides Hellmans/Best Foods, there's also Edys/Dreyers ice cream. My supermarket sells a few different toothpastes, though Crest and Colgate take up most of the shelf space.

[quote]Who still uses bar soap?

I do.

I felt the way you describe until I was visiting a friend and he turned me on to using bar soap again. It was one of the most wonderful experiences. I feel so much cleaner after taking a shower or washing my hands, compared to using what I now think of as slime, which I'd been using for 20 years or more.

[quote]Who still uses bar soap?

I do.

I felt the way you describe until I was visiting a friend and he turned me on to using bar soap again. It was one of the most wonderful experiences. I feel so much cleaner after taking a shower or washing my hands, compared to using what I now think of as slime, which I'd been using for 20 years or more.

I would NEVER buy toothpaste or paper goods in the supermarket. SO expensive

I use bar soap - from hotels. Can't stand liquid "body wash" at all.

Yes I know about eye level product placement bucks. I’m talking about top shelf to bottom shelf, entire side of the aisle, only Colgate and Crest.

[quote] What does that have to do with having a food culture?

Those kinds of early-closing hours (food stores) indicate that the country doesn't care so much about food & going an extra mile to make something tasty. Just my opinion. Open for discussion.

Bar soap: some people use it because it has the least amount of packaging, plus no water mixed into it getting shipped and flown from far and wide. That said, I use body wash.

R56 Lol, you are wrong. It is just very ingrained in our cultured. It's a mixture of Catholicism and workers' rights.

R2 - for us tops Whole Foods is where we eat...and not just at the hot bar.

I still use bar soap. I've tried body wash but I hate it.

r46 Costco is not exactly a supermarket.

According to my father who was in the grocery business for 40+ years, Wegman's is The Gold Standard. He says everyone was always trying to buy it.

r42 The difference between Wegman's (and Central Market in Texas) and chains like Gelson's, Whole Foods, and Bristol Farms is that Wegman's carries EVERYTHING, not just the "upscale" or organic stuff. You can't buy Diet Coke at Whole Foods, for example. And most Gelson's and Bristol Farms stores are half the size of a Wegman's or Central Market.

I really wish we had a Wegman's/Central Market-type store in California.

GGG -- what's your accent like? Are you more like Col. Klink or Marlene Dietrich?

GGG is neither German nor Gay nor a Guy.

The only thing that would lead me to believe he's not German is the fact that his English is better than half of the people who post on this board.

OP, there are 330 million Americans, a large percentage of whom are pretty well off by world standards. A market that size allows for a lot of variety.

Americans also place a high value on having a lot of choice. I'm not sure what it is in our national culture that makes us want to have 75 varieties of ice cream on the supermarket shelf, even though we always buy the same 3 kinds, but it's a common feature of our culture that applies in more areas than grocery/household shopping. (But not in politics, where we have less choice than most Western countries.)

R2, I’ve never understood why the DL attracts so many cheapstakes. I don’t mean people in need, I mean people who get some sort of bizarre pleasure from saving a few bucks on a cartful of groceries. They are disproportionately represented at the Datalounge.

OP, not everyone here shops at crappy, depressing Aldi.

R19, you can’t miss something you’ve never had. I suspect that, if they ever got used to a whole aisle of TP and paper towels, some of your neighbors would bemoan the lack. I know this because we’ve had to live with fewer choices in paper goods since the pandemic started, and lots of people hate it. (I, for one, hate that most of the time you can only get Select-A-Size paper towels. I fucking hate those things.)

R31, those hours would drive Americans mad. Most of our supermarkets are open even on Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day (although more limited hours than usual), by far the biggest holidays in our calendar. I would have said “all”, but R33 says WF closes on those days.

The idea of the supermarket closing on something like the Fourth of July is bizarre.

[quote] I'm not sure what it is in our national culture that makes us want to have 75 varieties of ice cream on the supermarket shelf, even though we always buy the same 3 kinds, but it's a common feature of our culture that applies in more areas than grocery/household shopping. (But not in politics, where we have less choice than most Western countries.)

Maybe all those "choices" are to pacify us into thinking we have so much freedom of choice. Then, when it comes to politics, we don't even bother to choose between our 2 choices.

r67 I don't think Aldi is crappy or depressing. I probably have a net worth far greater than you, but I'm not a food or label snob. I don't do all my shopping at Aldi, but they have some great products at great prices.

I am fortunate that I can shop in the higher end markets. And if we want to be honest, a pack of Kraft Cheese slices is no different in Wegman's than in Food Lion, but... I just prefer the type of customer that places like Wegmans's attract. You don't get people acting trashy. The stores are clean. And it's just a better shopping experience and sometimes you have to be willing to pay for that.

R6 When I am in Germany I love going into their grocery stores. I always come back to America with a good haul of German products I can't find here.

R67

Aldi is OK for some things.

[quote] In Bavaria, grocery chains such as Aldi open usually Monday to Saturday from 7:00 to 20:00 and are closed on Sunday. Fifteen to Twenty years ago they closed on Saturday at 14:00, then later at 18:00. Today is a national holiday in Germany, so stores are closed the whole weekend.

America was like that in the 70s. Generally a local store would be open until maybe 7 or 8 in the evening, closing earlier on Saturdays and closed on Sundays.

It was really only in the late 70s/early 80s, when malls went from being a few hundred regional wonders to literally in every suburban nook and cranny, that THEY were always open on Sunday...then grocery stores followed suit. And not long after that, the 24 hours stores popped up.

[quote] I'm not sure what it is in our national culture that makes us want to have 75 varieties of ice cream on the supermarket shelf, even though we always buy the same 3 kinds,

Apparently many companies push for fewer choices, because psychology apparently tells them that the more choices we the consumer have, the more likely we are to be overwhelmed, say "Fuck this" and walk away.

More proof that "GermanGayGuy" is mediocre troll.

I think automation and cheaper means of production have enabled us to have too many choices. I marvel at something like the Oreo. When I was a kid, there was just one kind. Now there are probably more than 50--flavors, sizes, etc. It's amazing.

r76 I picture him as an adult version of "Uter" from The Simpsons

R78 Well with their new casting requirements I hope if he return he will be played by a native speaker.

OP it’s a huge country and a lot of chains are regional. Someone on the west coast has likely never been anywhere near a Wegmans. Actually, Wegmans only just recently came to Brooklyn.

Did other countries have the IGA model?

American grocery stores have wide aisles and a lot of products but little 'food'.

I much prefer the butcher, baker, bio veg market to the time I spent in US groceries.

R72 What do you bring back to the States?

[quote]you can’t miss something you’ve never had. I suspect that, if they ever got used to a whole aisle of TP and paper towels, some of your neighbors would bemoan the lack. I know this because we’ve had to live with fewer choices in paper goods since the pandemic started, and lots of people hate it.

I don't know, in the sense that I don't think my neighbors are deprived anything but choices that don't matter. Maybe I would be disappointed but like to think that not too many would moan about not having an aisle as a long as a city block devoted to toilet paper and paper towels in endless brands and purported degrees of softness and color and patterns and quilting and ply and sheet size, then packaging: paper, plastic, one roll?, two?, four? six? eight? 12? 24? 36? or "back your truck up to the loading dock size."

If I ask a house guest to pick up a roll of paper towels, I don't have to explain which brand and which size package and which color and pattern and which degree of heavy-duty absorbency and whether I prefer the select-a-size option. Or if I go, there's no need to to stand, vacantly, facing a wall of paper towels that stretches far to the left and to the right, lost in mental calculations about which of my preferred brands in cheaper this week and which what number of units is the value optimal (a calculation that varies like stock quotes.)

I hope that they would not quickly assimilate and make the "luxury" of 85 Oreo cookie flavor choices into a "necessity," a point of testiness when the shelf is empty of "Nabisco Oreo Thins Bites Fudge Dipped Coconut."

Maybe not having all of those choices is not deprivation but a choice itself, a choice to focus instead on other choices.

Ask Europeans who visit America what they find daunting about restaurants and it's likely to the the dizzying choice of ordering: "Eggs scrambled? Poached? Fried? Over easy? Over hard? Sunny-side up? Hard boiled? Soft boiled? Toast? Brown? White? Whole wheat? Seven grain? Rolls? Pretzel rolls? Hard rolls? Soft rolls? Muffin? English muffin? Jam? Jelly? Butter? Margarine? Bacon crisp? Sausage? Patty? Link? Now, how would you like your coffee?" Restaurant American English its own sub-language, but the confusion comes from the barrage of questions of the diner who picked something he thought sounded simple and straight forward.

"How would you like that?" is much more important in ordering food in America than in other places, but how much does it add to always have this dialogue, however much abbreviated for the initiated?

R69 is onto something:

[quote] Maybe all those "choices" are to pacify us into thinking we have so much freedom of choice. Then, when it comes to politics, we don't even bother to choose between our 2 choices.

R16, is actually kind of right. I live in NY and as you can see OP grocery stores are also very regional. A place like Eataly is a niche store--more European like--which makes sense since it's Italian groceries. But that's what makes it "high class." As much as I liked Eataly, the ONE time I went I felt overwhelmed. It was bigger than I thought.

A place like Morton Williams I would consider high-class. As someone upthread, in some of these stores you can't find Diet Coke, but you have to be willing to pay for the experience as another poster said. I actually like getting dressed to go to these places. I'm sure there are niche grocery stories in wealthy areas outside of the Tri-State.

I wrote that wrong OP, I like Aldi. What I was trying to say is that I haven't visited more grocery stores in foreign places, and I feel like I should.

R29, I feel that is RIGHT up DLs alley. I love doing this when I visit a new store here in the US! Great souvenirs!!

Eataly is OK at its fresh counters but most of the rest of the store is mediocre and/or things you can find elsewhere in some form.

R86 I have friends who are hardcore Italian Americans, frequently visit Italy and have access to all of NYC who find things at Eataly that they can only get in country or there, no where else. The same can be said for Asian Americans who get favorite products in Asian markets in Queens and NJ that they have never seen outside their country of origin.

I have several Italian friends who dismiss Eataly as the overpriced bougie fuckery that it is.

R83 Mainly mustards and similar condiments. I find amazing how many cuts of pork there are at the meat counters, and how the very large stores carry so many non-food items.

I just looked at pictures of Erewhon and Sprouts Farmer's Market in Los Angeles! WOW! I want to go there! Anybody take me there and wants to gift me something. Has anybody ever been there? What are your experiences? Is it overpriced?

Sprouts is a bit over priced. One you might enjoy is Super H Mart, an asian grocery that has become very popular on the west coast. They have fresh fish counters with great selection and their produce section is massive.

R91 Check out the prices at Erewhon, especially for the eggs!! 12 organic eggs for 10,99! That is insane! It's three times the amount you would pay in Germany.

Gwyneth Paltrow goes there.

Nothing beats Waitrose

R93 It's not American.

[quote]I don't think Aldi is crappy or depressing. I probably have a net worth far greater than you, but I'm not a food or label snob. I don't do all my shopping at Aldi, but they have some great products at great prices.

I have been to three Aldi stores in the U.S., all miserable like a low-rent food co-op, and very heavy on frozen foods, rough looking fruit and vegetables, bad lighting, very basic stores, chaotic arrangement of stock and dubious looking off brands. In Europe, it depends on where the specific location, some are rather good and some are rather bad in the same city. (Lidl is the same, but their good stores can be very nice, much nicer than any Aldi I have seen.) Aldi in Europe pushes a lot of household goods at special prices and week long sales to pull in customers; their sales advertisements are geared to this week's special sale on orchids, frying pans, blankets, portable heaters, power tools, small home electronics...

Sprouts is a chain. It' sort of a smaller, less expensive version of Whole Foods.

[quote]Aldi in Europe pushes a lot of household goods at special prices and week long sales to pull in customers; their sales advertisements are geared to this week's special sale on orchids, frying pans, blankets, portable heaters, power tools, small home electronics...

So does Aldi in the US. Just look at one of their ads. Half of it is devoted to non-food items.

And they don't have "dubious off brands," they have STORE brands, just like nearly every other major supermarket, The difference is that they generally ONLY carry the store branded item. There are few national brands except for things like Coke and Cheerios.

R97: You're right, I'm sure, both about the U.S. ads (which I haven't seen) and about the Aldi store brands. I should have been more specific in referring to the unusually extensive frozen food selection (relative the store size) where I noticed everything seemed to be a different brand, all of them unfamiliar—though to be fair, frozen foods have a lot more brands than some other types of products. My few visits to U.S. Aldi stores suggested that they might be some budget choices or good for specific sorts of things, but it wasn't a match to my shopping needs or habits.

Except for DL's Darfur orphan, Aldi and the American Aldis in particular aren't going to impress many foreign visitors.

I love going to foreign supermarkets and pharmacies/drug stores. Paris has some really good ones, Bucharest has surprisingly great ones (Franprix, Carrefour) depending on location, Berlin in the museum quarter had little corner ones which I liked (but closed on Sundays!), London had nice ones too. All of them had as many or more choices (especially in the charcuterie section) as American stores. I miss ready made cheese platters.

I've only been at the airport at Narita in Japan, and if the supermarkets are anything like the little stores there, I probably would get lost for hours there.

When I was working in North Carolina back in 2012, the stores (even Trader Joe's) did not sell alcohol on Sundays- do they still do that?

Wegman's is a real experience with decent prepared foods and baked goods. Heinen's in Cleveland and Chicago and Gelson's in the LA area are similar but operate smaller stores. Harris-Teeter, a southeatern chain tries to be like this in some places but fails.

Publix (in the SE) is a an example of a usually well run conventional chain. Safeway and Kroger are good examples of mediocre, barely competent conventional chains.

Publix is an embarrassment, terrible produce. Insultingly, they sell mealy, inedible peaches in Georgia. Great place to buy a literal tub of lard.

In the US Aldi's are generally for lower middle class to poor people. Aldi has three or four stores in the Bronx. Their stores in the US sell a lot of POOR PEOPLE food- Snix snacks, cookies, big frozen pizzas, candy.

US Aldi ad. See for yourself.

BTW, Aldi is two different compaines: Aldi Nord and Aldi Sud. The US stores are owned by Aldi Sud. Trader Joe's is owned by Aldi Nord.

The upcoming Aldi ad has a chain saw, patio furniture covers, a comforter set, and enameled cast iron cookware.

R84, thank you for the thoughtful response. Just to be clear: It’s not the vast number of choices I think people would miss, it’s the individual choice they prefer that would be missed.

Very few Americans stand, bewildered, in the TP/paper towel aisle, pondering what to buy. In pre-COVID days, most of us had developed a preferred brand and style we always bought, perhaps changing the number of rolls from time to time based on need, price and storage space.

Believe me, there are fans of every one of those 85 Oreo flavors (and if one flavors lacks fans, it’s taken off the market … and then there are whole DL threads devoted to lamenting the loss). Once you’ve decided your favorite Oreo is Mint Double-Stuff, you’ll be annoyed if you can’t get it.

I doubt that Europeans are really all that different: Give them a choice, they’ll pick something. If they like it, they’ll want to find it when they go back to the store.

The restaurant choices you describe seem obvious to me. Do European restaurants not prepare breakfast eggs in a variety of ways? If not, you’re missing out. Why wouldn’t you want to be able to choose what kind of toast you want or whether you want sausage links or patties? (They taste different.) Everybody gets what they like; what's wrong with that?

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Loved the self-portrait, R101.