Jan 23rd, 2010

We have been adjusting to life here in New Zealand. I must say I had high expectations of what my experience related to food would be like…maybe a little too high. The weekly farmers markets we have come to depend on for our produce in Seattle have been hard for us to find here (but I am SURE they are around). Aside from a fresh produce shop in Auckland, we end up buying our food stuffs in an everyday, everywhere supermarket. The supermarket itself is a worldwide phenomenon and they all have the same components. Profit maximizing layouts (dairy and meat at the back of the store so you have to walk through isles of tempting, catchy stuff on your way to the necessities), bright fluorescent lights so the products glow, and consumer friendly muzak. I have been reading in the book Stuffed and Starved;the Hidden Battle for the World Food System by Raj Patel that there is actually an academic discipline devoted to “reconciling the facts of the retail environment with their perception by shoppers.” It is called the study of ‘atomospherics’.

I like to think that food distribution systems were originally developed in the best interest of consumers and farmers, but sometimes that is not the case. Take the history of the supermarket for example. Traditional grocery stores required a clerk that gathered groceries for each individual customer. The stores made little profit because overhead was relatively large. As the gold rush gave way to agriculture, self-service grocery stores began to gain popularity in the west. To further the transition, food prices skyrocketed after the US joined WWI and riots ensued in the east, putting more financial pressure on grocers. Then, in 1916, Clarence Saunders opened the first King Piggly Wiggly, where shoppers helped themselves to groceries by pushing carts through a designated path through the store. This cut labor costs considerably while taking advantage of the human tendency to take more than we may need because there are no limits set; all while exposing the customer to every item in the store. As time moves on, we see the ‘self-serving grocery store’ concept further profiting by taking advantage of economies of scale as the modern supermarket chains we all recognize the world over- Safeway, Whole Foods, Wal-Mart, etc.