Grocery Stores

Do you really pay attention to the grocery store you buy food and stuff at? Do you realize the whole system behind the store? Or do you care as long as they have what you want at the price you want to pay? You should for a number of reasons, foremost, global corporations, economies, nations, and people. Really it's people growing, harvesting, preparing, shipping, distributing, and selling foods you see in the store that day.

I personally shop at Metropolitan Market, specifically the Proctor store in Tacoma. It's a cool store with really cool people. Every one should have a market like these near you to teach you about people and geography. The people are the best I've ever encountered at a grocery store and many other stores of any kinds. And the customers are the best I've seen. I rarely see a misbehaved kid. I don't know why but kids love the place with the kid's carts and freedom to be in the store.

It's the geography I want to lecture you about. Ok, I'm a geographer, so it's expected. Do you really understand the whole systems behind everything you see in a grocery store, all of there at that moment for you personally to decide if you want to buy. It's a complex and complicated system of nations, corporations, states and counties, towns and cities, and especially the people who grow or raise the foods. And the whole system of producing, harvesting, preparing, shipping, distributing, marketing, and selling food.

It's all there for you. Tens of thousands of people behind the food you select, people directly or indirectly provided the avenue to get it to you from the producer to the you, the buyer. You walked in expecting something, looking for specific things for a meal, from a list, or for a party, or just looking for something, exploring a cooking or baking idea, wandering around for a food that could fill your taste buds, looking for something interesting. It's all there, and all you had to do was walk in the store.

I love Metropolitan Market because it has both the basics people need, the foods and stuff we don't really pay attention to brands but buy for price or quantity, and those special and interesting foods from around the world. They're not a discount grocery, a health grocery, nor really an upscale grocery, they're a market with lots of simplicity in marketing and beauty in presentation. They pay attention to the fact you don't realize the style of the market, it's comfortable and friendly, and you feel good just wandering around looking.

Do you feel the same in your grocery, or do you pay attention. If you're a Safeway shopper, do you realize the marketing that goes into them wanting you to buy their brand while stocking other brands? The same applies to other chain markets. At Metropolitan Market, they just provide the atmosphere for your to enjoy the great opportunity of having all these foods available to you there and then.

Ok, I'm glorifying a grocery store? Why not, in the history of man it's a relatively new ideas from the old dry goods stores, which my grandfather started in Valley Falls, Kansas in the early 1910's, to the vertical grocery corporations like Safeway. Something like Metropolitan Market makes the joy of being there worth the trip. And they have great food and stuff too. All for you. Isn't that enough to say thank you?