A Taste of Walmart

[annabelle]

...

That bakery, I should add, is pretty awesome. Their prune danish and strudel are worth getting up at 8 am and I am not a morning person at all. They've been around since the 1950s when that section of the Upper East Side was known for its concentration of people of Hungarian descent. Nowadays, it's yuppieville and kids fresh out of college.

In a five block radius from my apartment, I can count two Starbucks, a McDonald's, a Burger King, a Barnes & Noble, a Best Buy, two Gap stores, a CVS and a Footlocker. I'm just going off of memory. I'm sure there are more chain stores that I'm forgetting. I don't think we need more of the same. It's terribly depressing.

And why would this awesome bakery that will make you get up at a reasonable hour go out of business because a chain store opened? You can't tell me there are no Dunkin' Donuts, etc, in the city driving them out of business or killing off their quality control. The Walmart Super Center in my little village hasn't eclipsed any business at the local bakery which is run by Germans and is quite excellent.

Our Walmart had lovely clementines for $5 a box this week. Very sweet and tasty. Our area has had an influx of Hispanics in the last few years and we now have plantains, mangos and beautiful, fresh cilantro. Yes, the salsa verde is excellent.

[SobaAddict70]

There are places like the bakery two blocks from my apartment that I don't want to see vanish because some super-duper chain store sets up shop in the City, then replicates like cockroaches to the point where the places that made NYC unique vanish because people are attracted to the promise of [temporary] low prices.

That bakery, I should add, is pretty awesome. Their prune danish and strudel are worth getting up at 8 am and I am not a morning person at all. They've been around since the 1950s when that section of the Upper East Side was known for its concentration of people of Hungarian descent. Nowadays, it's yuppieville and kids fresh out of college.

In a five block radius from my apartment, I can count two Starbucks, a McDonald's, a Burger King, a Barnes & Noble, a Best Buy, two Gap stores, a CVS and a Footlocker. I'm just going off of memory. I'm sure there are more chain stores that I'm forgetting. I don't think we need more of the same. It's terribly depressing.

And why would this awesome bakery that will make you get up at a reasonable hour go out of business because a chain store opened? You can't tell me there are no Dunkin' Donuts, etc, in the city driving them out of business or killing off their quality control. The Walmart Super Center in my little village hasn't eclipsed any business at the local bakery which is run by Germans and is quite excellent.

Our Walmart had lovely clementines for $5 a box this week. Very sweet and tasty. Our area has had an influx of Hispanics in the last few years and we now have plantains, mangos and beautiful, fresh cilantro. Yes, the salsa verde is excellent.

I think that says it all.

You like Wal-Mart. I don't and on this, we'll have to respectfully disagree.

Edited May 6, 2011 by SobaAddict70 (log)

[HungryChris]

CDRF, using plastic gloves makes so much sense once you think about it, and has been, in our experience, common practice in Rome, Florence, all throughout Tuscany, Umbria and in virtually all the surrounding towns we have traveled to. The customer is expected to (put on gloves), weigh the produce, punch in the proper code for it and afix the resulting sticker onto the bag. Common practice or not, it should be universal because it does make so much sense as does the practice of charging extra for bags. Another one of my absolute favorites is the one Euro deposit for grocery carts. That deposit is refunded once you return the cart to its rightful place which goes a long way towards resolving the problem of carts dinging car doors. All those things combined make sense. Maybe I misspoke when I used the term "Europe", but it is a model we should all follow if I were asked.

HC

[Mjx]

CDRF, using plastic gloves makes so much sense once you think about it, and has been, in our experience, common practice in Rome, Florence, all throughout Tuscany, Umbria and in virtually all the surrounding towns we have traveled to. The customer is expected to (put on gloves), weigh the produce, punch in the proper code for it and afix the resulting sticker onto the bag. . . .

HC

Add Milan, Parma, Bologna, and Bolzano to that list. Also, the parts of Switzerland I visited. I've only seen this done in supermarkets and similar places, where the customer selects and bags the goods (in Italy, at least, small greengrocers do not like the customers touching the produce at all, and do the bagging themselves. They'll hold up and turn each piece for you to inspect however, if they're in the mood/you ask). Not a Walmart thing, hm?

[hathor]

I also live in Italy. Full disclosure: I'm a bona fide nomad.

I shop in a rural farming town in Umbria (Umbertide). I'd say abut 50% of the people use the plastic gloves, but it's dropped this year and I think its because there is a real push to eliminate plastic bags and plastic gloves seem particularly wasteful.

IMHO the plastic gloves are lame. I'm still going to go home & wash the produce.

Soba, I hear you on generic same-ness of the products of mass merchandisers. It's part and parcel of the mass merchandiser business model to be bland and vanilla. Retail consolidation is the real culprit.