Having 30 flavors of chips and 50 flavors of cookies is about owning the shelves. The big brands push the little brands out of the store by doing this.
16:00 In German the shelves with candy bars next to the conveyor belt at checkout are called "Quengelzone" (whining zone) because that's when children get impatient in the queue and start pestering their parents for the sweets on display.
When I took a marketing class elective in middle school, the candy, chips, and sodas placed at the checkout is placed there on purpose for impulse purchases. You have whining kids, adults whose willpower breaks down as they wait staring at instant dopamine-releasing treats, and hunger-overriding-logic from people that randomly shopped without eating first.
I think in Berlin where I live, near the check-out isnt candy, but cold beer, sodas and ice-cream, that is goods that are kept cold, and sold cold. You could say that is too keep the cold when you buy them for immediate consumption, or you can say.. beer is to Berlin, what candy is to the rest of the world :D
Choice paralysis is a thing. Tesco did a trial with a bunch of jams and other preserves. People stopped buying them. Any of them. They reverted to a smaller selection and sales went up again. Well, back to normal.
That's because Brits aren't used to or able to make choices anymore. They like being told what to do and how to live. It was the same after Germany reunited. Many East Germans were actively wishing for communism to come back because life was too hard for them when they had to make decisions and provide for themselves. Even though they had freedom and the ability to live far better lives, they hated it. They preferred to be told what do to and when and be handed a subsistence existence. Britain is there now.
Sounds potentially like a good thing, people get massive choice, but also feel less compelled to buy stuff they don't need. Obviously no good for Tesco's profits though.
But then there's choice fatigue, which is what most U.S. stores tend to bank on. Yes, jams and jellies might lose some sales. So will coffee. Maybe so will ice cream. But then you get to the cookies, and you're so tired from saying "no" to yourself, you just buy three packs. Then you get to the cereal. Then… And so on.
I was sooooooo confused when you said "This is your standard juice section." I was like.... "uhhhh do you know what juice is???" And then you clarified that you aren't blind. 🤣
15:50 I did notice the chocolate bars next to the checkout had been replaced with protein bars and dried fruit but I'd never realised there was a new law supporting this! That makes more sense now.
HFSS (High Fats Salts Sugars) the legislation prevents retailers from placing these products on the checkouts, front of store or promotional ends in an attempt to allow consumers to make healthier decisions.
I noticed that the isle where everyone lines up became the candy isle instead of them being by the checkout but despite the shops trying their work arounds I have felt less inclined to buy them on impulse but strangely now I sometimes put chocolate on the list of things I'm going there to buy so Im not sure if it works or not.
I'm a US citizen and I wish there were more corner shops in our neighborhood! Where I live in Seattle, we actually have a few small independently owned grocery stores, which are smaller than Trader Joe's, but stocked with every item you would ever need. The best thing about these tiny grocers is they are located in densely populated neighborhoods and are quick places to get in and out of (shopping is usually completed within 15 minutes!). We just need more of them.
And the older cities in the eastern US have the best setup for that. I tend to say NCY is the most european of the large US cities. Dense population that makes public transport viable, many neighborhoods towards the center where you find a store on the ground floor and residential space above. Pretty much how it used to be the standard in Germany. We have free standing supermarkets here as well, the corner shops are slowly dying out, but they're still there. Especially the small ones that stay open after hours and on sundays. They have special exemptions for that and only carry the very basics and grossly inflated prices. You don't do your groceries there, you buy a pack of beer and a bag of chips 5 minutes before the game.
Some Dollar Generals are starting to become something like this. Come by a few that even have your basics in fresh produce. Given where are live, this was a great thing to see as it was in the tiny towns that are 30+ minutes from a regular grocery store.
I grew up in south Seattle (white center/south park) and there used to be so many corner stores even 15-20 years ago. I think the city used to be zoned differently to accommodate it? The roosevelt/north u district neighborhoods have a lot of evidence of the old style of zoning. It's like... 15 minute cities or whatever are actually just how cities used to be built when not everyone owned 2 cars lol
People used to and still do in some places call them corner stores because they're often located on corners of streets. A lot of people actually want this instead of having to drive or ride a much longer distance to go to a store that takes double the time to go to, and double the time inside the store because it's so big.
Reminds me of a story about Eisenhower. He was president of Columbia university and there was a quadrangle where students were expected to walk around. Unfortunately, they kept walking across it. The university asked Eisenhowers advice to get the students to obey the rules and walk around on the pavement. His answer was to build pavements where the students wanted to walk. So desire paths can work.
I watched a video about the desire path in National Trust land. The documentarian called the people making them "Meanderthals," I thought that was hilarious
@@snafufubar The version I heard had the architects unable to agree where to put the paths, so Eisenhower said to just plant grass, then wait a year and see where paths got worn into the grass, then pave those.
I can remember being horrified when I stayed with a friend in Kentucky a few years ago. There was a big supermarket at the end of the street where she lived. But there was a hedge, deep ditch and another hedge between the supermarket and the housing estate. As in the example above, even if I wanted to don walking shoes and go all the way around the estate (because of course the only exit was as far away from the store as you could get) there was no footpath once I got off the estate. I would have to dodge traffic on a three lane road. Here, in the UK, I have a small supermarket, a library, pharmacy, fish and chip shop, convenience store, and even a hairdresser, all within a twenty minute round trip...with footpaths all the way. No, I don't live in the centre of a city, but on the outskirts of a small sea-side town. I go to a shop three or four times per week, often just for the opportunity to take a walk.
Ive learned that in the US I'm forced to overspend everywhere I go. As an adult with restraint I do all of my shopping in the early morning on my bike I buy enough to fill cargo bags on my bike and i fill by backpack too if I need more room. So basically I have a wonderful early morning cardio workout every Saturday and Sunday I bike up an incline hill and there are no cars because nobody is working. It's become my favorite part of the week to just go on a bike ride. Ideally I would prefer corner health stores but the government forces corner death stores
Fascinating content but a moment for these backgrounds, they're super nice, pretty and interesting (and the colour grading is beautiful) without distracting or seeming awkward - it really feels like watching a show produced with a larger crew!
I'm actually Dutch but concerning shopping I'm really German: I just want what I need and I trust it to be a good product and reasonably priced. 🤷🏽♂️🙃
Which is why Aldi Nord & Aldi Sud & Lidl own the planet. By being German. By buying in or commissioning really good food, that they buy in from suppliers who compete to sell to them because they buy based on quality not price. It's the same with the EU butter mountain, meat, whatever mountain. Only the very best of butter, meat etc goes into the mountain. Because it encourages great livestock handling etc. And so when Europe gives away food to poor people - it knows its giving away the BEST that Europe can produce. Personally, I made a mistake many years ago, as I did not know about Dutch employment law. That it was much more possible in the netherlands to be work part time and get supplementary support from the state If I had know this 20 years ago I would now be living in one of my favourite cities in the world Nijmegen and shopping in at a mixture of Lidl & Albert Hein. With excursions to Belgium to go to Le Clerc. Obviously I also shop at Aldi sud & nord.
@@LuluTheCorgi of course we have tons of vegetables. We grow tons of Kale for example where we live ( most other native veg too ) We are lucky as we have our own allotment in the village and also a large garden to grow our own vegetables and fruits. . I personally don’t eat UPF.
Over the last 2 years I've transitioned to shopping at Lidl in the US almost exclusively. I do a weekly shop every Sunday and get 80% of what I need for the week, but I enjoy riding my bike over a few more times during the week to pick up a random thing I'm either out of or have a craving for. The first time I went there, I wasn't impressed and the lack of selection was a turn off. After becoming accustomed to the products they have there and memorizing the entire layout of the store, which is pretty small to begin with, I've grown to LOVE IT! It's so convenient. If I'm just popping in for one thing, it takes maybe 2 minutes. If I'm doing my weekly shop, it takes no more than 10 to 15 minutes. No more wandering around huge supermarkets looking for X thing that isn't where I'd expect it to be. It does sadden me that I never see anyone else biking where I live. We have a huge traffic problem and some decent bike infrastructure by American suburb standards.
I'm much the same here in Croatia, I get one or two items in other supermarkets but Lidl has a lot of things I can't get anywhere else. In Hungary we also had a similar chain called Penny Market and I still go there once a month as some of their products are better quality than the Lidl own brands.
I'm in a rural part of the UK and do a weekly shop in Lidl and once a month go to one of the bigger shops for those bits you don't need as often and are not sold by Lidl.
Yeah, not the kind of store you go to when you do your big, varied weekly run. But where you go to get stuff for the weekend. You want bread, bacon, butter, a can of beans, a six pack of beer and a bottle of coke? Yeah, they got all that. They might only have three brands with 3 flavours each, but if you know what you like, you buy that and have no need to run through 150 types of cheese at Walmart. And we have big stores with lots of variety in Germany as well. They compete with that variety, not with prices. And the discounters like Lidl or Aldi tend to have lower prices than the big supermarkets. Sort of like anti-Walmart where the savings come from needing to stock less, but having that smaller set always available. They only nave Milbona and Bärenmarke milk, but those are pretty much the same milk as any other, made at the same farms from the same cows, moved by the same logistics companies and packaged by the same factory.
Lidl doesn't have a "lack of selection" - they ROTATE their selection. Want that particular flavor of Greek-style yogurt? You gotta wait for the "Greek week" and pay attention to their weekly offer. You want that tool set at a special price - run to Lidl NOW! Same goes for all their products - from tools and household appliances through clothes to food. Everything is being rotated weekly. So better hurry up and buy the stuff you like now, who knows how long until it comes back. They are very good at generating demand and getting you inside the story on a regular basis.
The meat is their military rations that are close to their expiration date... also no ground coffee for some reason. I have to grind it for myself (buying a machine to do that from them I guess) or drink the instant coffees that taste awful.
For me, it's easy. Need a cereal. Need a cereal I'm not allergic or intolerant to. Know that General Mills makes cereals that upset my stomach. Move to the natural cereal section. Find one without wheat, emulsifiers, coconut, tree nuts, or sesame and sunflower oil. Buy the one cereal that meets that criteria. 😂
@jmas43 that's understandable. I love Coco Pops, so when I'm shopping, I either choose that one or the shops equivalent. Only two choices thankfully, nut there is a mini debate as to the size for coco pops since they have different ones, but if there was 20+ options for chocolate coated aerated rice, I'd start crying. It's like having too many options forces you almost to have that brand or variety loyalty.
Canadian here, who lives 45 minutes from the border, and frequently "cross border shops." To my Canadian eyes, the selection in American stores is staggering. Also the insanely liberal coupon policies. Also, it's a fun day out. Canada is somewhere in the middle. Way less selection but hyper overprocessed and only a few mega corporations represented and a lean towards car-culture.
@@Jordyb33123 Oh dear, it sounds like a progressive disorder of England, he'll be OK as long as the cynicism doesn't set in permanently, or the New Jersey will be completely washed out . Unless that's his intention.
I feel like it’s him slowly realizing he grew up in essentially a third world country. Then moved to the UK, which Europe looks down on and he was still blown away.
One great thing about my country (and I'm sure it's a thing in a lot of other places too) are farmers markets that are usually very close to supermarkets and grocery stores. So essentially, not only do I live close to a grocery store, I can also see whether the potatoes are better in store or does the lady at the farmers market has better ones that day 😅 It's good to be reminded what a blessing these things are, especially when we're so used to them being normal.
@@PeterFabian no like in the uk and europe you have actual farmers and farms that have a small store where they sell the stuff they grow and theyre everywhere. I have a flower shop and butchers 2 minutes from me, in a city that has been selling flowers, veg, fruit and meat for over 250 years, owned by the same family. In ireland youll often run across honesty boxes and they can sell all sorts of stuff. Like i was hiking one time and i ran across an honest box stocked with fresh squeezed juice, eggs with the dirt still on them from the local farm etc and you could just steal it all if you wanted, there wasnt even another person within a 10 minute walk at least from where it was sitting, but oc i grabbed some strawberry lemonande and left some money.
@@PeterFabian yeah unfortunately things like that happen too :/ where I'm from we have two types of farmer stalls, either people who bring produce from a larger market (that comes directly from farmers but it's not guaranteed so it might be imported and therefor - old) or stalls where farmers who live close by come with their own produce - that one you can trust a little more :)
The big difference is that the government is more interested in people’s healthcare as it has to fund the nhs from taxes. Whereas this isn’t the model for the US. The uk is thus more interested in saving money on the nhs If it can legislate to make people’s food healthier.
I’ve mentioned it in 2 other vids comparing supermarkets! Sometimes I get concerned about repeating certain things though I go back to certain topics 😇
im supposed to know a guy named evie love? chixks are so self involved , evan would be better off with out you. why? well, you posted on here, reminds me kf my ex gal
As a American living in Britain I agree and I’m glad that you pointed this out. I try to explain to my friends back home about how different things are here like that (so random I know) and it’s so hard but like it really was a culture shock moving here especially living in rural Britain
I'm from Canada but moved to a small city in India 10 years back, and I fell in love with the way grocery shopping works over here (though it took me years to change my habits!). Just now, I felt like having cucumber with my lunch, so I walked like 200m to a small shop that sells, well... ONLY vegetables! Then, walking back, I crossed a guy pushing a cart of beautifully looking vegetables in the street, so I bought some more. Came back with a big bag of veggies! The fruits and vegetables vendors are completely apart from other shops. And still, the UPF here are not so tempting. It's mainly a small choice of biscuits, chips, candies, and soft drinks. The majority of the shop is for pulses, grains, spices, cleaning items, etc. Now, UPF are such a small part of my diet and I always have access to so much fresh food!
As someone who grew up and will probably never leave NJ (unfortunately lol), I really appreciate the constant references/deep dives into to the garden state. I grew up in sussex county where for me, the nearest grocery store was a 25 minute drive away. Although, I love nature and appreciate that area, I now crave more walkable places and will probably be moving to a more walkable town next year. To me "walkable" used to mean walking along a precarious shoulder whereas to my partner it means sidewalks, bike lanes and downtown within walking distance. I dream about walking to a park to hammock, popping downtown to grab a coffee or grabbing some fresh produce at a market. One day! 🤞
We're in Byram, which, admittedly, is only just Sussex County. If every US state has a "Bumblefuck", then NJ's one is almost definitely in Sussex County. As a Brit living in NJ, Evan's comments about neighbourhoods looking dead over here hits home. The only pedestrians you ever see around here are people walking their dogs. The roads have no footpaths, for the most part, and I daren't let my kids play in the street or ride bikes, as they're likely to get mown down by some fuckwit in a Silverado.
I just went to a brand new housing estate rhat isnt even fully built yet and bang in the middle of it is already a bunch of shops including the semi-local-mini supermarket that i work for. Its a lil more expensive than the buffer supermarkets but it specialises in giving you fewer choices but being very local and giving you the convenience of a lil corner shop (it's cheaper than those price marked abominations though) so we sit between the tiny corner shop and the supermarkets. Also, i can be in and out of a major supermarket within 5-10 minutes. 👌
9:21 Yes, the sidewalk is largely useless. The only use is if you 'walk' for exercise or if you actually know your neighbors and go visit them. Spoiler alert: Nobody knows their neighbors
I was staying in a hotel just outside of Austin Texas for SXSW a few years back, and myself and some of the band could see a gas station with store from our window. So, being late and hungry for snacks, we decided to walk to the gas station for a shopping trip. Being dumb Brits, we had not planned for disappearing sidewalks, no pedestrian crossing spots and the need to battle through the undergrowth to get to the gas station. It was a bit of a shock (bit we were drunk so it was an adventure lol) but when we got to the store/gas station and had done our shopping we decided we couldn't face the trip back so called a taxi. We were just naive back then and assumed that walking to places was normal, especially when you can see them less than a mile from your window.
@@zaxchannel2834 If we hadn't just got back from the festival, had been sober and it wasn't 2am and dark, we'd probably have been able to work out it was a dumb idea. I guess we just took the idea of a sidewalk being there for granted lol. Never made the mistake again and to be fair, we were not exactly in the center of Austin. We had a laugh about it anyway and was amazed we didn't get a police car pulling up and asking what a bunch of drunk idiots were doing stumbling around the edge of the freeway. "Sorry Officer, we're not from round here and we desperately need junk food from the gas station in the distance. We seem to have misplaced the sidewalk however???" 😂😂😂😂
I'm at 11:07 right now thinking about how many North Americans think that the point Evan is making about having the convivence of multiple stores where you can get that one little thing be nearby is a Pipe Dream, and that if we tried to implement it here it would lead to the downfall of society and would be the actions of a dictatorial government....
I remember when I first went into Asda in the early 80s. It was called a Hypermarket at the time and seemed enormous. Now, exactly the same store seems normal (for a Brit). Asda was never a UK version of Walmart by the way. It’s just that Walmart bought them at one time (but don’t own them any more).
I live in Down Under, and you're right about the ColesWorth, BUT - we luckily still have Aldi. There are also other supermarkets, like Drakes or Foodland, but their prices are even more expensive than two main chains, though at least their produce quality is usually a lot better. Many Aussies (I'm European living in Aus) have been buying their essentials in Aldi, and since Aldis are often located near one of the big chains, they complete the shopping there. If your brain is particularly large and you can be bothered, you can also take the advantage of the half price and clearance sales in the big chains, and plan your dinners around that. When it comes to convenience though, there's a supermarket in every neighbourhood, usually a walking distance. I can really appreciate it as I do like taking walks.
Also Aldi is significantly better quality for vegetables etc than it is in the UK - it seems to be worth it for them to do compete on quality as well as price. When I lived in Australia, I used to walk down to my local Aldi for my general shopping, and only bother going into town to the Woolies when the Aldi was shut, as it had narrower opening hours.
A lot of areas also have IGAs which are quite handy for any "fill in the gaps" shopping or more common smaller grocery shops. Many also have the same sales on a cycle, so you can plan what you want to buy based on that if you explore a little
I live in the city (Chicago) and I have 5 small grocery stores within walking distance, so I'm shopping almost every day, it gets me out of the house, year round, too. Fresh produce daily is the way to go.
Getting to walk to the store makes SUCH a difference it’s actually wild. I feel like I had a glimpse of the euro experience in Hawaii because they also carry less stuff out there and it does make it easier to shop when you don’t have a million choices (even if the choices are ones you wouldn’t even make. I don’t even eat Oreos but seeing the wall of Oreos IS kind of stressful lol). My life significantly improved once I started using grocery delivery and shopping at Aldi. Also I know you said that you were really tunneling here but I love when you make videos like this. I feel like I learn something or just have you fully lay out my own thoughts I was already having lol. Also congrats on 800k I’m so proud of you ❤
It drives me nuts when I go to a stationary shop and they have a whole isle or blue ballpoint pens and nothing else, no black ones, no felt ones or markers. A million clones by different brands is not variety.
Thought on options - in my experience, it isn’t just about flavors. If you have any dietary restrictions, European-style grocery stores (at least in the US - maybe it’s better in Europe) often don’t have great options. Big grocery stores are some of the only places I can find certain foods I want. My local Aldi, which is conveniently a 3-4 minute walk away, doesn’t have some things I use every day or at least multiple times a week. If it did, I would never have to drive to a grocery store. I don’t care about having 20 flavors of Doritos or whatever, but I want to be able to buy more than one firmness of tofu (a necessity for some recipes) and any nutritional yeast at all lol. I could probably survive on the foods at my local Aldi, but I would have to rule out many recipes and probably take more supplements
From what I’ve seen of US supermarkets the UK is much better for anyone with dietary restrictions- all of my local supermarkets have a fairly big vegetarian/ vegan refrigerator section and a bit free from (catering to gluten free, vegan, nut free etc) non chilled section. Though Aldi / Lidl tend to have much less of that, and you are limited (I couldn’t solely shop at Aldi or Lidl here either)
You sound like a very non-normal customer. I don't meant that in a bad way. But you should recognize that most people don't have dietary restrictions, and since you do, you're naturally going to have a harder time shopping. Although I see your point that in the US, our only "european style" stores are LIDL and ALDI, which offer very limited choices.
It's not a huge selection but I can say Aldi in Germany does have some vegan, gluten-free, and lactose-free products. It might also be interesting to point out the even the "bigger" supermarkets there aren't even half the size of a place like Walmart, so shopping at them isn't nearly as overwhelming. Although the jam aisles are always a bit intimidating.
Is freedom possessing the ability to choose between 20 brands of cereal or being able to puruse life goals regardless of the material conditions one is born into?
I just grab the first one that comes to hand and always seem to end up with something different. Last time it was black which was profoundly shocking until I realised it's charcoal toothpaste. Needless to say the flavour and texture are exactly the same as all the other types.
I'm really glad that toothpaste doesn't run out as quickly as milk or eggs. I really despise having to browse through all of them to find the cheapest one from a reputable brand.
OK, I checked. On Colgate's UK website, they list 51 different types of toothpaste. On their US website, they list 35, plus 4 prescription-only toothpastes. They don't list their prescription-only toothpastes on the UK website because it is illegal to advertise prescription-only medicines, but I know there is at least one, because I've been prescribed it in the past.
I would be surprised if someone hasn't already pointed this out but for store layout crimes no one beats IKEA. Even though you can escape at several places if you know where to look, it is a snaking layout which forces you to go from start to finish :)
Ikea is my idea of shopping hell.. whereas I have friends who absolutely love going there and look at it as a great day out... I think I'd rather go to the dentist
I suspect they took their design strategy from museums rather than traditional retail. Many museums also lead you subconsciously on a winding journey through a chain of themed rooms full of things to look at. With strategically placed lighting to direct your eyes toward specific displays and keep you moving forward. AND museums often have a cafe/gift shop area near the exit.
I actually enjoy the IKEA jurney-like layout. I don't consider it a crime because they are straight open about it. You know what you are getting into when you enter the schowroom part and in many places you can skip forward large chunks of the track. With that said it is also true that one does not simply walk into IKEA and leave without buing anything. 😉
@@HumbleWooperI went to Ikea for the first time last week, and that’s how I described my experience, It’s like a furniture museum 😂 But I liked it, I view it as a day out too! It felt like I was walking in the catalog
Just to point out that the ´That's Life' piece on chicken crisps was from around fifty years ago! We're a bit more familiar with that kind of thing now 😇
It is, sort-of. There are multiple styles of Target - some are more like TK Maxx (I'd refer to it more as a general store), and some are "SuperTargets" that also have groceries (so-called Hypermarts). The prevalence of "SuperTargets" depend more on where you live than anything; I never saw one until I was in my 30s, personally.
We are expats living in the Netherlands. I am from Wyoming, where the trip to the grocery store was a 20 minute drive each way and then a major size store to get through even for a few things. I shopped once every two weeks and had a massive American fridge and, later, a box freezer. Then I lived in NYC for a decade. There, we didn’t have a car and went to the store- which was a walkable distance and not zoned like Suburbia- about twice a week. Now we live in the Netherlands in a town of 80,000 but, again, we don’t need nor have a car, and the markets are all within walking distance. We also have a smaller Dutch-sized apartment and a smaller fridge. We go around four times a week and it never seems like a hardship. And the food is fresher, more seasonal, and more affordable. Yay The Netherlands!
I recently moved back to the states from Glasgow (family stuff) and genuinely had reverse culture shock walking into US markets. Hell I even had shock just going into a larger Tesco extra while I was in the UK. Thankfully I live in a mega city in the US and so my local markets, even though they’re a drive away, are still quite limited in size compared to what one may experience in a rural community, so they prioritize essentials rather than choice. I also live quite close to a couple different Trader Joe’s and another market called Sprouts that has many healthy options that are relatively affordable. There are also a few ethnic food stores I’m near so I’m definitely privileged in terms of my options for healthy choices, especially in America. The one mainstream market near me, Ralph’s, I try to avoid haha.
another reason i go to the shop more often as a european is because in a flat i just don’t have that much storage (i live in a shared flat now but that was also applicable for my parent’s flat) so i can’t stock up on things, when i only have 1,5 shelves in the cupboard instead of a large pantry. also, as you said, i can only carry how much fits in my backpack or bike pack, which puts a physical limit on every shop. but this still beats living in car-centric dystopia for me.
yeah as an American i think our tendency to want things that will last a long time so we don't have to shop as often is what lead to so many things being stuffed with preservatives and add that with everything having 5-10 different brand choices and maybe 1 is a "healthy" option that is kind badly labeled as that makes it really hard to try and eat healthy
Having to DRIVE several miles to get to the store (in most cases) is also going to factor in to that mentality. Local shops within a few minutes walk are a very common thing pretty much everywhere outside of North America.
@@TalesOfWar yeah that is definitely true as well that needing to drive so far Factors into that which comes from I think the fact that north American cities for the most part were made and grew after the industrial revolution so they were designed around cars compared to European cities that were mostly founded before the industrial revolution so they are more pedestrian focused
@@TalesOfWar America is huge compared to other places, the distance between a rural area and a city can be immense. I don't know why people can't figure this out.
@@amicableenmity9820 So is Russia. They seem to manage with stores being closer to where people actually live. Russia also has a vastly superior passenger rail network. And incase you've forgotten, Russia is the biggest country in the world, so no, size isn't an excuse. It's piss poor urban planning that's the problem.
@@mobster24451 American cities weren't designed around the car, they were bulldozed for it. I mean that quite literally. Just look at all those massive urban highways that split communities, most minority communities. Look up Robert Moses, he was pretty prolific at this kind of thing.
Hey Evan in Australia we do have a few other grocery stores but the two large one tend to monopolise the market due to size and choice of products. We have IGA ( Independent grocery Association) Aldi and food works. The Three latter ones are smaller and have a smaller footprint but AGI are more prominent in smaller townships. We are 5 min walk from our local Woolworths a 20 min walk to Aldi and I GA which requires a car. Small convenient shopping centres are deliberately placed in the centre of suburbs for convenience of the people living there and we still have corner stores and service stations that have a few emergency supplies when it’s a public holiday or shops are shut. Most Woolworths are open till 11pm but Aldi shut at 7pm.
Australia is mostly like the US in that you generally need a car to go to the supermarket. But there is very little competition because of zoning laws, so even if there are other options, the closest are almost aways Woolworths and Coles. That's why prices are so high for groceries in Australia. The system is the worst possible.
Idk I guess it depends where you live, before I moved overseas from a small regional town, my local Aldi was nicely walkable, on a road with a couple of other shops and a car/caravan dealer, but still very much in the middle of a residential area, while the Woolies was in the centre of town. I’d only generally bother going to Woolies if I was already in town, or if it had got past 7 and I realised I had literally no food for dinner
My town (a suburb of Boston in the US) has no grocery stores in town and the nearest ones to me are a ten minute drive. Even if I wanted to walk or bike to the store, it really wouldn’t be safe, because our town doesn’t have sidewalks. We do have 14 pizza restaurants and used to have 5 Dunkin Donuts within a five minute drive, until a couple years ago.
Being a single person household, my weekly shopping bill is one of my larger expenses- as much as I like to try new foods, the higher prices now dictate that I more or less keep to the stuff I know I like. It’s disappointing to find you don’t enjoy that new flavour coffee or new biccies (the important stuff😂) so spending double to go back for your original choices. Obviously this isn’t a frequent occurrence, but it does make you stop and reconsider. Lord knows how people with kiddies go on with the same issue, what with pester power and whatnot. Great video Evan!
I grew up in Salzburg and live in the US now. My non-negotiable when buying a house was that I am able to walk to a grocery store. Does not have to be big but needs to have the essentials.
That massive Albany Wal-Mart is my local one and it has 2 levels with an escalator in the middle with a special lift for your cart. I typically don't frequent it but it's a wild experience.
There's basically only 2 kinds of cookies at the local Safeway: Chips Ahoy in like 70 different flavors and Oreos in 93 different flavors. Coming from Canada, we didn't have that many flavors of those (maybe 3-4 of each), but we also had Maple Leaf creme cookies (multiple brands, Leclerc being possibly the best), Fudgeeos, the Dare version of Fudgeeos whatever it is called, the crème françaises cookies disappeared a long time ago. but there's the other sandwich cookies with that little fruit flavored rubber thing in the middle. In any case, technically fewer flavors, but a lot more cookie variety (and brands though they might all be from the same conglomerate company in the end). So yeah, I do feel that illusion of choice. Same with beers, there's a gazillion microbrew IPAs but try to find one amber ale...
LeClerc? Ooh La La... Ireland here. After visiting France I would love if some of those French Stores would open here. LeClerc being the fanciest.. Then I find they're already transatlantic 🤨
While I think your overall point is completely valid, I feel like using Walmart and Target as your US grocery store examples is a bit off. Those aren't grocery stores, they are everything stores. We do have places that are just grocery stores (Stop and Shop, Shaw's, Hanaford's, and many other regional options), although it sounds like they are often much larger than your average British grocery store. Granted there are the separate issues that have led places like Walmart and target (or worse Dollar General) to being the only places people can get groceries in their community.
@@jaycee330 yeah, the last time I was in England the only grocery stores I went to were in Brighton or London, and one I think was a Tesco Express or something, so I was not sure how representative they were. But, my local market definitely has a long row of salad dressings, and it's far from the biggest market I've been to, so I was willing to accept that they are usually smaller in the UK.
I’m Autistic and have ADHD and the only stores I shop at are Trader Joe’s, Aldi, and I’ll pop into my local grocery store (which is on the small side) just because I find having so much choice in picking foods WAY too overwhelming and causes sensory overload. The fact that Trader Joe’s and Aldi provide just one or two options for what you’re looking for is a literal lifesaver for me, as I don’t shop for groceries at a typical grocery store.
More choices doesn't necessarily mean more quality though, it just means more added artificial junk ingredients to give you those endless flavour options!😅 Perhaps the closest analogy is your cheap and cheerful high street Chinese restaurants where the menu options can run to several pages long but quality takes a backseat to quantity whereas a more upmarket Chinese restaurant will feature all of their menu offerings on just one or two pages but the raw ingredients are of infinitely better quality.
@@MsBlue68more options isn't a gimmick.They make more money because they have a wider variety of flavors, therefore increasing the number of people who finally have a flavor they want.
@@cablefeed3738 It actually creates artificial competition. Because it increases their maeket share if they have more products. Instead of several brands with a few flavours competing, you have one, maybe two brands with a huge selection just "competing" in flavours
@@raerohan4241 that has to do with monopolies more than with choices. There doesn't need to be a competition between different flavors of pop tart.I just want a lot of different flavors of pop tarts. You know what the competition for a pop tart is toaster strudel.
having less products also allows for seasonal rotation, which opens up opportunities to run promotions that also promote other things that we always have stocked, but people might always miss. brings customers back for every season of the year. useful for places like Aldi, Lidl (middle aisles) and even tesco cause they do a lot of other stuff too clothes and gifts etc.
Just moved to the UK: The food is fresher and my shopping is much faster than when I was living in the USA. I am not staring at aisles upon aisle trying to make a choice. I don't mind going more often but the issue is I snack more now. My brain just goest "the shop is just next door, I can just get a chocolate bar or a bag of crisps/chips or a drink or dessert" Also because of you I had to pop down to my local Sainsbury's to get some ice cream. I don't hate the ice cream in the UK, but it isn't good either. I find the food selection in the UK good enough and some items I do prefer over the US counterpart, but oh do I miss larger containers of sauces, higher selection of cheeses, and some other items.
If you want a higher selection of cheeses, usually the bigger version of the super markets have a big cheese section like Sainsburys for example. I don't know about "upmarket" places suchas Waitrose etc as they are far too expensive for my wallet lol.
Try a dairy ice cream like mackie's. I also really like little moons. Probably nothing compared to the ice cream in the states but there are better choices than soft scoop lol.
I'm always surprised when people say the food in the UK is fresher than X. As someone that moved from Portugal to the UK, the food quality was a massive downgrade for me.
@@Mikas60Comparison is always relative. I've been to your beautiful country. When I was there, at least, your climate was a lot more agreeable. I can imagine trying to grow all sorts of things that don't grow quite as well over here. That said, I think the quality of our food in general (especially meat, I've noticed) has been slowly declining over the course of decades, as supermarkets have really started to cut back on quality for profit, and large companies have started to move in.
It's funny because, creature of habit that I am, I've been meeting to figure out where the best places to find certain items rather than going to the same place all the time since I'm not exactly short on options. For those wondering, within an hours walk from my home there is: A Tesco, a Sainsburys, an Aldi, a Lidl, an Iceland and a Poundland. (obviously some of those are closer than others)
The "walking to Lidl over the grass" situation is actually a perfect example of how to do proper footpath planning. Make no paths, let the people decide where exactly they want to walk, then come back a year or two later and put paths exactly there.
I lived in Japan for 6 years and, when I returned to the US, I returned to my previous job at a supermarket here in the US. Maybe it's because I have to put up tags every week when the sales change, but I hate how much variety there is in the US & miss the limited selection in Japan (something I never thought I would say because initially I also missed having variety). Please explain to me why there are regular, family & giant sizes of the same cereal. Not to mention that there are Oreo and Crumbl "cereal". I swear there are at least 2-3 flavors (if not more) of every product. I still find it overwhelming.
The different sizes are (theoretically) so you can buy either the size that best fits your needs or your budget... but it's also secretly a way to confuse buyers into spending more than they need to. It's all a ploy to make us mindless consumers who just grab what looks best, because we don't have enough time or mental bandwidth to actually consider the dozens of options in front of us. The biggest box is *often* the cheapest per ounce/100g/serving of product, but not always. And it varies between chains which size box is the best value for any given cereal. And when the bigger box goes on sale 3 for $11 and the smaller one is buy four get one free, you have to redo all your calculations. You'd need to use a calculator or get very good at mental math and holding lots of numbers in your head, to make actual thoughtful choices about this stuff. Probably spreadsheets too, and nobody wants to spend an hour or more at the store poking spreadsheets on their phone every time they need food.
The regular size is for when you want a feed a family of four for a week, the giant size is for when you want to feed a family of four for a month and the giant size is when you want to fill a swimming pool.
As someone from Eastern Europe who studied in the UK - I was often overwhelmed by the number of options (usually brands, not flavours) in the shops. Meanwhile, I hate shopping in Lidl back home due to how little choice it offers. UK Lidl, on the other hand? My absolutely favourite store where everything was perfectly balanced
Seriously? I too am originally from Eastern Europe and moved to Ireland (I know, not UK but close by) and I just can't, there is so little choice in the shops. In my country, if I went in, I could always find something new to try, or a choice of 10 different flavours of the same chips if I wanted something more standard. Lots of different interesting products from other countries, and lots of great local products. Here, everything is either tasteless or just of poor quality. Definitely not what I expected from Western Europe.
Before I started organising my weeks more I’ll admit I used to pop into Tesco 3-4 times a week at least, but now that I’ve got more things going on and I’ve a good idea of what ingredients I need for the week, I stop by Tesco once a week, maybe twice if I grab a snack there en route to somewhere else. But compared to let’s say my mum, she still regularly pops in over 3 times a week; luckily it’s a 5 minute walk from our house which is great, but I still found the time that I save by planning out my meals for the week is a much more beneficial use of my time, and it helps with budgeting a lot too since all my weekly food I’ll need is in one big shop/bill, and whatever’s left in my food budget for the week after that can be spent on whatever; a random snack, McDonald’s, Subway, etc.. But I’ve definitely found that the less time I spend in supermarkets the less unhealthy food/snacks I buy, and the less I buy in general too
I love this video. As someone who lived in Italy for 4 months; I just could not get over how different my grocery store experience was. I was going multiple times a week because the closest grocery store was around the corner from my apartment, I had a much much smaller selection of items and less of it was junk food, even when I went to the larger stores, they still were not anywhere close to the size of stores in the U.S. I had multiple store options within an easy walking distance and some bigger options a short public transit ride away. I actually had reverse culture shock when I came home because I found that U.S. grocery stores were way too big and way too overwhelming with the amount of choices and switched to shopping at Aldi instead. I felt like I forgot how to shop as I used to because I got so used to be able to quickly run out and grab things versus having to take my car and drive somewhere. Anyways I’ve studied this topic a bit and have a paper I think you would find interesting if you haven’t come across it already. It compares grocery stores in the U.S. and Switzerland : Supermarket savvy: An Analysis of Psychological exploitation within grocery stores by Calvin Brinkworth
Yeah but it says "non-dairy" in a very legible, noticeable font right on the front of the tub. Evan acknowledged that the reason for the new rule was, in theory, to provide for this, and that's fine. But a large portion of what the average reasonable consumer would assume are "OG, cow juice"-style ice creams... aren't. Like, if I intentionally buy sorbet, I'm not getting tricked.
Pretending for a moment that there is a consistent and useful definition of "ultra-processed foods," Ben & Jerry's Non-Dairy Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream would be an example of a UPF.
I’ve lived in the US and the UK. A huge HEB opened a mere 13 miles away from my Texas home. Just when I got used to the layout, they moved the store around again. Once, I wasn’t even able to find the frozen food section, as it was hidden amongst the crappy clothes section. An employee had to lead me there. Fortunately, an Aldis opened almost opposite. I could whiz in and out of there, and only go to HEB if I needed a more exotic ingredient. Then I learned my neighbour was growing a market garden, so I got most of my veggies from him.
😂😂😂😂😂 Evan I've been watching every one of your videos for many years man you went down the rabbit hole with this one... OMG dude. I had to keep pausing to process the information with my brain. In Central Florida here BTW. And the thing that shocked me most about the video is how small the supermarkets are in UK . We have five super Walmarts within a 20-minute Drive. Also Me and my husband always laugh about all of the weird flavors of stuff...
Walmart and target are more like department stores that also sell food rather than actual grocery stores. Actual grocery stores have a bigger focus on whole foods and has fewer options of Oreos than Walmart or Target in my experience. (Places like Kroger and Safeway) I know Walmart sells the most groceries by percentage in the country but still.
Android Oreo, chocolate crème Oreo, coconut delight Oreo, strawberry milkshake Oreo, strawberry cream Oreo, strawberry cheesecake Oreo, green tea Oreo, lemon ice Oreo, organic Oreo, blueberry ice cream Oreo, orange ice cream Oreo, golden Oreo, double stuff golden Oreo, mega stuff golden Oreo, uh oh Oreo, chocolate crème golden Oreo, Oreo heads or tails, creamsicle Oreo, ice cream Oreo rainbow sherbet Oreo dq blizzard crème cookies, and double delight Oreo cookies are just a few. There’s an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to it. It is important to not however that not all flavors are available everywhere at all times
There are some biscuit brands in the UK that have been bringing in a lot of seasonal or variant products like jammy dodgers and jaffa cakes. For the most part they seem not as nice as the std and my kids often don't finish the pack. I guess it's just to push novelty and seasonal sales when they must know they won't be as popular. On the flip side, if there is a seasonal product you really like, that's horrible too, as you have to stock pile it while stocks last.
I tend to shop at Trader Joe’s. I like that they have fewer selections. Walmart and Target really aren’t grocery stores. They just happen to have groceries in addition to the other items.
I live in the US and shop at my local Lidl about twice a week. I love this store. The produce is waaay better than bigger chain grocery stores. I appreciate many of the European choices they offer. The layout of the store itself makes it extremely easy to shop. I realized that when I go to a bigger store, I get slightly overwhelmed with the aisles and choices. You’re absolutely correct with grocery stores being within close proximity of a neighborhood, BUT NOT WALKABLE! I have a market two minutes from my house, but it would probably take about thirty minutes to walk to it because there’s a creek, and a patch of trees blocking the way.
I guess compared to the US, a first world problem in the UK is that in a lot of places the nearest shop is something like a OneStop or a Co-op- I’M SORRY THE AVERAGE SIZE OF A WALMART IS WHAT? That completely threw me off my train of thought I have no idea what I was complaining about WHAT IS THAT SIZE
That's because Walmart is not just a grocery store - it has clothes, electronics, hardware, a garden centre, many have a car service area where you can buy tyres, home goods, etc. It's a one-stop shop, and yeah, you have to drive there, but it does beat having to travel to 5 different stores to get things.
My city has relaxed zoning in my neighborhood and I can now pop into trader Joe's or sprouts both around 5 minutes away by bike. I totally loved this video, I get exceedingly stressed trying to find things in a target, or trying to pick the best peanut butter out of a bunch of junk. Since switching to a mostly whole foods plant based diet I basically turned my health completely around, lost tons of weight, have much better blood works, and found myself way less stressed in the store. Now I just buy whatever veggies and fruit look good, in season, and cheap and pair them with some bean + grain combo. I'm not pregect so sometimes I buy some upf or retrieve them from my works kitchen but I can tell they seriously set me back. (my office has 3 serving bags of nerds gummy clusters which are slowly killing me, send help)
I used to shop at ASDA years ago. They have really gone downhill in the last 20 years. The quality of your store may well depend on where you live though. My local Morrisons is a good store, but the one near my parents is gross.
If more Americans could get over their desire for a single family home on a 1/4 acre of land, more of them could walk to the shops. I have made the decision for my life and I can easily walk to 3 different grocery stores. And to be clear, I am not talking about living in some transit heavy city either. The opportunities do exist for more people if we just make some different choices and trade offs. That said, the vast majority of Americans continue to choose the house and quarter acre and end up "living" in their cars.
We like our quiet spaces and not bunched up in flats with forty other families in same building. :D So, I'll trade that off for a twice monthly shopping at Walmart.
There's a Sainsbury's behind my parents' house and there's a little short cut into the carpark if you're coming from my parents' street. And it's a bigger Sainsbury's so my mum often goes around with her little cart full of reusable bags a couple times a week. Then there's a 'little' Tesco down the road if there's something Sainsbury's doesn't have. And honestly I'd rather have less choice - I don't really want to choose between several brands of kidney beans or whole wheat bread.
Hmm ... I shop at Target quite often, and rarely buy anything that wasn't on my list. But I see your point about the floor plans. And maybe I'm not a typical consumer.
There is nothing wrong with pork pies and sausage rolls for the first twenty years but it never changes and there is no escape. They have stopped stocking proper 'Pork Farms' pies for 'Melton Mowbray' homogenised mincemeat. It is like this in every town in every supermarket. The same range, thee same flavour and brands in every supermarket in all the land for evermore.
I chose to write about the psychology of shopping for my degree dissertation, and since then, going into a store has never been the same. Everything is designed to trick you into buying stuff you don't need and probably didn't even want.
@@dutchy1121 Yes, and you can tell they both are German owned by the way they do business. So unlike American owned grocery stores. The Aldi branded stores even have you drop coinage in order to get a shopping cart...almost every grocery store I've been to in Europe has you drop a 1 Euro coin to get a cart (the money is returned when you return the cart and insert the "lock" into the next cart). That certainly insures shoppers will return their cart instead of leaving them all over the parking lot (like you see at every other grocery store in America). I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've played shopping cart bingo trying to avoid stray carts left in the parking lot.
Speaking of the correlation between time spent in supermarkets/shops and money spent, my grandmother was known for her efficient grocery-list system when she lived in Penn Yan, New York. She had memorized the layout of the shop, and she would list the items she needed to buy in the order that she would pass them while walking around the shop. At some point, the layout of the shop changed, and everyone wondered how she would manage.
So refreshing to hear someone speak so smoothly and pleasantly to the ear! No uptalk and this moronic intonation that has spread among virtually ALL youngsters nowadays and makes it hard for me to stand how most people speak, especially online!!!!
i've had europeans yell about how it's not fun to go to the grocery store multiple times and that i should just move when i've mentioned i wish here in the US that grocery stores were closer and walkable in rural areas. i have to drive so my shopping is once a week at most. visiting the UK in December and actually looking forward to being able to walk to get groceries while i'm there. really interesting video. we really have too many options here in the states, that salad dressing case from the beginning of the video doesn't even count the literal aisle where even more salad dressings take up a quarter to a third of the shelf space
Having 30 flavors of chips and 50 flavors of cookies is about owning the shelves. The big brands push the little brands out of the store by doing this.
But what if I like spending $8 for 5 oz of artificially flavored potatoes, and taking 20 minutes to make that important decision?
@@DennisComellatotally missed the point..
@@MorelorrrI don't think he missed anything.
@@Morelorrr totally missed the joke.
@@Defektyd And the sarcasm. We really are past the parody inversion point.
16:00 In German the shelves with candy bars next to the conveyor belt at checkout are called "Quengelzone" (whining zone) because that's when children get impatient in the queue and start pestering their parents for the sweets on display.
Auch mein bauch
When I took a marketing class elective in middle school, the candy, chips, and sodas placed at the checkout is placed there on purpose for impulse purchases. You have whining kids, adults whose willpower breaks down as they wait staring at instant dopamine-releasing treats, and hunger-overriding-logic from people that randomly shopped without eating first.
I can relate as an ex-child in Estonia 😂
The isles near the register have gum, razors and candy hahah
The Germans call it was it is. They don't beat around the bush. ❤from RSA
I think in Berlin where I live, near the check-out isnt candy, but cold beer, sodas and ice-cream, that is goods that are kept cold, and sold cold. You could say that is too keep the cold when you buy them for immediate consumption, or you can say.. beer is to Berlin, what candy is to the rest of the world :D
Choice paralysis is a thing. Tesco did a trial with a bunch of jams and other preserves. People stopped buying them. Any of them. They reverted to a smaller selection and sales went up again. Well, back to normal.
That's because Brits aren't used to or able to make choices anymore. They like being told what to do and how to live. It was the same after Germany reunited. Many East Germans were actively wishing for communism to come back because life was too hard for them when they had to make decisions and provide for themselves. Even though they had freedom and the ability to live far better lives, they hated it. They preferred to be told what do to and when and be handed a subsistence existence. Britain is there now.
It takes me five minutes to choose between strawberry or raspberry.
Sounds potentially like a good thing, people get massive choice, but also feel less compelled to buy stuff they don't need. Obviously no good for Tesco's profits though.
But then there's choice fatigue, which is what most U.S. stores tend to bank on. Yes, jams and jellies might lose some sales. So will coffee. Maybe so will ice cream. But then you get to the cookies, and you're so tired from saying "no" to yourself, you just buy three packs. Then you get to the cereal. Then… And so on.
@@caw25sha - The answer is raspberry.
I was sooooooo confused when you said "This is your standard juice section." I was like.... "uhhhh do you know what juice is???" And then you clarified that you aren't blind. 🤣
I should have taken the photo from further away
Well Evan does wear glasses soooo…. Maybe when writing the script he forgot his glasses
sure did look like juice to me for a few seconds
then i looked again
teens, u know
@@musicalmoop4743evan whi? go away !!
thats my problem with kids man!! yall have no idea
15:50 I did notice the chocolate bars next to the checkout had been replaced with protein bars and dried fruit but I'd never realised there was a new law supporting this! That makes more sense now.
You still see sweets and chocolate in many superstores, so there may be a law but there must also be a workaround for them to do that so often.
@@Thurgosh_OGthey are specifically talking about next to the checkout, not in the store itself...
HFSS (High Fats Salts Sugars) the legislation prevents retailers from placing these products on the checkouts, front of store or promotional ends in an attempt to allow consumers to make healthier decisions.
I noticed that the isle where everyone lines up became the candy isle instead of them being by the checkout but despite the shops trying their work arounds I have felt less inclined to buy them on impulse but strangely now I sometimes put chocolate on the list of things I'm going there to buy so Im not sure if it works or not.
Those things are basically glorified candy bars themselves, but I suppose slighy better is still better.
I'm a US citizen and I wish there were more corner shops in our neighborhood! Where I live in Seattle, we actually have a few small independently owned grocery stores, which are smaller than Trader Joe's, but stocked with every item you would ever need. The best thing about these tiny grocers is they are located in densely populated neighborhoods and are quick places to get in and out of (shopping is usually completed within 15 minutes!). We just need more of them.
And the older cities in the eastern US have the best setup for that. I tend to say NCY is the most european of the large US cities. Dense population that makes public transport viable, many neighborhoods towards the center where you find a store on the ground floor and residential space above. Pretty much how it used to be the standard in Germany.
We have free standing supermarkets here as well, the corner shops are slowly dying out, but they're still there. Especially the small ones that stay open after hours and on sundays. They have special exemptions for that and only carry the very basics and grossly inflated prices. You don't do your groceries there, you buy a pack of beer and a bag of chips 5 minutes before the game.
Some Dollar Generals are starting to become something like this. Come by a few that even have your basics in fresh produce. Given where are live, this was a great thing to see as it was in the tiny towns that are 30+ minutes from a regular grocery store.
I grew up in south Seattle (white center/south park) and there used to be so many corner stores even 15-20 years ago. I think the city used to be zoned differently to accommodate it? The roosevelt/north u district neighborhoods have a lot of evidence of the old style of zoning. It's like... 15 minute cities or whatever are actually just how cities used to be built when not everyone owned 2 cars lol
Seattle loves criminals. City of love
People used to and still do in some places call them corner stores because they're often located on corners of streets. A lot of people actually want this instead of having to drive or ride a much longer distance to go to a store that takes double the time to go to, and double the time inside the store because it's so big.
A path? No, that's a "desire path", which is where people have created a path around the paved/authorised walking areas. There's a subreddit.
Reminds me of a story about Eisenhower. He was president of Columbia university and there was a quadrangle where students were expected to walk around. Unfortunately, they kept walking across it. The university asked Eisenhowers advice to get the students to obey the rules and walk around on the pavement. His answer was to build pavements where the students wanted to walk. So desire paths can work.
“Walk the cow path”
I watched a video about the desire path in National Trust land. The documentarian called the people making them "Meanderthals," I thought that was hilarious
@@snafufubar I believe there was a recent build where they didn't put any paths in in the first semester, then paved all the paths that developed.
@@snafufubar The version I heard had the architects unable to agree where to put the paths, so Eisenhower said to just plant grass, then wait a year and see where paths got worn into the grass, then pave those.
I can remember being horrified when I stayed with a friend in Kentucky a few years ago. There was a big supermarket at the end of the street where she lived. But there was a hedge, deep ditch and another hedge between the supermarket and the housing estate. As in the example above, even if I wanted to don walking shoes and go all the way around the estate (because of course the only exit was as far away from the store as you could get) there was no footpath once I got off the estate. I would have to dodge traffic on a three lane road.
Here, in the UK, I have a small supermarket, a library, pharmacy, fish and chip shop, convenience store, and even a hairdresser, all within a twenty minute round trip...with footpaths all the way. No, I don't live in the centre of a city, but on the outskirts of a small sea-side town. I go to a shop three or four times per week, often just for the opportunity to take a walk.
UK is thousands of years old. Thousands of years of an agricultural society developing. Congats
Ive learned that in the US I'm forced to overspend everywhere I go. As an adult with restraint I do all of my shopping in the early morning on my bike I buy enough to fill cargo bags on my bike and i fill by backpack too if I need more room. So basically I have a wonderful early morning cardio workout every Saturday and Sunday I bike up an incline hill and there are no cars because nobody is working. It's become my favorite part of the week to just go on a bike ride. Ideally I would prefer corner health stores but the government forces corner death stores
Jealous
Fascinating content but a moment for these backgrounds, they're super nice, pretty and interesting (and the colour grading is beautiful) without distracting or seeming awkward - it really feels like watching a show produced with a larger crew!
Haha thanks there’s a clip cut out of me moving one of the things behind me while saying “nobody but me cares about the background!”
Does "just popping" anywhere even exist in the US? Seems like everywhere you'd want to go is a car drive away.
Depends on where you live. You can pull it off in major cities in the Northeast, for instance.
Not Just Bikes has a short series on UA-cam called Stronger Towns, which is about exactly this problem.
We don't even get that these days. 9/10 businesses I drive to only allow online customers now.
unless you live in a big city like NY Chicago or some on the east coast then o
Yes it’s called cities
I'm actually Dutch but concerning shopping I'm really German: I just want what I need and I trust it to be a good product and reasonably priced. 🤷🏽♂️🙃
Yes. Brit here, but I agree. It’s getting worse. We don’t need more new products which aren’t really food .
Which is why Aldi Nord & Aldi Sud & Lidl own the planet. By being German. By buying in or commissioning really good food, that they buy in from suppliers who compete to sell to them because they buy based on quality not price. It's the same with the EU butter mountain, meat, whatever mountain. Only the very best of butter, meat etc goes into the mountain. Because it encourages great livestock handling etc. And so when Europe gives away food to poor people - it knows its giving away the BEST that Europe can produce.
Personally, I made a mistake many years ago, as I did not know about Dutch employment law. That it was much more possible in the netherlands to be work part time and get supplementary support from the state If I had know this 20 years ago I would now be living in one of my favourite cities in the world Nijmegen and shopping in at a mixture of Lidl & Albert Hein. With excursions to Belgium to go to Le Clerc. Obviously I also shop at Aldi sud & nord.
@@phoenix-xu9xjyall got vegetables again at least or are they still rotting on the fields because no one wants to harvest them for 6£ an hour
@@LuluTheCorgi of course we have tons of vegetables. We grow tons of Kale for example where we live ( most other native veg too ) We are lucky as we have our own allotment in the village and also a large garden to grow our own vegetables and fruits. . I personally don’t eat UPF.
@@annakissed3226more than 2,30€ for a rock of butter doesnt sound like a mountain to me. arent we substituting the dairy farmers like crazy already?
Over the last 2 years I've transitioned to shopping at Lidl in the US almost exclusively. I do a weekly shop every Sunday and get 80% of what I need for the week, but I enjoy riding my bike over a few more times during the week to pick up a random thing I'm either out of or have a craving for.
The first time I went there, I wasn't impressed and the lack of selection was a turn off. After becoming accustomed to the products they have there and memorizing the entire layout of the store, which is pretty small to begin with, I've grown to LOVE IT! It's so convenient. If I'm just popping in for one thing, it takes maybe 2 minutes. If I'm doing my weekly shop, it takes no more than 10 to 15 minutes. No more wandering around huge supermarkets looking for X thing that isn't where I'd expect it to be.
It does sadden me that I never see anyone else biking where I live. We have a huge traffic problem and some decent bike infrastructure by American suburb standards.
I'm much the same here in Croatia, I get one or two items in other supermarkets but Lidl has a lot of things I can't get anywhere else. In Hungary we also had a similar chain called Penny Market and I still go there once a month as some of their products are better quality than the Lidl own brands.
I'm in a rural part of the UK and do a weekly shop in Lidl and once a month go to one of the bigger shops for those bits you don't need as often and are not sold by Lidl.
Yeah, not the kind of store you go to when you do your big, varied weekly run. But where you go to get stuff for the weekend.
You want bread, bacon, butter, a can of beans, a six pack of beer and a bottle of coke? Yeah, they got all that. They might only have three brands with 3 flavours each, but if you know what you like, you buy that and have no need to run through 150 types of cheese at Walmart.
And we have big stores with lots of variety in Germany as well. They compete with that variety, not with prices. And the discounters like Lidl or Aldi tend to have lower prices than the big supermarkets.
Sort of like anti-Walmart where the savings come from needing to stock less, but having that smaller set always available. They only nave Milbona and Bärenmarke milk, but those are pretty much the same milk as any other, made at the same farms from the same cows, moved by the same logistics companies and packaged by the same factory.
Lidl doesn't have a "lack of selection" - they ROTATE their selection.
Want that particular flavor of Greek-style yogurt? You gotta wait for the "Greek week" and pay attention to their weekly offer. You want that tool set at a special price - run to Lidl NOW!
Same goes for all their products - from tools and household appliances through clothes to food. Everything is being rotated weekly. So better hurry up and buy the stuff you like now, who knows how long until it comes back.
They are very good at generating demand and getting you inside the story on a regular basis.
The meat is their military rations that are close to their expiration date... also no ground coffee for some reason. I have to grind it for myself (buying a machine to do that from them I guess) or drink the instant coffees that taste awful.
i think I'd have a mental breakdown trying to shop in America 😂
I'm just imagining it to be like IKEA but with food everywhere. And no signs to help you escape.
It happens frequently. Part of why there are so many "Karens" here.
I've never had an issue with "choice paralysis" and I've lived here my whole life.
For me, it's easy. Need a cereal. Need a cereal I'm not allergic or intolerant to. Know that General Mills makes cereals that upset my stomach. Move to the natural cereal section. Find one without wheat, emulsifiers, coconut, tree nuts, or sesame and sunflower oil. Buy the one cereal that meets that criteria. 😂
@jmas43 that's understandable. I love Coco Pops, so when I'm shopping, I either choose that one or the shops equivalent. Only two choices thankfully, nut there is a mini debate as to the size for coco pops since they have different ones, but if there was 20+ options for chocolate coated aerated rice, I'd start crying. It's like having too many options forces you almost to have that brand or variety loyalty.
Canadian here, who lives 45 minutes from the border, and frequently "cross border shops." To my Canadian eyes, the selection in American stores is staggering. Also the insanely liberal coupon policies. Also, it's a fun day out. Canada is somewhere in the middle. Way less selection but hyper overprocessed and only a few mega corporations represented and a lean towards car-culture.
and crappy coupon laws. everything in canada sucks compared to the states
Canada has Walmart but other than that another grocery duopoly that colludes on prices.
I can't believe the Aussie Coles & Woolies duopoly was mentioned!
I’m loving this series, it’s just Evan getting progressively more accepting how British he’s getting and increasingly frustrated with Americanisms 😂
@@Jordyb33123
Oh dear, it sounds like a progressive disorder of England, he'll be OK as long as the cynicism doesn't set in permanently, or the New Jersey will be completely washed out . Unless that's his intention.
I feel like it’s him slowly realizing he grew up in essentially a third world country. Then moved to the UK, which Europe looks down on and he was still blown away.
One great thing about my country (and I'm sure it's a thing in a lot of other places too) are farmers markets that are usually very close to supermarkets and grocery stores. So essentially, not only do I live close to a grocery store, I can also see whether the potatoes are better in store or does the lady at the farmers market has better ones that day 😅 It's good to be reminded what a blessing these things are, especially when we're so used to them being normal.
Until you find out that the "farmers" produce... is just the produce out of Costco 😢
@@PeterFabian no like in the uk and europe you have actual farmers and farms that have a small store where they sell the stuff they grow and theyre everywhere. I have a flower shop and butchers 2 minutes from me, in a city that has been selling flowers, veg, fruit and meat for over 250 years, owned by the same family. In ireland youll often run across honesty boxes and they can sell all sorts of stuff. Like i was hiking one time and i ran across an honest box stocked with fresh squeezed juice, eggs with the dirt still on them from the local farm etc and you could just steal it all if you wanted, there wasnt even another person within a 10 minute walk at least from where it was sitting, but oc i grabbed some strawberry lemonande and left some money.
@@PeterFabian yeah unfortunately things like that happen too :/ where I'm from we have two types of farmer stalls, either people who bring produce from a larger market (that comes directly from farmers but it's not guaranteed so it might be imported and therefor - old) or stalls where farmers who live close by come with their own produce - that one you can trust a little more :)
I have a farmer that sets up twice a week that sells free run eggs for less than the closest grocery, and they are amazing.
@@WookieWarriorz that's so lovely ❤️ I'm sure those honesty boxes help them out if they have surplus on their farms so that way it doesn't go to waste
The big difference is that the government is more interested in people’s healthcare as it has to fund the nhs from taxes. Whereas this isn’t the model for the US. The uk is thus more interested in saving money on the nhs If it can legislate to make people’s food healthier.
People in the UK are almost as unhealthy as in the US.
Just for your info, if you didn't already know Evan, is that Trader Joes is owned by Aldi Nord.
Yeah, I also hoped Evan would have mentioned that.
This is so funny
I’ve mentioned it in 2 other vids comparing supermarkets! Sometimes I get concerned about repeating certain things though I go back to certain topics 😇
im supposed to know a guy named evie love?
chixks are so self involved , evan would be better off with out you. why? well, you posted on here, reminds me kf my
ex gal
Well *I* didn’t know so I’m glad y’all mentioned it!
As a American living in Britain I agree and I’m glad that you pointed this out. I try to explain to my friends back home about how different things are here like that (so random I know) and it’s so hard but like it really was a culture shock moving here especially living in rural Britain
Yay rare Australia mention
To say "shits fucked" and then move on too. Because yes, it really is fucked.
One of the reasons why ALDI is doing so well in the US
In Australia too.
I'm German and did not expect a Laugeneck to be called out 😂 LOVE IT.
Also brilliant video, thank you!
Das Laugeneck ist mein lieblingsgebäck
I'm from Canada but moved to a small city in India 10 years back, and I fell in love with the way grocery shopping works over here (though it took me years to change my habits!). Just now, I felt like having cucumber with my lunch, so I walked like 200m to a small shop that sells, well... ONLY vegetables! Then, walking back, I crossed a guy pushing a cart of beautifully looking vegetables in the street, so I bought some more. Came back with a big bag of veggies!
The fruits and vegetables vendors are completely apart from other shops. And still, the UPF here are not so tempting. It's mainly a small choice of biscuits, chips, candies, and soft drinks. The majority of the shop is for pulses, grains, spices, cleaning items, etc. Now, UPF are such a small part of my diet and I always have access to so much fresh food!
As someone who grew up and will probably never leave NJ (unfortunately lol), I really appreciate the constant references/deep dives into to the garden state. I grew up in sussex county where for me, the nearest grocery store was a 25 minute drive away.
Although, I love nature and appreciate that area, I now crave more walkable places and will probably be moving to a more walkable town next year. To me "walkable" used to mean walking along a precarious shoulder whereas to my partner it means sidewalks, bike lanes and downtown within walking distance. I dream about walking to a park to hammock, popping downtown to grab a coffee or grabbing some fresh produce at a market. One day! 🤞
We're in Byram, which, admittedly, is only just Sussex County. If every US state has a "Bumblefuck", then NJ's one is almost definitely in Sussex County.
As a Brit living in NJ, Evan's comments about neighbourhoods looking dead over here hits home. The only pedestrians you ever see around here are people walking their dogs. The roads have no footpaths, for the most part, and I daren't let my kids play in the street or ride bikes, as they're likely to get mown down by some fuckwit in a Silverado.
I just went to a brand new housing estate rhat isnt even fully built yet and bang in the middle of it is already a bunch of shops including the semi-local-mini supermarket that i work for. Its a lil more expensive than the buffer supermarkets but it specialises in giving you fewer choices but being very local and giving you the convenience of a lil corner shop (it's cheaper than those price marked abominations though) so we sit between the tiny corner shop and the supermarkets.
Also, i can be in and out of a major supermarket within 5-10 minutes. 👌
9:21 Yes, the sidewalk is largely useless. The only use is if you 'walk' for exercise or if you actually know your neighbors and go visit them. Spoiler alert: Nobody knows their neighbors
I was staying in a hotel just outside of Austin Texas for SXSW a few years back, and myself and some of the band could see a gas station with store from our window. So, being late and hungry for snacks, we decided to walk to the gas station for a shopping trip. Being dumb Brits, we had not planned for disappearing sidewalks, no pedestrian crossing spots and the need to battle through the undergrowth to get to the gas station. It was a bit of a shock (bit we were drunk so it was an adventure lol) but when we got to the store/gas station and had done our shopping we decided we couldn't face the trip back so called a taxi. We were just naive back then and assumed that walking to places was normal, especially when you can see them less than a mile from your window.
@@martin-1965 That's a whacky adventure :P
@@zaxchannel2834 If we hadn't just got back from the festival, had been sober and it wasn't 2am and dark, we'd probably have been able to work out it was a dumb idea. I guess we just took the idea of a sidewalk being there for granted lol. Never made the mistake again and to be fair, we were not exactly in the center of Austin. We had a laugh about it anyway and was amazed we didn't get a police car pulling up and asking what a bunch of drunk idiots were doing stumbling around the edge of the freeway. "Sorry Officer, we're not from round here and we desperately need junk food from the gas station in the distance. We seem to have misplaced the sidewalk however???" 😂😂😂😂
@@martin-1965 That's pretty standard, especially for places around interstate highways.
I'm at 11:07 right now thinking about how many North Americans think that the point Evan is making about having the convivence of multiple stores where you can get that one little thing be nearby is a Pipe Dream, and that if we tried to implement it here it would lead to the downfall of society and would be the actions of a dictatorial government....
I love that you've taken on the phrase 'pop to the shops'
I remember when I first went into Asda in the early 80s. It was called a Hypermarket at the time and seemed enormous. Now, exactly the same store seems normal (for a Brit). Asda was never a UK version of Walmart by the way. It’s just that Walmart bought them at one time (but don’t own them any more).
I live in Down Under, and you're right about the ColesWorth, BUT - we luckily still have Aldi. There are also other supermarkets, like Drakes or Foodland, but their prices are even more expensive than two main chains, though at least their produce quality is usually a lot better.
Many Aussies (I'm European living in Aus) have been buying their essentials in Aldi, and since Aldis are often located near one of the big chains, they complete the shopping there.
If your brain is particularly large and you can be bothered, you can also take the advantage of the half price and clearance sales in the big chains, and plan your dinners around that.
When it comes to convenience though, there's a supermarket in every neighbourhood, usually a walking distance. I can really appreciate it as I do like taking walks.
Also Aldi is significantly better quality for vegetables etc than it is in the UK - it seems to be worth it for them to do compete on quality as well as price. When I lived in Australia, I used to walk down to my local Aldi for my general shopping, and only bother going into town to the Woolies when the Aldi was shut, as it had narrower opening hours.
A lot of areas also have IGAs which are quite handy for any "fill in the gaps" shopping or more common smaller grocery shops. Many also have the same sales on a cycle, so you can plan what you want to buy based on that if you explore a little
I live in the city (Chicago) and I have 5 small grocery stores within walking distance, so I'm shopping almost every day, it gets me out of the house, year round, too. Fresh produce daily is the way to go.
Older US cities have managed to avoid the building zones issues that newer (1920s ish onwards) suburbs and new town builds have had to put up with.
Getting to walk to the store makes SUCH a difference it’s actually wild. I feel like I had a glimpse of the euro experience in Hawaii because they also carry less stuff out there and it does make it easier to shop when you don’t have a million choices (even if the choices are ones you wouldn’t even make. I don’t even eat Oreos but seeing the wall of Oreos IS kind of stressful lol). My life significantly improved once I started using grocery delivery and shopping at Aldi.
Also I know you said that you were really tunneling here but I love when you make videos like this. I feel like I learn something or just have you fully lay out my own thoughts I was already having lol.
Also congrats on 800k I’m so proud of you ❤
Ooo but isn’t Hawaii the most expensive state for groceries?
@ probably lol
It drives me nuts when I go to a stationary shop and they have a whole isle or blue ballpoint pens and nothing else, no black ones, no felt ones or markers. A million clones by different brands is not variety.
You go into a shop that's not moving? And it has small islands?
Don't do drugs kids. And don't skip school.
Stationery.
Aisles.
Thought on options - in my experience, it isn’t just about flavors. If you have any dietary restrictions, European-style grocery stores (at least in the US - maybe it’s better in Europe) often don’t have great options. Big grocery stores are some of the only places I can find certain foods I want. My local Aldi, which is conveniently a 3-4 minute walk away, doesn’t have some things I use every day or at least multiple times a week. If it did, I would never have to drive to a grocery store.
I don’t care about having 20 flavors of Doritos or whatever, but I want to be able to buy more than one firmness of tofu (a necessity for some recipes) and any nutritional yeast at all lol. I could probably survive on the foods at my local Aldi, but I would have to rule out many recipes and probably take more supplements
From what I’ve seen of US supermarkets the UK is much better for anyone with dietary restrictions- all of my local supermarkets have a fairly big vegetarian/ vegan refrigerator section and a bit free from (catering to gluten free, vegan, nut free etc) non chilled section. Though Aldi / Lidl tend to have much less of that, and you are limited (I couldn’t solely shop at Aldi or Lidl here either)
You sound like a very non-normal customer. I don't meant that in a bad way. But you should recognize that most people don't have dietary restrictions, and since you do, you're naturally going to have a harder time shopping. Although I see your point that in the US, our only "european style" stores are LIDL and ALDI, which offer very limited choices.
It's not a huge selection but I can say Aldi in Germany does have some vegan, gluten-free, and lactose-free products. It might also be interesting to point out the even the "bigger" supermarkets there aren't even half the size of a place like Walmart, so shopping at them isn't nearly as overwhelming. Although the jam aisles are always a bit intimidating.
Is freedom possessing the ability to choose between 20 brands of cereal or being able to puruse life goals regardless of the material conditions one is born into?
And those 20 brands being part of a single conglomerate at that
Oh definitely the cereal one. Everyone knows that. Don't you hear the eagle screech everytime you go down the cereal aisle?? :P
Yes.
@@druelia9485Sounded more like a redtail hawk, though
MARTHA! Get me mah shotguurrn!
But for real, why are people legit terrified of this question?
How many types of Colgate toothpaste are there in the US? In the UK there’s about 50 of them, which about 49 more than we actually need.
I just grab the first one that comes to hand and always seem to end up with something different. Last time it was black which was profoundly shocking until I realised it's charcoal toothpaste. Needless to say the flavour and texture are exactly the same as all the other types.
At Walmart in stock it shows 80 version
I'm really glad that toothpaste doesn't run out as quickly as milk or eggs. I really despise having to browse through all of them to find the cheapest one from a reputable brand.
OK, I checked. On Colgate's UK website, they list 51 different types of toothpaste. On their US website, they list 35, plus 4 prescription-only toothpastes. They don't list their prescription-only toothpastes on the UK website because it is illegal to advertise prescription-only medicines, but I know there is at least one, because I've been prescribed it in the past.
FYI toothpaste is regulated as a drug in the US. If that sounds crazy, that's because it is.
As an American I'd be fine if there was less crazy new options if it meant lower prices.
I would be surprised if someone hasn't already pointed this out but for store layout crimes no one beats IKEA. Even though you can escape at several places if you know where to look, it is a snaking layout which forces you to go from start to finish :)
Ikea is my idea of shopping hell.. whereas I have friends who absolutely love going there and look at it as a great day out... I think I'd rather go to the dentist
I suspect they took their design strategy from museums rather than traditional retail. Many museums also lead you subconsciously on a winding journey through a chain of themed rooms full of things to look at. With strategically placed lighting to direct your eyes toward specific displays and keep you moving forward.
AND museums often have a cafe/gift shop area near the exit.
IKEA is a destination in itself. An immersive experienc, basically a day out.
I actually enjoy the IKEA jurney-like layout. I don't consider it a crime because they are straight open about it. You know what you are getting into when you enter the schowroom part and in many places you can skip forward large chunks of the track. With that said it is also true that one does not simply walk into IKEA and leave without buing anything. 😉
@@HumbleWooperI went to Ikea for the first time last week, and that’s how I described my experience, It’s like a furniture museum 😂 But I liked it, I view it as a day out too! It felt like I was walking in the catalog
We have Aldi now. And IGA (Independent Grocers Australia) 🇦🇺. So we are all good. 😎🙏
IGA is in American as well (Independent Grocers America) - we used to shop there all the time when I was a kid. We called the "Igga".
IGA was owned by a Swedish company years ago. I haven't checked recently but it probably still isn't an Australian company. Fake and misleading name.
Just to point out that the ´That's Life' piece on chicken crisps was from around fifty years ago! We're a bit more familiar with that kind of thing now 😇
…….although the principle is still the same - they taste like what you’re told the flavour is.
Genuinely up until last year, I thought target was like tk max because of all the videos online of people showing off the ‘new in’ stuff.
Tj maxx is much larger than Tj maxx. American stores are massive.
It is, sort-of. There are multiple styles of Target - some are more like TK Maxx (I'd refer to it more as a general store), and some are "SuperTargets" that also have groceries (so-called Hypermarts).
The prevalence of "SuperTargets" depend more on where you live than anything; I never saw one until I was in my 30s, personally.
We are expats living in the Netherlands. I am from Wyoming, where the trip to the grocery store was a 20 minute drive each way and then a major size store to get through even for a few things. I shopped once every two weeks and had a massive American fridge and, later, a box freezer. Then I lived in NYC for a decade. There, we didn’t have a car and went to the store- which was a walkable distance and not zoned like Suburbia- about twice a week. Now we live in the Netherlands in a town of 80,000 but, again, we don’t need nor have a car, and the markets are all within walking distance. We also have a smaller Dutch-sized apartment and a smaller fridge. We go around four times a week and it never seems like a hardship. And the food is fresher, more seasonal, and more affordable. Yay The Netherlands!
Do you have any tips for learning Dutch?
I recently moved back to the states from Glasgow (family stuff) and genuinely had reverse culture shock walking into US markets. Hell I even had shock just going into a larger Tesco extra while I was in the UK. Thankfully I live in a mega city in the US and so my local markets, even though they’re a drive away, are still quite limited in size compared to what one may experience in a rural community, so they prioritize essentials rather than choice. I also live quite close to a couple different Trader Joe’s and another market called Sprouts that has many healthy options that are relatively affordable. There are also a few ethnic food stores I’m near so I’m definitely privileged in terms of my options for healthy choices, especially in America. The one mainstream market near me, Ralph’s, I try to avoid haha.
another reason i go to the shop more often as a european is because in a flat i just don’t have that much storage (i live in a shared flat now but that was also applicable for my parent’s flat) so i can’t stock up on things, when i only have 1,5 shelves in the cupboard instead of a large pantry. also, as you said, i can only carry how much fits in my backpack or bike pack, which puts a physical limit on every shop. but this still beats living in car-centric dystopia for me.
yeah as an American i think our tendency to want things that will last a long time so we don't have to shop as often is what lead to so many things being stuffed with preservatives and add that with everything having 5-10 different brand choices and maybe 1 is a "healthy" option that is kind badly labeled as that makes it really hard to try and eat healthy
Having to DRIVE several miles to get to the store (in most cases) is also going to factor in to that mentality. Local shops within a few minutes walk are a very common thing pretty much everywhere outside of North America.
@@TalesOfWar yeah that is definitely true as well that needing to drive so far Factors into that which comes from I think the fact that north American cities for the most part were made and grew after the industrial revolution so they were designed around cars compared to European cities that were mostly founded before the industrial revolution so they are more pedestrian focused
@@TalesOfWar America is huge compared to other places, the distance between a rural area and a city can be immense. I don't know why people can't figure this out.
@@amicableenmity9820 So is Russia. They seem to manage with stores being closer to where people actually live. Russia also has a vastly superior passenger rail network. And incase you've forgotten, Russia is the biggest country in the world, so no, size isn't an excuse. It's piss poor urban planning that's the problem.
@@mobster24451 American cities weren't designed around the car, they were bulldozed for it. I mean that quite literally. Just look at all those massive urban highways that split communities, most minority communities. Look up Robert Moses, he was pretty prolific at this kind of thing.
I have been shouting about this issue for years. I’ve been saying “I just want to be able to walk to my grocery store” for so long.
Trader Joe's, utilizes a more European style Market place for one great reason. It's owned By Aldi North, and utilised as a franchise in the US.
Hey Evan in Australia we do have a few other grocery stores but the two large one tend to monopolise the market due to size and choice of products. We have IGA ( Independent grocery Association) Aldi and food works. The Three latter ones are smaller and have a smaller footprint but AGI are more prominent in smaller townships. We are 5 min walk from our local Woolworths a 20 min walk to Aldi and I GA which requires a car. Small convenient shopping centres are deliberately placed in the centre of suburbs for convenience of the people living there and we still have corner stores and service stations that have a few emergency supplies when it’s a public holiday or shops are shut. Most Woolworths are open till 11pm but Aldi shut at 7pm.
Australia is mostly like the US in that you generally need a car to go to the supermarket. But there is very little competition because of zoning laws, so even if there are other options, the closest are almost aways Woolworths and Coles. That's why prices are so high for groceries in Australia. The system is the worst possible.
Idk I guess it depends where you live, before I moved overseas from a small regional town, my local Aldi was nicely walkable, on a road with a couple of other shops and a car/caravan dealer, but still very much in the middle of a residential area, while the Woolies was in the centre of town. I’d only generally bother going to Woolies if I was already in town, or if it had got past 7 and I realised I had literally no food for dinner
My town (a suburb of Boston in the US) has no grocery stores in town and the nearest ones to me are a ten minute drive. Even if I wanted to walk or bike to the store, it really wouldn’t be safe, because our town doesn’t have sidewalks. We do have 14 pizza restaurants and used to have 5 Dunkin Donuts within a five minute drive, until a couple years ago.
Being a single person household, my weekly shopping bill is one of my larger expenses- as much as I like to try new foods, the higher prices now dictate that I more or less keep to the stuff I know I like. It’s disappointing to find you don’t enjoy that new flavour coffee or new biccies (the important stuff😂) so spending double to go back for your original choices. Obviously this isn’t a frequent occurrence, but it does make you stop and reconsider. Lord knows how people with kiddies go on with the same issue, what with pester power and whatnot. Great video Evan!
I grew up in Salzburg and live in the US now. My non-negotiable when buying a house was that I am able to walk to a grocery store. Does not have to be big but needs to have the essentials.
800k subscribers!! i remember when i subscribed probably 10 years ago. im so proud!
Great job Evan. Thanks
That massive Albany Wal-Mart is my local one and it has 2 levels with an escalator in the middle with a special lift for your cart. I typically don't frequent it but it's a wild experience.
There's basically only 2 kinds of cookies at the local Safeway: Chips Ahoy in like 70 different flavors and Oreos in 93 different flavors. Coming from Canada, we didn't have that many flavors of those (maybe 3-4 of each), but we also had Maple Leaf creme cookies (multiple brands, Leclerc being possibly the best), Fudgeeos, the Dare version of Fudgeeos whatever it is called, the crème françaises cookies disappeared a long time ago. but there's the other sandwich cookies with that little fruit flavored rubber thing in the middle. In any case, technically fewer flavors, but a lot more cookie variety (and brands though they might all be from the same conglomerate company in the end). So yeah, I do feel that illusion of choice. Same with beers, there's a gazillion microbrew IPAs but try to find one amber ale...
LeClerc? Ooh La La... Ireland here. After visiting France I would love if some of those French Stores would open here. LeClerc being the fanciest.. Then I find they're already transatlantic 🤨
Been subbed for 10 years now, congrats on the 800k you deserve it 🎉
While I think your overall point is completely valid, I feel like using Walmart and Target as your US grocery store examples is a bit off. Those aren't grocery stores, they are everything stores. We do have places that are just grocery stores (Stop and Shop, Shaw's, Hanaford's, and many other regional options), although it sounds like they are often much larger than your average British grocery store.
Granted there are the separate issues that have led places like Walmart and target (or worse Dollar General) to being the only places people can get groceries in their community.
Eh, I would say a Tesco or Sainsbury's is only a little smaller than a typical Kroger, in my opinion, having been to both.
@@jaycee330 yeah, the last time I was in England the only grocery stores I went to were in Brighton or London, and one I think was a Tesco Express or something, so I was not sure how representative they were. But, my local market definitely has a long row of salad dressings, and it's far from the biggest market I've been to, so I was willing to accept that they are usually smaller in the UK.
I’m Autistic and have ADHD and the only stores I shop at are Trader Joe’s, Aldi, and I’ll pop into my local grocery store (which is on the small side) just because I find having so much choice in picking foods WAY too overwhelming and causes sensory overload. The fact that Trader Joe’s and Aldi provide just one or two options for what you’re looking for is a literal lifesaver for me, as I don’t shop for groceries at a typical grocery store.
More choices doesn't necessarily mean more quality though, it just means more added artificial junk ingredients to give you those endless flavour options!😅 Perhaps the closest analogy is your cheap and cheerful high street Chinese restaurants where the menu options can run to several pages long but quality takes a backseat to quantity whereas a more upmarket Chinese restaurant will feature all of their menu offerings on just one or two pages but the raw ingredients are of infinitely better quality.
Right, plus more options is a gimmick to make people spend more money thus making the corporations richer.
@@MsBlue68more options isn't a gimmick.They make more money because they have a wider variety of flavors, therefore increasing the number of people who finally have a flavor they want.
@@cablefeed3738 It actually creates artificial competition. Because it increases their maeket share if they have more products. Instead of several brands with a few flavours competing, you have one, maybe two brands with a huge selection just "competing" in flavours
@@raerohan4241 that has to do with monopolies more than with choices. There doesn't need to be a competition between different flavors of pop tart.I just want a lot of different flavors of pop tarts. You know what the competition for a pop tart is toaster strudel.
having less products also allows for seasonal rotation, which opens up opportunities to run promotions that also promote other things that we always have stocked, but people might always miss. brings customers back for every season of the year. useful for places like Aldi, Lidl (middle aisles) and even tesco cause they do a lot of other stuff too clothes and gifts etc.
Just moved to the UK: The food is fresher and my shopping is much faster than when I was living in the USA. I am not staring at aisles upon aisle trying to make a choice. I don't mind going more often but the issue is I snack more now. My brain just goest "the shop is just next door, I can just get a chocolate bar or a bag of crisps/chips or a drink or dessert"
Also because of you I had to pop down to my local Sainsbury's to get some ice cream. I don't hate the ice cream in the UK, but it isn't good either.
I find the food selection in the UK good enough and some items I do prefer over the US counterpart, but oh do I miss larger containers of sauces, higher selection of cheeses, and some other items.
If you want a higher selection of cheeses, usually the bigger version of the super markets have a big cheese section like Sainsburys for example. I don't know about "upmarket" places suchas Waitrose etc as they are far too expensive for my wallet lol.
Try a dairy ice cream like mackie's. I also really like little moons. Probably nothing compared to the ice cream in the states but there are better choices than soft scoop lol.
I simply do not believe you had a bigger selection of cheeses I the US . We have over 400 British cheeses alone, let alone European ones.
I'm always surprised when people say the food in the UK is fresher than X. As someone that moved from Portugal to the UK, the food quality was a massive downgrade for me.
@@Mikas60Comparison is always relative. I've been to your beautiful country. When I was there, at least, your climate was a lot more agreeable. I can imagine trying to grow all sorts of things that don't grow quite as well over here.
That said, I think the quality of our food in general (especially meat, I've noticed) has been slowly declining over the course of decades, as supermarkets have really started to cut back on quality for profit, and large companies have started to move in.
The last time I watched this channel, I was 19 and dreaming of living abroad. It's interesting that this has found its way back to me.
It's funny because, creature of habit that I am, I've been meeting to figure out where the best places to find certain items rather than going to the same place all the time since I'm not exactly short on options.
For those wondering, within an hours walk from my home there is: A Tesco, a Sainsburys, an Aldi, a Lidl, an Iceland and a Poundland. (obviously some of those are closer than others)
There's a really old TED talk, from back when they were good, by a guy called Barry Schwarz called "The Paradox of Choice". It's well worth a watch.
Trader Joe is Aldi Nord. Aldi is Aldi Sud. Both German.
Richtig
Das ist krass!
The "walking to Lidl over the grass" situation is actually a perfect example of how to do proper footpath planning.
Make no paths, let the people decide where exactly they want to walk, then come back a year or two later and put paths exactly there.
I lived in Japan for 6 years and, when I returned to the US, I returned to my previous job at a supermarket here in the US. Maybe it's because I have to put up tags every week when the sales change, but I hate how much variety there is in the US & miss the limited selection in Japan (something I never thought I would say because initially I also missed having variety). Please explain to me why there are regular, family & giant sizes of the same cereal. Not to mention that there are Oreo and Crumbl "cereal". I swear there are at least 2-3 flavors (if not more) of every product. I still find it overwhelming.
The different sizes are (theoretically) so you can buy either the size that best fits your needs or your budget... but it's also secretly a way to confuse buyers into spending more than they need to. It's all a ploy to make us mindless consumers who just grab what looks best, because we don't have enough time or mental bandwidth to actually consider the dozens of options in front of us.
The biggest box is *often* the cheapest per ounce/100g/serving of product, but not always. And it varies between chains which size box is the best value for any given cereal. And when the bigger box goes on sale 3 for $11 and the smaller one is buy four get one free, you have to redo all your calculations.
You'd need to use a calculator or get very good at mental math and holding lots of numbers in your head, to make actual thoughtful choices about this stuff. Probably spreadsheets too, and nobody wants to spend an hour or more at the store poking spreadsheets on their phone every time they need food.
The regular size is for when you want a feed a family of four for a week, the giant size is for when you want to feed a family of four for a month and the giant size is when you want to fill a swimming pool.
As someone from Eastern Europe who studied in the UK - I was often overwhelmed by the number of options (usually brands, not flavours) in the shops. Meanwhile, I hate shopping in Lidl back home due to how little choice it offers. UK Lidl, on the other hand? My absolutely favourite store where everything was perfectly balanced
Seriously? I too am originally from Eastern Europe and moved to Ireland (I know, not UK but close by) and I just can't, there is so little choice in the shops.
In my country, if I went in, I could always find something new to try, or a choice of 10 different flavours of the same chips if I wanted something more standard. Lots of different interesting products from other countries, and lots of great local products. Here, everything is either tasteless or just of poor quality. Definitely not what I expected from Western Europe.
Before I started organising my weeks more I’ll admit I used to pop into Tesco 3-4 times a week at least, but now that I’ve got more things going on and I’ve a good idea of what ingredients I need for the week, I stop by Tesco once a week, maybe twice if I grab a snack there en route to somewhere else. But compared to let’s say my mum, she still regularly pops in over 3 times a week; luckily it’s a 5 minute walk from our house which is great, but I still found the time that I save by planning out my meals for the week is a much more beneficial use of my time, and it helps with budgeting a lot too since all my weekly food I’ll need is in one big shop/bill, and whatever’s left in my food budget for the week after that can be spent on whatever; a random snack, McDonald’s, Subway, etc.. But I’ve definitely found that the less time I spend in supermarkets the less unhealthy food/snacks I buy, and the less I buy in general too
I love this video. As someone who lived in Italy for 4 months; I just could not get over how different my grocery store experience was. I was going multiple times a week because the closest grocery store was around the corner from my apartment, I had a much much smaller selection of items and less of it was junk food, even when I went to the larger stores, they still were not anywhere close to the size of stores in the U.S. I had multiple store options within an easy walking distance and some bigger options a short public transit ride away. I actually had reverse culture shock when I came home because I found that U.S. grocery stores were way too big and way too overwhelming with the amount of choices and switched to shopping at Aldi instead. I felt like I forgot how to shop as I used to because I got so used to be able to quickly run out and grab things versus having to take my car and drive somewhere.
Anyways I’ve studied this topic a bit and have a paper I think you would find interesting if you haven’t come across it already. It compares grocery stores in the U.S. and Switzerland :
Supermarket savvy: An Analysis of Psychological exploitation within grocery stores by Calvin Brinkworth
That Americone Dream Ben & Jerry's you miss so much is non-dairy Evan, last week you were arguing that non dairy "ice-cream" isn't ice-cream. 😮
Yeah but it says "non-dairy" in a very legible, noticeable font right on the front of the tub.
Evan acknowledged that the reason for the new rule was, in theory, to provide for this, and that's fine. But a large portion of what the average reasonable consumer would assume are "OG, cow juice"-style ice creams... aren't.
Like, if I intentionally buy sorbet, I'm not getting tricked.
Pretending for a moment that there is a consistent and useful definition of "ultra-processed foods," Ben & Jerry's Non-Dairy Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream would be an example of a UPF.
I’ve lived in the US and the UK. A huge HEB opened a mere 13 miles away from my Texas home.
Just when I got used to the layout, they moved the store around again. Once, I wasn’t even able to find the frozen food section, as it was hidden amongst the crappy clothes section. An employee had to lead me there.
Fortunately, an Aldis opened almost opposite. I could whiz in and out of there, and only go to HEB if I needed a more exotic ingredient. Then I learned my neighbour was growing a market garden, so I got most of my veggies from him.
lol, the frozen peas keeping the tracksuit pants cool and fashionable.
Asda used to be owned by Walmart, hence the same logo. They have the same Onn own brand etc.
But about a year or so it was sold to a new UK owner.
😂😂😂😂😂 Evan I've been watching every one of your videos for many years man you went down the rabbit hole with this one... OMG dude. I had to keep pausing to process the information with my brain. In Central Florida here BTW. And the thing that shocked me most about the video is how small the supermarkets are in UK . We have five super Walmarts within a 20-minute Drive. Also Me and my husband always laugh about all of the weird flavors of stuff...
Walmart and target are more like department stores that also sell food rather than actual grocery stores. Actual grocery stores have a bigger focus on whole foods and has fewer options of Oreos than Walmart or Target in my experience. (Places like Kroger and Safeway) I know Walmart sells the most groceries by percentage in the country but still.
200 flavours of Oreo? 🫨 I can’t even think of 200 separate foods whose flavours you’d impart to Oreos…😅
Maybe they are combinations. Strawberry and onion. Chocolate and tuna. Vanilla and pork.
For a fun spoof on this look up Brennan Lee Mulligan Oreo CEO. They have an improv sketch on college humor or dropout channel. 😊
Android Oreo, chocolate crème Oreo, coconut delight Oreo, strawberry milkshake Oreo, strawberry cream Oreo, strawberry cheesecake Oreo, green tea Oreo, lemon ice Oreo, organic Oreo, blueberry ice cream Oreo, orange ice cream Oreo, golden Oreo, double stuff golden Oreo, mega stuff golden Oreo, uh oh Oreo, chocolate crème golden Oreo, Oreo heads or tails, creamsicle Oreo, ice cream Oreo rainbow sherbet Oreo dq blizzard crème cookies, and double delight Oreo cookies are just a few. There’s an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to it. It is important to not however that not all flavors are available everywhere at all times
There are some biscuit brands in the UK that have been bringing in a lot of seasonal or variant products like jammy dodgers and jaffa cakes. For the most part they seem not as nice as the std and my kids often don't finish the pack. I guess it's just to push novelty and seasonal sales when they must know they won't be as popular.
On the flip side, if there is a seasonal product you really like, that's horrible too, as you have to stock pile it while stocks last.
This is why I shop in Lidl, they have 1 sometime 2 varieties of a product, we usually spend 30min max doing our fortnightly shop
I tend to shop at Trader Joe’s. I like that they have fewer selections. Walmart and Target really aren’t grocery stores. They just happen to have groceries in addition to the other items.
I live in the US and shop at my local Lidl about twice a week. I love this store. The produce is waaay better than bigger chain grocery stores. I appreciate many of the European choices they offer. The layout of the store itself makes it extremely easy to shop.
I realized that when I go to a bigger store, I get slightly overwhelmed with the aisles and choices.
You’re absolutely correct with grocery stores being within close proximity of a neighborhood, BUT NOT WALKABLE! I have a market two minutes from my house, but it would probably take about thirty minutes to walk to it because there’s a creek, and a patch of trees blocking the way.
I miss the choice of seafood options and meat cuts in the US supermarkets compared to here.
Just found your channel, I love the amount of information you dive into in your videos :)
I guess compared to the US, a first world problem in the UK is that in a lot of places the nearest shop is something like a OneStop or a Co-op- I’M SORRY THE AVERAGE SIZE OF A WALMART IS WHAT? That completely threw me off my train of thought I have no idea what I was complaining about WHAT IS THAT SIZE
That's because Walmart is not just a grocery store - it has clothes, electronics, hardware, a garden centre, many have a car service area where you can buy tyres, home goods, etc. It's a one-stop shop, and yeah, you have to drive there, but it does beat having to travel to 5 different stores to get things.
My city has relaxed zoning in my neighborhood and I can now pop into trader Joe's or sprouts both around 5 minutes away by bike.
I totally loved this video, I get exceedingly stressed trying to find things in a target, or trying to pick the best peanut butter out of a bunch of junk.
Since switching to a mostly whole foods plant based diet I basically turned my health completely around, lost tons of weight, have much better blood works, and found myself way less stressed in the store. Now I just buy whatever veggies and fruit look good, in season, and cheap and pair them with some bean + grain combo. I'm not pregect so sometimes I buy some upf or retrieve them from my works kitchen but I can tell they seriously set me back. (my office has 3 serving bags of nerds gummy clusters which are slowly killing me, send help)
I used to shop at ASDA years ago. They have really gone downhill in the last 20 years. The quality of your store may well depend on where you live though. My local Morrisons is a good store, but the one near my parents is gross.
I wish I could like this video a million times. This is why I live in a city in the US. Specifically NYC. So I can walk to the grocery store.
If more Americans could get over their desire for a single family home on a 1/4 acre of land, more of them could walk to the shops. I have made the decision for my life and I can easily walk to 3 different grocery stores. And to be clear, I am not talking about living in some transit heavy city either. The opportunities do exist for more people if we just make some different choices and trade offs. That said, the vast majority of Americans continue to choose the house and quarter acre and end up "living" in their cars.
We like our quiet spaces and not bunched up in flats with forty other families in same building. :D So, I'll trade that off for a twice monthly shopping at Walmart.
@@jaycee330 "Quiet spaces", LOL.
I did not expect a video about Illusion of Choice to turn into a Not Just Bikes style urban planning essay. 👌
There's a Sainsbury's behind my parents' house and there's a little short cut into the carpark if you're coming from my parents' street. And it's a bigger Sainsbury's so my mum often goes around with her little cart full of reusable bags a couple times a week. Then there's a 'little' Tesco down the road if there's something Sainsbury's doesn't have. And honestly I'd rather have less choice - I don't really want to choose between several brands of kidney beans or whole wheat bread.
I thought for a moment you were going to say they climb over their back fence 😅
@@caw25sha haha that would be a story! Unfortunately my parents aren’t as fit and agile as they used to be
Hmm ... I shop at Target quite often, and rarely buy anything that wasn't on my list. But I see your point about the floor plans. And maybe I'm not a typical consumer.
There is nothing wrong with pork pies and sausage rolls for the first twenty years but it never changes and there is no escape. They have stopped stocking proper 'Pork Farms' pies for 'Melton Mowbray' homogenised mincemeat. It is like this in every town in every supermarket. The same range, thee same flavour and brands in every supermarket in all the land for evermore.
I chose to write about the psychology of shopping for my degree dissertation, and since then, going into a store has never been the same. Everything is designed to trick you into buying stuff you don't need and probably didn't even want.
You mention Trader Joes as a European type store, that's because it is, Aldi Sud (cannoy type the u with an umlaut) from Germany
It's owned by yAldi Nord, not Aldi Sud.
If you are in need of an "ü" you get an "ü".
@@CarlTippins My bad, so the Aldi stores are Aldi Sud and Trader Joe's Aldi Nord. Either way though, it is a German chain store.
@@dutchy1121 Yes, and you can tell they both are German owned by the way they do business. So unlike American owned grocery stores. The Aldi branded stores even have you drop coinage in order to get a shopping cart...almost every grocery store I've been to in Europe has you drop a 1 Euro coin to get a cart (the money is returned when you return the cart and insert the "lock" into the next cart). That certainly insures shoppers will return their cart instead of leaving them all over the parking lot (like you see at every other grocery store in America). I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've played shopping cart bingo trying to avoid stray carts left in the parking lot.
Speaking of the correlation between time spent in supermarkets/shops and money spent, my grandmother was known for her efficient grocery-list system when she lived in Penn Yan, New York. She had memorized the layout of the shop, and she would list the items she needed to buy in the order that she would pass them while walking around the shop. At some point, the layout of the shop changed, and everyone wondered how she would manage.
So refreshing to hear someone speak so smoothly and pleasantly to the ear! No uptalk and this moronic intonation that has spread among virtually ALL youngsters nowadays and makes it hard for me to stand how most people speak, especially online!!!!
i've had europeans yell about how it's not fun to go to the grocery store multiple times and that i should just move when i've mentioned i wish here in the US that grocery stores were closer and walkable in rural areas. i have to drive so my shopping is once a week at most. visiting the UK in December and actually looking forward to being able to walk to get groceries while i'm there. really interesting video. we really have too many options here in the states, that salad dressing case from the beginning of the video doesn't even count the literal aisle where even more salad dressings take up a quarter to a third of the shelf space
Target's layout looks kinda like Home Bargains, and other british cheap "value" stores.
every video like this drives me a little closer to planning my move abroad
Chilli Heatwave is the only Dorito worth eating.
Was, last few times I had them the flavour seemed to be dialled back though. The purple chilli ones are king now.
I am now going to have "it's fun to shop at the A-S-D-A" going round in my head whenever I use said store. Thanks Evan.