A Short History of Grocery Shopping
We have come a long way since those first early days when homegrown vegetables, fruits, herbs, and grains were shared or swapped between communities or farmers. Outdoor markets once were the only place to stock up for the winter and where witches gathered most of their precious supplies if they didn’t grow them. Witches spent most winters creating potions to assist the sick, help those with their spiritual path, and aid with the many births they encountered. In those early times, salt was a very expensive commodity as it was an essential part of preserving meat, seafood, and dairy products in the absence of refrigeration. There were no pesticides, everything was more than organic, and if it wasn’t in season, you didn’t find it at the market until it was.
The food on the table identified one’s financial status within the community, and sadly to this date it still does. More often than not, our ancestors ate the same meal for days on end. Grains such as wheat, rye, oats, and barley were their staple diet. These were boiled down into soups, ground into flour to make bread, and malted for alcoholic beverages. Legumes provided protein, as meat was only available on rare occasions.
The introduction of the country general store in the middle of the 1800s dramatically changed the way people purchased food. These stores were unique and friendly; they had very little lighting, long counters, high shelves, and rounded glass drawers and bins filled with all sorts of grains.
There was hardly anything prepacked; goods were mostly sold by weight and mainly situated behind the counter. While the storekeeper individually wrapped your order, social interaction was at its peak, not only with the storekeeper but also with those waiting to be served. Stocking up at the general store was the daily or weekly social event some people looked forward to while others shunned, not wanting their business to become public knowledge in the town.
Once weighed, the price of each item was jotted down on a small piece of paper or added up in the storekeeper’s head. This process was tedious and time-consuming, as there was limited staff and customers simply had to wait their turn.
By the early 1900s, those little stores had evolved into larger businesses that added more staff, cash registers, self-service shelves where shoppers could pick out their own foods, and rows and rows of prepackaged goods.
Today’s conglomerates can overpower the buyer with their different brands and colorful labels. Major food companies now pay substantial fees for their products to be at eye level on the shelf, leaving other brands out of sight on the very bottom or very top shelves. For the most part, there is no escaping the conglomerates that have become a part of our society over recent decades.
Having access to everything we need in one place is a convenience a lot of people cannot live without. Our daily schedules and financial needs draw us to it like a magnet. Supermarket shopping is now a rite of passage and will be for generations to come.
Although there are still stores with that personal uniqueness of how it once was, you may need to travel far and wide to find them, and more often than not they don’t stock your everyday needs. If they do, the limited buying power of these smaller stores mean you will pay substantially more. These types of stores are trendy to visit on weekends but are usually not suited for our daily needs—but don’t you wish they existed to take us back to the simplicity we once had!
Not so long ago and even now, shoppers could not find organic products on supermarket shelves. Consumers who wanted them for health reasons or personal preference had to look elsewhere. The conglomerates saw the growing demand, however, and now offer organic products of all types.