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We Don’t Need Bigger Supermarkets, We Need Better Quality Produce
The day a two-football-pitch-sized supermarket broke my brain
It was a quick trip home to the UK that did it.
My brother picks me up from the airport and asks if we can stop at the out-of-town supermarket on the way home. We need groceries for dinner.
It’s been a while since I’ve visited one of these stores, living as I now do in Portugal. But there we were, standing in 100,000 square feet of food and consumer goods. On my walk around the aisles, I count nearly 30 different types of hummus.
I wonder. Do we need 30 different types of hummus?
I lose my brother as he searches for Bluey-branded yoghurts for his kids. Wonder if I’ll ever find him again. Because they’re big, these supermarkets. One-stop shops for everything you could ever want, even if you don’t know it yet.
Standing in the chip aisle, the overwhelm of decision paralysis kicks in. And I feel…done. Done with this way of grocery shopping. The way I have shopped for most of my life.
Do we really need endless jam varieties? Or four aisles dedicated to chips and cookies alone? Or do we, in fact, need the one thing these supermarkets are not giving us right now —
