Supermarkets

Attention shoppers: There’s a special on sliced bread and chopped liver. Two for one, today only. This offer is exclusively for club card members. Happy shopping and have a nice day! You can find anything you may need in the aisles of these often unpopular places where we purchase our basic necessities. Nevertheless, we need go to grocery stores in order to keep both our bellies and fridges full. Ooops! Clean up on aisle 4. We’ll suss out supermarkets on this week’s episode of FYI!

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thank you attention shoppers there's a special on sliced bread and chopped liver two for one today only this offer is exclusively for Club Card members happy shopping and have a nice day you can find anything you may need in the aisles of these often unpopular places where we purchase our basic necessities nevertheless we need to go to grocery stores in order to keep both our bellies and our fridges full oops clean up on aisle four we'll suss out supermarkets on this week's episode of f why I welcome to for your info English you got it[Applause][Music][Applause] oh[Applause][Music] hello hello hello and welcome to another exciting edition of FYI the topic based show where we learn about everything and anything under the sun and who knows what we're gonna look at next week well I'll tell you somebody who does my patrons but you never know what could come up especially because I get tons of suggestions from you my fyiers so thank you to everybody who has been tuning in to this show since the beginning the show has been growing constantly it's also been charting on even in Argentina not just in Spain so this is great news and also we've got some really awesome reviews so if you haven't reviewed FYI yet go over to your favorite podcast platform give it five stars and give us a little write up it really helps and it's just something simple you can do as we say in English a little bit goes a long way and today we're going to some place that seems mundane but really it's essential and I'm gonna start off by telling you we don't really call them supermarkets in the United States we call them grocery stores which I know that's a false friend in Spanish a groceria is something that's disgusting if I'm not mistaken well groceries in English is another way of saying things that you can eat things that are edible so let's discover grocery stores supermarkets whatever you want to call them and we'll start out like we always do with our intro I started out by holding my nose now that's the second time I've done that to produce an audio effect the first time it was in the hospitals episode if you haven't listened to it give it a listen so I held my nose I said attention shoppers I mean that's something you'll always hear no matter where you go and be careful with the pronunciation shop versus Chop Chop think about the sound it makes when you're chopping onions so you got to make sure you're shushing somebody shh Shoppers and maybe today we've got some shopaholics among us although let's distinguish something here we've got grocery shopping and then we've got shopping for gifts for clothes and I feel like one of them is more of a necessary evil and the one of course is grocery shopping why because we need to eat and I don't know too many people who grow their own fruits and vegetables or have their own cows on their property so as I said before they are essential so I said attention shoppers there's a special on sliced bread and chopped liver now I don't know if you caught this but I use those two items on purpose and the reason why is they're both idiomatic expressions in English and in the bonus part we're going to take a look at a lot of idiomatic expressions fun facts and so much more and if you want to join us every week in the bonus episode all you have to do is go over to patreon.com slash Alberto Alonso and you can join our curious Community we are growing not just in numbers but I believe we are all enriched even myself as a teacher I really look forward to our weekly classes I look forward to my private classes with my Interstellar students and I'm proud of each and every one of you and if you guys want that special attention or if you just need a little more like you just can't get enough of FYI we'll find out what you're missing out on over on patreon.com Alberto Alonso you can talk to any of my patrons and they'll tell you that it's definitely worth it and speaking of my patrons I'd like to send a shout out to each and every one of you especially my super duper students Lena Javier Paco Roberto Jose Maria Mila and Al Alex and don't forget about my Interstellar students Carmen Isa Paco David and Edgard keep up the wonderful work guys I'm extremely proud of you and you should be proud of yourselves if you want to join us find out more at patreon.com Alberto Alonso now let's get back to our intro did you get the sliced bread and chopped liver thing well the first expression is this is the greatest thing since sliced bread now I don't know why that's such an important invention but I guess it is and don't forget we have an episode on bread as well where I even tell you about my family's Bakery their Sicilian Bakery minardis but the greatest thing since sliced bread is an amazing invention something that has made everybody's life easier so I guess you could say FYI is the greatest thing since sliced bread and what are you gonna put on that bread well maybe some chopped liver and we just looked at the word chop but the expression chopped liver igado picado means that you're unimportant so let me give you an example you give everybody a slice of pizza and I don't get one and then I say to you wait a second what am I chopped liver and you've got to say it with that intonation what am I chopped liver no cuento aqui I'm not important I think in Spanish you say those are just two idiomatic expressions but we'll look at many more throughout the show and even in the bonus part then I said two for one today only I think that's pretty self-explanatory and then I said this offer is exclusively for Club Card members and you know these a lot of supermarkets or grocery stores these days have their Club cards and by the way I'm a member a of all of them and I'll tell you about that in the bonus part how my wife calls me grandma but hey I love bargain shopping shopping for deals buscando fertas I mean just last week I got Pantene Pro-V shampoo for free well I had to spend 50 euros but nowadays if you buy three things you've already spent 50 euros sadly but it can't hurt to be in the club but I'll tell you more about my shopping habits later or shall I say my rituals and then I said happy shopping and have a nice day then I went on to say you can find anything you may need in the aisles let's say that word the aisle es el pasillo and you can use the aisle in an airplane you can use the aisle in a theater they're all called aisles but also in a supermarket and here's a little trick it sounds exactly like the contraction of I will so if somebody asks you next time you board a plane would you like a window seat or an aisle seat you say I'll have an aisle seat please hey it's a good way to remember it and then I called them unpopular places yes they're essential but who likes going there well some people but most people see it as a necessary evil after a long day of work the last thing you want to do is go walk around a supermarket for 45 minutes and wait online and and whatever else to fill up your gas tank you don't want to run errands you want to go home and chill out on your couch with your family or go for a nature walk or whatever it is you do when you have some down time but we don't want to be in supermarkets longer than we have to in general but we purchase our basic necessities then I said nevertheless which you can say nevertheless or nonetheless we need to go to grocery stores in order to keep our bellies and fridges full and your belly or your tummy is another way of saying your stomach a cute way of saying your stomach and obviously you can say refrigerator or fridge and obviously this was a very important invention that changed this whole industry forever but we'll talk about those milestones and those inventions that made the supermarkets possible that we have today these Mega supermarkets and then you heard me say oops because I dropped something I gotta admit I'm a bit clumsy and it wouldn't be the first time I dropped something in a supermarket aisle but we have a joke that we say when somebody drops something a glass or they spill a drink or something like that and we say clean up on aisle four clean up on aisle four and the reason we say that is because at the supermarket Market when something broke you would hear that over the loudspeaker you would hear them say clean up on aisle seven so now we do that when somebody drops something it's it's as old as time itself at least in the area where I grew up and it's something we heard from an early age because a lot of times especially when we were really young we would go with our parents to go grocery shopping and I think it's a great activity to do together not just because I teach my daughter hundreds of words when we go to the supermarket but also because we make good choices together and then I wrapped up the intro saying we'll suss out supermarkets and to suss out is to explore so what is a supermarket well let's define it a supermarket is a self-service shop offering a wide variety of food Beverages and household products organized into sections this kind of store is larger and has a wider selection than earlier grocery stores but is smaller and more limited in the range of merchandise than a hypermarket or a big box Market in everyday U.S usage however grocery store is often used to mean Supermarket so the terms are interchangeable and as we just said they're self-service now they weren't always self-service this was just one of the many Milestones but what was the world like without these supermarkets where you could get everything you want Under One Roof well all you have to do is think about Grandma at least in my case my abuela mama I called her Maria Lilia when I used to come to Almeria in the Summers she wouldn't get the fish at the same place as the meat or the same place as the bread you get the fish at the fishmonger and you get the Mead at the butcher shop and you get the bread or the pastries from the bakery you get fresh produce produce is fruits and vegetables you get fresh produce from the green grocer or a fruit stand my point is you would go to each place for each specific thing and that was great when everybody had all the time in the world and I remember my grandma she would take all morning just to buy seven things now the food was delicious that she made but it was quite time consuming and now as we know in many households everybody's working so who has time to spend the whole morning going from shop to shop we're all running around like headless chickens we're in a hurry we're going to be late to our own funerals as my mother says and we can afford time wise to go to seven different stores so there's an emphasis on convenience and speed but I used to love going with my grandma to The Butchers then to the Bakers at first I didn't understand it because ever since I could remember in the United States we got everything at the same place and I must say that's a beautiful thing about Europe you still have butcher shops you still have markets all over Madrid and all over Spain where you can go to each individual stand and you can really get your fish from the fish guy the guy who knows fish it's his thing you can ask him a million questions nobody knows more about fish than him and you would ask about his family and he would ask about your kids I mean it was a very social thing as well I remember my grandma stopping to talk to 50 million people along the way and that was cool that was part of it there was no rush but now I gotta get to work I gotta drop my kids off I gotta pick them up soccer practice it is crazy with our busy schedules these days days and as much as we all love to be chatty Kathy's and gossip and chat with our friends when we come across them on the street we don't really have that much time we want to get the groceries we need on our list go in get out of there go home put it away and forget about it it's much less of an experience these days and let's face it I mean if you want to sum it all up into one sentence the average Shopper these days prefers to spend more time in one trip rather than making several small trips so you don't want to go buy bread then oh the next day I'm gonna go buy some fruit no you want to buy it all the same day and save on trips but that wasn't the way it was back then you wouldn't even think of getting your fish at the same place you got your vegetables or at least from the same person and then in 1915 a guy named Vincent Astor streamlined this idea and to streamline line is to make it aerodynamic so to speak and he came up with something in New York City called the aster market and he put everything all Under One Roof it was a way to cut costs because people didn't have to move anywhere so it would save time and money and it was an Open Air Market when I read about it it kind of reminded me of the Spanish markets and they sold meat fruit produce and flowers and if you go to Mercado de San Miguel today that's what they sell plus oysters and Sushi okay we've modernized quite a bit but the idea was to make it easy and obviously the more people purchased the better and he based it on the economy of scale but it did not work people resisted and in 1917 just two years later the market folded this is another way of saying to shut down but he his idea didn't work at that time now we see that that's the general idea that all supermarkets or even open-air markets share kind of a Cooperative everybody working together sharing the space taking care of the space and Europe now even though the United States led the way in supermarkets and grocery stores Europe is leading the way on these Co-op supermarkets and this is where it's just a group of people who all chip in to get better prices better products as we say in English it's power in numbers then in 1916 there was a guy named Clarence Saunders and he opened something that is still in existence today it's called the Piggly Wiggly you gotta love the name Piggly Wiggly well Piggly you know what it is a pig and to wiggle is to move around so it's got a very catchy name and it opened in Memphis Tennessee now they're all over the United States but this was different why this was the first time we saw self-service so at a Piggly Wiggly you wouldn't have to wait for a store clerk to get something down off the shelf for you or to hand you the tomatoes you could get them yourself and you could walk around and browse if they were lucky you would buy things that you didn't intend to buy so it was brilliant to say the least and also he didn't have to hire as many people because now the Shoppers were doing all the work sir could you pass me that can of stewed tomatoes oh no grab it yourself ma'am please feel free so the people working at the supermarket could spend their time doing other things cleaning up the store restocking the shelves they didn't have to spend as much time dealing with the customers and he was a Pioneer in many other ways including franchises so as with everything we've looked at on FYI it's a series of different things that come together to make the modern day thing we have today and the industry like many had to overcome many hurdles a hurdle is like a limitation and more and more when people started working well they had less time to spend at the supermarket or going to different stores so that was a big cultural shift too people couldn't afford to spend all morning there other things that made the industry grow obviously Refrigeration the invention of freezers in 1857. now you could buy more things and you could stock up on things for the winter things wouldn't go bad as quickly I mean this was a major turning point in many Industries not just in food service and distribution in the 1920s the car was a huge thing because think about it you can only buy as much as you can carry well what's the problem you usually went there on foot yeah you would usually walk there did you hear me talk about a car when I talked about my grandma no you walked from place to place you did your little route but you could only carry what you could carry so you were limited and the money they could make was limited as well but now if people had cars well they could bring their cars and fill up their cars and you didn't have to go to the store as many times and you didn't have to carry as much or do as many trips and of course with the invention of the car what they realized was they had to put parking lots or parking garages because if people could come there and park for free then they could fill up that car and it worked they made these huge supermarkets with parking lots plenty of parking for everybody and parking was free and a lot of them advertise that too like okay we know it's a little further than the center of the city but you can park for free and you know it was an even more influential invention in this world than the car the shopping cart that's right and it came after the car the automobile was invented before the shopping cart the shopping cart came out in 1937 a guy named Goldman and people hated it men said I'm not going to push a cart around that's not manly and women said okay I'll push my daughter around in a stroller but I'm not gonna be walking lettuce and bread around so it wasn't accepted at first but again that was another huge invention because now you could bring everything on Wheels and if you've noticed how big our shopping carts these days they have gotten exponentially bigger throughout the years sure it's a big business and we're going to talk a lot about the business side of it in the bonus episode today other huge breakthroughs were the rewards clubs barcodes computers and of course microwaves in the 1970s because now they could have prepared food for all of these workers with their busy schedules so all of these things contributed to the growth of the supermarkets and their popularity of course so where did it all start what was the first Supermarket well there are many claims as you can imagine but they say it's King Cullen it is the closest thing to the modern day supermarket and it had many firsts that we still have today and there was a big debate they even got the Smithsonian institution involved and they tried to Define what the attributes of a supermarket were and they said and I quote self-service separate product departments discount pricing marketing and volume selling and according to that definition the first true supermarket in the United States was opened by a guy named Michael J Cullen the store was called King Cullen I believe they still have some in New York if I'm not mistaken the name rings a bell well this was August 4th 1930. it was in a former Garage in Jamaica no not Jamaica the island Jamaica Queens in New York City and their motto their slogan was pilot high sell it cheap so they would buy things in bulk and be able to sell it cheaper than the smaller stores again discount pricing was part of their definition another thing was the prices were clearly marked before that you didn't really see the prices now I think it's a law you have to clearly Mark the prices well at the time of Michael J Cullen's death in 1936 there were 17 King Cullen stores in operation and his legacy was bringing the world's self-service uniform stores where each one was like the next Nationwide marketing so they started marketing and trying to get people in the doors as well and then separating the different departments as well as large volumes of food as we said where they could give a better price and the parking lot which was key so King Cullen is the king and then many others followed suit such as Safeway Kroger and now you've got the King of Kings Walmart and they have groceries they have clothes they have a perfume Department whatever you can think of and obviously Walmart is quite controversial they're putting many mom and pop shops out of business some American towns have voted against putting a Walmart in there yes it's convenient but at what cost as we ask ourselves in every episode in the Amazon episode we said what cost does this convenience have so the Undisputed Champion is definitely Walmart and there's so much more than just a supermarket they have double the annual income of Kroger who used to be the leading supermarket chain at the time of the recording of This podcast they have 4735 locations that means almost 7.5 percent of all grocery stores in the United States are Walmarts and as with any industry you've seen a lot of merging many companies have not weathered the storms of recession and other unforeseen circumstances that may come up a famous one that I remember being the king of kings was one called A and P the full name was the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company and it was established as far back as 1859. it was a chain that you could find in Canada and the United States and it was everywhere and now it doesn't exist anymore after two bankruptcies a p finally closed its doors in 2015. so even Giants can fall and in the United States all these things were happening you know people were moving out to the suburbs so grocery stores were becoming the next big thing but Europe lagged behind now you can find these Mega supermarkets here in Europe and there are some really good chains here in Europe but if you look at the timelines of the two they're very very different as I said when I used to come to to Almeria 25 years ago and even now you can still go and get your fish at the fishmongers your meat at The Butchers and I don't know about you guys but I don't want that to stop yes I'm all for convenience who isn't but I don't want those mom and pop shops to disappear these people are Specialists they could tell you every single part of a cow or a chicken and now it's just some teenage kid who well he scans the barcode and he says no this is the actual price so you can say Europe lagged behind or Europe is still holding on to getting things at their designated place which I think is absolutely beautiful I think it's great to have both to have a mega Supermarket where you can pick up everything and anything you need but also to be able to go over to the corner butchers and look them in the eye and know his children's names that's awesome and that should ever change I'm saying that to you guys many of my listeners in Spain because in the United States in general those days are done everything is Mega centers with ultra processed food and we're going to talk about that when we talk about the dark side as well in the bonus episode but let me give you a fun fact before we get going grocery stores can have over 39 500 different items on average they have stuff you didn't even know you needed or stuff that maybe you didn't need but you bought anyway well I hope you enjoyed our little foray into supermarkets and I sure hope you'll join us in the bonus episode of today's F why[Applause][Music] thank you[Music]