What’s afoot? Saying goodbye to the weekly shop

An article a couple of weeks back in the Financial Times, ran under the header “Supermarkets’ shift sounds death knell for the weekly shop.” The article says that people are changing their shopping habits, and are becoming less likely shop using a car. “Young people (in the US) are staying single longer, and are much more likely to stay in urban areas for longer. Many also do not drive. At the other end of the spectrum, many ageing baby boomers are downsizing and returning to city living. Smaller kitchens and smaller families have reduced the appeal of large weekly purchases…” And it isn’t just the US where “....the death of the weekly shop has real benefits for society. Food waste, while still at appallingly high levels, is starting to drop in the UK, a trend that Tesco attributes to more frequent, smaller shopping trips in addition to more cautious buying because of the recession. Supermarket-owned convenience stores are also helping reduce traffic and adding to the vibrancy of UK high streets and US cities by making it easier to shop on foot.”

Face-scanning at the petrol pump: another reason not to drive to Tesco…

…avoid Tesco, avoid the surveillance society. Get out of the car, and shop local.

Joke of the Week

Fishmonger at Shoreham Farmer's Market. “What’s the best thing to put on a Tesco burger? £5 each way.” 

More jokes here about horse burgers. Not to mention lasagne. Or spaghetti bolognese. And who knows what else. Is it funny? Not really. But it’s easier to laugh than think about what’s going on - a consequence of globalised supply chains, the commoditisation of food production and constant downward pressure on prices driven by economies of scale. You don’t have to drive to a supermarket to do your shopping. You don’t have to go to a supermarket at all. And you don’t have to eat ready meals. If you did before, why would you now? (Photo: horse butcher’s shop, Venice)

Resistance: Not Always Futile

Seen in Lewes Road, Brighton: a bit of agitprop graffiti on the boarded-up window of an empty (new) shop. On the site of what used to be a petrol station. Which became a community garden. Which became a shop, which was, nearly, a Tesco, which the locals didn’t want…

Quote(s) of the Week

Here are some quotes/scary facts to think about next time someone (not you, obviously) mentions their weekly drive to the supermarket, or topping up the shopping at an oh-so-convenient local supermarket. It’s from an article in today’s Guardian by John Harris. Something to remember when, in the not too distant future, there are no independent shops left. When every British High Street offers identical shops. When you’ll have to go abroad to experience the charm and satisfaction of shops that offer diversity and real competition. Read on…

“There are just over 8,000 supermarkets in the UK, and they account for 97% of total grocery sales.
Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda and Morrisons take 76% of that market. Their share of non-food retailing currently stands at 14%, a figure up by 75% since 2003.
In the two years up to November 2010, planning permission was granted to 480 stores run by the Big Four, which works out at one supermarket every other day.
Since 2008, they have accounted for 87% of the retail floor space given planning permission.
In May, Channel 4 News reported that by 2014 retail space operated by the Big Four was set to increase by 20%: as its report put it, "an expansion drive on a scale never seen before".

The March of the Clones: Sainsbury’s, Tesco et al invade Brighton and Hove

Brighton has always been the kind of place where, when you look along a street, something catches the eye – maybe a quirky individual, maybe a glimpse of the sea. Or one of the interesting shops that give the place a lot of its character. Like Taj, pictured here, from a steamy bus at the Old Steine. Taj is a grocery shop with a huge and eclectic range of fresh and packaged foods on sale. There used to be two. Now there’s just one, seen in the other picture, on Western Road. Plenty to catch the eye, snag the interest, and tease the palate at Taj. I don’t know why the Old Steine Taj is closing. But I do know that the site is due to be occupied by a Sainsbury’s, the tenth in Brighton and Hove. And about a third of mile (a six minute walk) from the latest Sainsbury’s, just opened next to the Clock Tower. What does any of this have to do with not owning a car? Here’s what. As a Sainsbury’s spokesman said, “The new store will be ideally located to serve the area, providing a top-up facility for local people.” Which is another way of saying, if you forget to get anything in your weekly car-borne mega haul from an out-of-town Sainsbury’s (or any other supermarket chain), where you fill the fuel tank with petrol, and the boot with groceries, you can pick it up just round the corner at your handy neighbourhood store: Sainsbury’s (or Tesco, which now controls over 30% of the UK grocery market. Or one of the other chains which, no longer able to do Out-of-Town Big Box, are now switching to Inner-City Small Store). Trevor Freeman, Brighton and Hove branch secretary for the Federation of Small Businesses, was quoted in the Argus, “The supermarket’s decline will probably be alongside that of the car.” So if you’re happy for Brighton and Hove to end up looking like everywhere else in Britain, just keep getting in the car, and shopping at the chain supermarkets. And then, when there isn’t anywhere else to buy food, don’t wonder why you can’t switch to a competitor, because there won’t be any left. So what can you do? Here’s what the New Economics Foundation said in the last version of its Report on Clone Town Britain, “Use them, or lose them”. Residents should put their money where their mouth is and seek out independents and locally sourced products.” What’s not to like about that?

Guerilla Gardening

This was nearly a post in the “Amazing places that used to be car parks” series, but I realised that, although related, it didn’t quite meet the criteria. Anyway, spot the links. Yesterday, I walked to Hove Town Hall, new venue for Seedy Sunday. At the core of this increasingly popular event is a seed swap, a way to get round the bureaucracy of licensing restrictions that is reducing the diversity of Britain’s species bank. As well as the seed swapping, there are interesting stalls, a sort of subculture around permaculture, including Slow Food and, one of my favourites, Special Branch (a local tree nursery). There are also talks, one of which was by Richard Reynolds on guerrilla gardening,  “the illicit cultivation of someone else’s land.” This was based on his experiences, which became a book on “gardening without boundaries.” Much of this gardening happens in marginal places in uncompromising urban environments. So far as I could tell, no car parks have yet been guerilla gardened (digging up tarmac isn’t really on the agenda). But there’s one example that comes pretty close here in Brighton: the site of a former Esso petrol station on Lewes Road,  “Once a bland outpost of the CARbon economy….now transformed by the commitment, love and creativity of a random bunch of locals who dared 'imagine a garden' on the Lewes Road”: the Lewes Road Community Garden.

After the filling station closed down, the site was stripped and the land bought for development. It lay empty for a while and, before plans were announced, was guerrilla gardened, becoming a popular local amenity. And now planning permission has been applied for. And guess what? It’s going to be a new Tesco, aka Tescopoly. Just what we all need. Despite the fact that it is literally next door to an existing Co-Op supermarket. Almost directly opposite a Spar. And a few doors up from a Turkish grocer and a few doors down from an Indian grocers. I guess this is what politicians, the Office of Fair Trading, and the Competition Commission mean by “choice.” Of course, the irony in all this is that a key factor in the decline of filling stations has been the rise of supermarkets as fuel retailers. And nowadays, the fuel stations that remain are normally co-located with mini supermarkets. And guess who runs them? As with so many things in life, if you think that what you want is “cheap”, I’d say be really, really careful what you wish for.