When I was a kid growing up on a farm on the second line we shopped once a week, usually Saturday night, at the Red Front Grocery in Wingham.
It was not a very big store and had a long counter along one side of the store. Harry Merkley, the owner, stood behind the counter. Mother read off her shopping list and Harry found the items for her. The meat counter was under the counter where Harry stood and the supply was somewhat limited because most people bought their meat at the butcher shop. We ran a bill at the Red Front and Dad paid it off about twice a year when we marketed cattle or pigs. Harry never charged interest or sent out a bill.
The three grocery stores in Wingham had a unique delivery system. Shoppers could call in their order and it was delivered to your door the same day. A young entrepreneur with a panel truck delivered anywhere in town for a dollar. That might not seem like much but by comparison I worked in Smith’s Grocery store for fifty cents an hour the summer I graduated from grade eight.
In the mid-1940s, Harry remodelled the Red Front store and made three aisles and a meat cooler on one side of the store and a vegetable and fruit section along the other side of the store. He had a stack of three or four shopping baskets and he encouraged the shoppers to pick up their own groceries and bring them to the check-out counter at the front near the entrance door. This was the new American style of grocery store. Smith’s Grocery store half a block up the street where I worked pioneered this kind of shopping and Harry could see that shoppers liked it. It was several years before grocery carts made their debut. It took a while before all shoppers were on-board with picking up their groceries, change is not easy for some people.
By the end of the decade, the Red Front Grocery store and Smith’s Grocery store closed and a new big supermarket with a big parking lot, many aisles and a great selection of brands of everything appeared on the edge of town. It was the end of an era for the small-town grocery stores. Everything was getting bigger. Rural schools became central schools, village churches closed, local government became regional government and village grocery stores closed. Villages like Bluevale and Belgrave that had two grocery stores each now had none.
A couple of weeks ago I was accompanying my wife doing our weekly grocery shopping trip. I was just along for the ride so I had lots of time to observe the other shoppers.
It seemed to me that shoppers today can be divided into three categories. Group one rushed through the store tossing items into their cart and making a run for the check out counter. Group two spent time reading the labels of all the items, picking up a can of soup and studying the ingredients and then carefully putting the can back on the shelf and picking up another brand of the same soup and again studying the contents. They did not appear to be price comparing but ingredient comparing. Group three were mostly men with a cell phone in their hand FaceTiming their partner and holding up items for the stay-at-home- person to make the decisions. I happened to be in the first group. I need a list and I treat shopping like a scavenger hunt.
A year or so ago I learned a valuable lesson in humanity. In the last few years one of the things that I have observed is the number of shoppers who obviously have very limited resources and are trying to decide how they can afford to feed their family. It is usually a young woman often with a baby. She might have only a few cans of soup, a loaf of bread and a jug of milk in her cart. I was in line behind just such a young girl and the woman ahead of me quietly told the check-out clerk that she would pay for the girl’s groceries. I have watched for opportunities like that to pay forward.
We usually shop at a smaller-sized grocery store. We find that the big supermarkets have too many choices and are more expensive. I like a store that has four aisles and a meat counter. I do not need a selection of 27 kinds of toilet paper. They pretty much all do the same thing.
My favourite grocery store is Aldi, a chain started by two German brothers. They charge a quarter to get a shopping cart and you get the quarter back when you return the cart to its stall. There are no stray carts in the parking lot and no employes devoted to rounding up carts that have been abandoned helter-skelter and yon. The power of a quarter is amazing. We also find that many people offer you their cart and don’t want the quarter. Somehow this brings out the best in shoppers.
The next big change in grocery buying was the advent of self check-outs. In the store where we regularly shop there are no check-out clerks. The shopper scans their own groceries. There is no one even watching the shoppers check out. The only security is a question when one hits the PAY button. The scanning machine asks if you have scanned all the articles in your cart. It’s your last chance at honesty.
Our son and his wife never need to enter a grocery store. They order all of their groceries on-line using the Kroger app. The groceries are delivered the next day. No delivery charge. If a head of lettuce is not good, they get on the app and cancel it from their bill. No questions asked. I don’t think Kroger would deliver on the second line of Morris Township.
Grocery shopping has come full circle. When I was a kid the grocery truck came to our farm every Thursday. I think his name was Dave Draper and he serviced parts of Morris and Turnberry townships. He had almost everything we needed on his truck. Whatever we couldn’t get on Thursday we got at the Red Front Grocery on Saturday night.
The other big change is that we now pay for our groceries with a plastic card or just hovering our cellphones. What a world. ◊