Why Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores
Food shopping is expensive and inefficient, but change is coming
Americans have long been proud of their supermarkets. The first grocer with food in aisles, to be picked up by shoppers rather than kept behind a counter, opened in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1916. In Bentonville, the hometown of Walmart in north-west Arkansas, Americans flock to a bombastic museum celebrating the firm’s founder, Sam Walton, and his commitment to “bringing low prices to underserved rural communities”.
This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “The not-so-super market”
United States June 4th 2022
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