retail anthropology/science of shopping

Another educational food production platform, if nothing else….

When I worked at marketumbrella.org, one of the many projects that I helped design and run was our White Boot Brigade, the roaming shrimper market for added seasonal seafood sales. Rouse’s Supermarkets was an early supporter of the WBB, and we genuinely enjoyed working with this Houma-based family company. Since they gamely took on being the main grocery store chain in our city (when Sav-A-Center decided that post-Katrina New Orleans wasn’t for them), I for one was very happy as I knew them and knew their stores. New Orleanians are VERY picky about their “markets” (as stores are often called) and yet, the Rouse family has mostly met their needs. As for buying locally, they do buy, they do support local entrepreneurs. Farmers have a harder time getting their produce in there, but value-added farmers market vendors seem to be doing well.
They just opened a store a few blocks from the flagship Saturday farmers market in downtown New Orleans, and I think it will help both the market and the store. That store is the subject of this excellent story on their new rooftop garden.

The only supermarket in downtown New Orleans is the first grocery in the country to develop an aeroponic urban farm on its roof.

What exactly is an aeroponic urban garden?

Think vertical instead of horizontal. The garden “towers” use water rather than soil, and allow plants to grow upward instead of outward. It was developed by a former Disney greenhouse manager, and is used at Disney properties, the Chicago O’Hare Airport Eco-Farm and on the Manhattan rooftop of Bell Book & Candle restaurant.

Rouse’s downtown

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Clustering

Advertising executive Larry Leach talks about how clustering like items or stores can actually help sales. Something market managers need to understand, but also to understand the need for tact when designing their markets…
“In communities where competition is limited we found that people would chose to drive to another community where there was more choice, more variety, and better prices because of competition.”
news

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Let’s retake ugly food too

This report makes a great point about our unease with ugly fruit. I believe that the entire responsibility DOES go to those supermarkets that started to stage light and wax fruit for display. They have lost the ability to lure people in with smells or bursting ripeness. Let me also say that the finger pointing to the consumer in this story as the culprit is unsubstantiated; we have become conditioned based how food has been presented in our lifetime, and it’s up to the farmers markets (once again!) to change that perception with gentle encouragement.
WE can bring back the ugly fruit too, by simply encouraging our farmers to bring “seconds” and then to promote them. Why not ask the farmers to bring a few boxes that are not perfect and do as the Monica family in New Orleans does- label the box “chef special” which, of course brings every serious home cook to peer in the box and then drop their jaw at the lower price.
report

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Supermarkets feedback: “specialty market gone corporate”

An interesting view of grocery stores using “alternative concepts” as a marketing ploy. (cheat sheet-some see right through it)

Am I being whiney and ungrateful? Yes. Wegmans responds to every item on my consumer wish list. It has consistency and dependability. It won’t be sold to some large chain that will destroy its quality, as was the case with Kings and Zagara’s. But that’s the problem. It is the large chain. It’s the specialty market gone corporate. In the tradition of American cooptation of the alternative option, it has made the alternative option into standardized fare.

The Smart Set: Supermarkets
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Heavy shopping bags weigh on your psyche

Turns out, those people who have wheels for their food are the smart, happy ones.

Heavy shopping bags weigh on your psyche.

Maybe this explains Josh’s Slow Food missive over the summer…
heavy bags

So maybe this is a benefit that markets can handle happily and with some flair?
Hollywood wagons

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Food app for kids

Taggie, a smartphone app developed by recent Dutch design school graduate Niels van Hoof, allows users to direct a smartphone camera at the barcode of food items to learn about their origin, growth process, and different varieties. After recognizing the scanned barcode, Taggie launches a 3D augmented reality animation to engage children with a short, fun lesson about the food.Van Hoof developed the app as a graduation project for the Design Academy in Eindhoven, Netherlands after being inspired by Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. “He went to schools and tried to find out if kids know where food comes from,” van Hoof says. Perhaps needless to say, most of them didn’t—which set van Hoof’s wheels in motion. Van Hoof hopes that by using the app, children will “discover more about fruits and vegetables and [will not be] afraid of the product anymore, which results in living healthier.”

Untitled from Niels van hoof on Vimeo.

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Drugstore shopping: Worse than you’d expect

On average, prices were 36% higher than supermarkets.

Drugstore shopping: Worse than you’d expect.

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Leave it to them to use tokens this way…

The McDonald’s restaurant on South Claiborne Avenue in New Orleans is utilizing a token system for customers who need to use the latrine….

The bathroom door now has a token meter for which customers will have to request to use the facilities. The token is free upon request.

Token story

You know, maybe I’m thick-headed; how is giving a token out to use their bathroom going to reduce trash or encourage good behavior?

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Australian interview on markets

Australian farmers, Garry Stephenson Coordinator of the Small Farms Program at Oregon State University, Stacy Miller, Farmers Market Coalition Executive Director and Jane Adams, the Australian farmers market organization founder talk about the growth of farmers markets in both countries. The market movement in Australia has grown in their first 10 years to 150 markets nationwide and this interview examines the growth concerns in both countries. Jane Adams speaks well on the criteria Aussie markets employ and being able to “buy dinner” and on the size of the markets versus diversity of products. Australian organizers will be in the U.S. at the end of the month to share their lessons and will attend the Community Food Security Coalition conference November 5-8 in Oakland CA.

Australian farmers market interview

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The Smart Set: Things Aren’t Grrrrreat! – June 16, 2011

The Smart Set: Things Aren’t Grrrrreat! – June 16, 2011.

HMMM, breakfast cereals (or RTE Ready To Eat cereals in industry parlance) are fading. Is this because there are alternatives or because they are more expensive? In any case, consumer behavior takes a slow turn…

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Local materials and expertise for farmers market shed

This shed was designed by architectural students at Virginia Tech, School of Architecture + Design seems to meet many of the requirements that open-air farmers markets should have for any facility-simple, properly scaled, used local materials…

Although this next line makes me wonder what fumes they were inhaling from the materials while building:

This market pavilion is the modern expression of timeless agrarian sensibilities.

Hey kids-it’s a roof.

Still, I like it and applaud the collaborative effort. Now, if they could get some farmers…
Shed design

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Stepping in to help save a market

Great story on a small market in Oregon that was struggling to such an extent that it was about to close- until a market vendor stepped up to manage it. Interestingly, those interviewed seem to think that produce, although vital, needs to be balanced with a whole bunch of other items and educational events to attract and retain a large enough customer base. Sounds like a good track to me, but hey folks I might also look at the size, how space is used, parking and type of events offered already…
And take a look at how neighboring Oregon City Farmers Market manages the balance.
West Linn

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Competing for space

Story on competition in WI farmers markets

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Are there too many markets?

A NYT article in Sunday’s paper reports on (and quotes some of our market leaders) on saturation worries with climbing numbers of markets and cannibalization of shoppers. Of course, its already true in some areas, but in my mind, only if we ignore the fact that, at best, we attract 1-5% of the population right now.
We can increase the number of markets if we continue to direct resources to increasing the number and type of farmers while we seek out groups of new “low-hanging fruit” of the next generation of shoppers.
In short, to improve we need to maintain balance of benefits while reaching new, often slightly less ready shoppers while holding on to our old faithfuls…

NYT

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