The New Grocer
waking up from an illusion of choice
Super excited to share you can find us in Type 01’s ISSUE 09 on the role of design and our relationship to food. Special thanks to Olssøn Barbieri team for inviting me to be part of this very special issue.
Nothing brought me as much joy as biting into fresh fruit deep in the valley, in the home I grew up in surrounded by greenery equal parts heat and humidity—the beauty of Honduras juxtaposed by the political instability, corruption and high crime rates, afterall, there is no paradise without hell. Luckily for me, the PTSD parts while growing up are eclipsed by the memories of love and nurturing, instilled mostly by my maternal grandmother, from who I inherited my unfilteredness as well as a connection to what nourishes.
Every Saturday she would return from La Concha, one of the oldest bustling markets in my hometown, carrying the most colorful and lively (quite literally) bounties of fruits, veggies, legumes, dairy and on ocassions, water buckets filled with crabs. It was a sensorial experience more than a tedious one, to help her clean the white maize and the beans before she readied them for the mill (one which no longer exists) —there were also times of disgust whenever she washed the tripe for her mondongo soup or when she asked me to peel the tamarind to make fresh juice, the sticky crunch is something you can never unfeel. I would watch her make her cheese donuts to make her famous Nicaraguan cheese soup, she taught me how to wash and prepare rice, adopting me at times as her sous-chef. On ocassion, she would reward me with stuffed mini 8-ball zuchinis, a recipe she learned from the Arab family she rented from when she fled the Nicaraguan civil war and moved to Honduras.
I did not realize it then—but it was such a privilege to grow up so close to the food that nourishes you, and as I grew older, I would often accompany my mom to the farmer’s market on Sundays and would get lost in the maze of vegetable and fruit stands that all led to the sauna-esque stalls of the tortilla makers, girls that were either younger or around my age, making stacks of corn or flour tortillas so fast, you could blink and find a new one made, wrapped in a plastic bag and sold just as quick. The sights of papayas displayed on newspapers, the scrublike dirt left on potatoes and carrots as you browse, the noise of the crowd reverbating in the cement stalls oozing with steam from the heat—it at times feels like a distant dream.
The misting machines at the produce section at Whole Foods often bring that to mind for me—and I shared the above to preface the unedited piece you can find in Type01’s ISSUE 09. I was asked to speak on the role of design in CPG in the modern state of grocery—inherently, a tale of two grocers, based on my own experiences mixed in with the work I do at Snaxshot. Though it’s my job to report and observe the cultural convergences we are seeing in the industry—it’s hard not to feel pessismistic at a time where fresh food in one of the richest countries in the world, is unaccessible to many and the idea of groceries as luxury considering food and beverage are the cornerstone of the human experience.
The New Grocer
Cartwheels shriek as the doors slide open at your modern grocery store, unveiling a vast sea of sameness, reflecting an illusion of choice, as if playing pretend as a kid all over again–rituals so far corrupted from the actual origins of grocery shopping, it has become almost aspirational. In the beginning, we shopped for pantry staples at general stores with limited offerings, surrendering our household necessities to the store clerk that would choose for us, there were no brands, there were only needs to be met. For a while, stores had been designed around this gatekept experience, but as industrialization roared on and war loomed, the need to make the grocery experience more efficient and convenient grew, cardboard boxes and tin made keeping food fresh more accessible, by the mid 1910s, the first self-service store came to be, Piggly Wiggly, others would soon follow.
Removing the middleman, this new design around browsing open shelves was adopted across the globe, this spread out layout somehow fostered the empowering idea of choice–more space meant more options to choose from, and as consumers navigated these new seas, consumer packaged goods became disguised siren calls. In today’s world, the customer itself has become the product, grocery stores salivating at the thought of luring us in to be once again enticed by their influx of shiny objects, what was once a form of temple wherein one performed a simple tribute, an exchange of offerings to suffice a need, has now become a battling ground for retailer, brand and consumer.
Our parents found themselves presented with the choice of brand vs. off-brand, in the end the process of elimination came down to utility, but in this era of Millennials and GenZ, groceries have evolved to be a form of external signaling—my olive oil most not only perform its inherit duty, but it most also communicate identity, lifestyle, status or desire. Something prophesied by artist Andy Warhol back in the 1960s, his Campbell soup elevated mundane everyday items to a form of art, from soup to Coca-Cola bottles, his pieces also serving to represent a brewing era of mass consumption. Big box stores replaced humble general stores, think Walmart and their gargantuan footprint, and Kroger now considered the largest grocery chain with over 5,000 stores across the US, now operating like real estate brokers selling off their best shelf spaces to the highest bidders. Slotting fees as they are commonly known within the industry, is what drives grocers interests, it’s no longer to provide for needs but instead foster over consumption.
Technology has also influenced the modern grocery industry–from Amazon to Instacart, your groceries are at the tip of your fingers, that is if you’re willing to pay extra. Scrolling has become the new browsing–but don’t let the flat design of these new product shelves fool you–these platforms too operate in a form of shelving system, by favoring sponsored placements. This inescapable dullness around what was once a more experiential custom has allowed for us to be marketed this inherent experience, wrapped in aspirational branding, and resold at a premium–inspired by the allure of traditional outdoor markets of yore. Brands like Flamingo Estate operate under the slogan “mother nature is the last greatest luxury house” –groceries that for the majority of population are already an unaffordable necessity, now marketed as a form of status signaling.
Erewhon, what I like to dub as “hypebeast grocer” –has become an aspirational lifestyle brand itself–not only selling the illusion of quality products under a pseudo wellness halo, but also by collaborating with luxury brands like BALENCIAGA, it’s price inaccessibility making it more coveted for brands and consumers alike, and they profit massively from this positioning. This idea of aspirational groceries has even led affordable chains like Trader Joe’s, Target and Walmart to invest in rebranding their private label, trying to make it as aesthetically pleasing as what one might find at more expensive chains–indulging the new generations in their wish of pretty packaging.
On the other extreme of the spectrum we find eco-friendly grocery stores like re: Grocery that discourage packaging in lieu of BYOC (bring your own containers) releasing consumers from the paradox of choice and claws of marketers– while online grocers like Sunrise focus on guiding you to make better choices by helping (some may think of shaming) one to visualize the carbon footprint that accompanies their grocery lists when ordering within their app. Does removing packaging itself bring us closer to traditional forms of grocery, or does it help us pave a way forward by ridding us of what are seemingly distractions to bigger issues like consolidated food systems?
Even specialty grocers have been rebranded as “curated” –intentionally selected to be a juxtaposition of BigBox retail–a focus on emerging brands and being less predatory around shelf placements in hopes to bring visibility to brands that need it more than BigFood. Pop Up Grocer, though from the outside looking in, can seem to your average consumer, as an overpriced shop with beautifully packaged goods, yet it actually focuses on curating and highlighting women founders as well as POC founders, as opposed to operating with a real estate type mentality. Similarly stores like The Goods Mart and Tiny Grocer have piloted these concepts for the smaller convenience store, having been able to find success and replicate their formats across New York City and Austin–though there are others that have yet been able to find the balance between challenging and embracing the ruling grocery store formats, see the recent demise of Foxtrot Market.
What does the new grocery store look like at a time of late-stage capitalism? Designs that help give direction and serve less manipulation–instead of Trojan horsing with aesthetics–can better merchandising help consumers become more informed about their consumption through novel store design formats like Pop Up Grocer or release them from marketing machinations through zero waste models like Re: Grocery? The modern grocery store should foster our inherent connection with what nurtures us–a cornerstone in every person’s life, it should not have to be aspirational, see farmer’s markets across the world, where buying from your local merchants helps tie what we consume with where it’s produced.
In an era where every aspect of our lives can serve as social signaling, eased by the rise of platforms like Instagram and TikTok, the responsibility around design should not fall back just on new shop or brand owners, but instead pulling back the thread of what allowed the disconnection to begin with, the new grocer can only rise from the ashes of outdated and archaic systems that continue to manipulate us– if we can create stickers that change color as produce ripens to prevent consumers from letting it go to waste, to bringing about the paper bottle revolution now adopted by BigBeverage, then the role of design should continuously be one to remind us that other paths are possible, flickering lights that offer hope in darkness.
This was such a fantastic essay! You’re brilliant.
Thank you for this!!