Grocery Time

The history of the word grocery begins this way:  these were dealers who sold by the gross - in large quantities at discounted retail prices.  This was in medieval England.  There was a Grocer's Hall in London in the early 15th century, and the French word grosser, meant a 'grocer's shop' by 1828.  But that seems so far away to what is now the supermarket.  I looked down the last aisle of the Sobey's yesterday and it was a wall of large glass doors of freezer goods. It seemed eerie. The shelving and food storage may have changed, but the large self-service store with food and household goods has been with us for 100 years.  Vincent Astor founded the Astor Market in 1915 in Manhattan, creating an open-air mini-mall that sold meat, fruit, produce and flowers.  While it was not successful, Piggly Wiggly stores opened in 1916.   The Great Atlantic and Pacific Team Company started just after. There was a debate in the U.S. over who opened the first 'true' supermarket.  The Smithsonian Institute along with Heinz researched the history and determined that the first supermarket was opened by Michael J. Cullen in 1930.  The stores were called King Kullen.  The slogan was: "Pile it high. Sell it low."  And that has been the dominant theme of supermarkets - reducing overhead costs to deliver competitive prices. The supermarket was a staple of the MBA program.  It has perfected all the techniques in controlling purchasing behaviour through layout, circulation, coordination and convenience.  There is also a principle about colour psychology.  Did you know that yellow is known to 'evoke energy and increase appetite?"  The grocery store layout principles are explained here at realsimple.com.  This is an example of a site whose goal is to bring shopping behaviour to the attention of consumers. I fall into the category of the consumer who is looking for a few specific things.  I spend time up and down the aisles looking for a single item - this week it was Kosher salt which I didn't find.  "Many stores have layouts that can seem unnecessarily confusing - this is another trick that grocery stores use.  When shoppers go into a store looking to buy a few specific items, they end up walking through the entire store looking for those items if the layout is confusing. They’ll be exposed to more products, spend more time in store, and likely spend more money." This interesting-looking plant was at the Denver Botanical Garden last year. There is one blooming in my greenhouse with long spikes of insignificant flowers. It is bukiniczia cabulica - a member of the plumago family that grows in Pakistan and Afghanistan.  I got it last year at a sale at the Ontario Rock Garden and Hardy Plant Society from one of the members.  Being a biennial, it will die after this flowering.  My job is to save the seed and return to the grower who will start some new plants.