WELCOME TO OUR KITCHEN: We're talking about the evolution of the modern grocery store!
Let's talk about the grocery store! Not about what's there or how to find the best that's there. Instead, about how the modern grocery store got to be the way it is . . . and maybe some notions of where it's headed.
We're veteran cookbook authors Bruce Weinstein & Mark Scarbrough. We've published three dozen cookbooks through several New York publishers. This podcast is about our passion: food and cooking.]
Want to see our latest cookbook? It's THE LOOK & COOK AIR FRYER BIBLE. Over seven hundred photographs, one for every step of every recipe. You can find it here.
Here are the segments for this episode of COOKING WITH BRUCE & MARK:
[01:04] Our one-minute cooking tip: Eat greasy or coated chips with chopsticks to keep your fingers clean.
[03:38] The evolution of the modern grocery store: from self-serving to its modern incarnation with our thoughts of where things may be headed.
[25:38] What’s making us happy in food this week: a game to help you learn how to use chopsticks and ramen in New Haven, CT, at Mecha Noodle Bar.
Transcript
Hey, I'm Bruce Weinstein, and this is the podcast Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Speaker:And I'm Mark Scarbrough, and Bruce and I are veteran cookbook
Speaker:writers, as you well know.
Speaker:This is our food and cooking podcast, all about one of the passions in our life.
Speaker:Bruce has a passion for knitting, and I have a passion for literature.
Speaker:Bruce has published knitting books, and he's got patterns for sale on
Speaker:his own website, bruceweinstein.
Speaker:net.
Speaker:I've got a podcast that is slow walking through Dante's cookbook.
Speaker:Comedy, the divine comedy, although Dante only called it comedy.
Speaker:That's a whole story.
Speaker:I've got a podcast about that.
Speaker:You can check us out wherever you get your podcast from, or you can check out Bruce's
Speaker:patterns for sale on his own website, but we're not talking about any of that.
Speaker:We're back to our main focus, which is food and cooking.
Speaker:We've got a one minute cooking tip about.
Speaker:eating greasy Cheetos.
Speaker:Yes, believe it or not.
Speaker:We want to talk about the evolution of grocery stores and what has happened to
Speaker:grocery stores over the years and where they are probably going in the future.
Speaker:And we'll tell you what's making us happy in food this week.
Speaker:So let's get started.
Speaker:Our one minute cooking tip now.
Speaker:I actually saw someone doing this on TikTok and it was brilliant if you're
Speaker:going to eat greasy Cheetos or Doritos or things that stain your fingers yellow
Speaker:from the cheese or those messy snacks.
Speaker:Nacho cheese Doritos and that kind of stuff and Cheetos and I don't
Speaker:know what chicken liver Fritos.
Speaker:I don't
Speaker:even know.
Speaker:Eat them with chopsticks.
Speaker:I'd never even thought of that.
Speaker:It's brilliant.
Speaker:It keeps your finger clean.
Speaker:Now.
Speaker:These people were using it to feed a toddler, right?
Speaker:So they were giving a toddler Cheetos.
Speaker:But it works for adults.
Speaker:It
Speaker:does work.
Speaker:I love it.
Speaker:You sit there with a bag of Cheetos and chopsticks.
Speaker:There's one problem is that we have a podcast that basically drops hard
Speaker:in the United States and Canada.
Speaker:And most people don't know how to use chopsticks.
Speaker:So there is a problem right there.
Speaker:You know what?
Speaker:Go to Amazon.
Speaker:And look for baby chopsticks and they'll have a spring action and you can get
Speaker:the same ones that little kids learn on and just eat Cheetos with chopsticks.
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:I mean, I have to admit that the first time I learned to use chopsticks was
Speaker:the first time I went to Asia because it was like, use chopsticks or die.
Speaker:So, use chopsticks or don't eat.
Speaker:Starve to death.
Speaker:Right, so, um, it was a whole thing.
Speaker:But you can find all kinds of, uh, chopstick.
Speaker:Primers online.
Speaker:And in fact, let me also say that those are great things to get for
Speaker:your kids, because knowing how to eat with chopsticks is important in
Speaker:an increasingly globalized world.
Speaker:All right, before we get to the next segment of our podcast, let me
Speaker:say that we are I have a newsletter comes out about every other week.
Speaker:Not so much lately, but on Mondays, usually, uh, it's kind of start back
Speaker:up again because we're done with our book and we've turned it in.
Speaker:I'm sure you've heard two reams of paper on absurd amount of work.
Speaker:We'll tell you our
Speaker:hundred and 25
Speaker:recipes grow and 137 photos.
Speaker:We'll tell you all about that up ahead.
Speaker:But in future podcasts, but right now, uh, the newsletter is about to start up again.
Speaker:If you want to get in that, go to cooking with bruceandmark.
Speaker:com or just bruceandmark.
Speaker:com you'll find a way to sign up for the newsletter there.
Speaker:It's not necessarily connected to this podcast.
Speaker:Sometimes recipes from this podcast appear there, but you can find out other
Speaker:things about living in new England, about being cookbook writers, about the
Speaker:process of selling cookbooks, things that are interesting in our lives, our
Speaker:food finds, all kinds of things there.
Speaker:I do not capture your name or your email.
Speaker:You can unsubscribe it.
Speaker:every turn of the way, and I do not let the provider capture it either.
Speaker:Check that out at CookingWithBruceAndMark.
Speaker:com.
Speaker:Okay, up next, segment two, the evolution of the North American grocery store.
Speaker:If you've ever watched an episode of Little House on the Prairie Oh,
Speaker:God.
Speaker:Wait, yeah, great.
Speaker:I set this up as this big historical thing, and so now
Speaker:you're going to talk about TV.
Speaker:Go on.
Speaker:Well, yeah.
Speaker:Do go on.
Speaker:The academic in me is fainting.
Speaker:The Olsons owned the General Store.
Speaker:Oh my
Speaker:gosh.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Do come on.
Speaker:And
Speaker:that General Store is exactly what markets were like until the early 20th century.
Speaker:Yes, it's true.
Speaker:They mostly stocked non perishables.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Early canned goods, flour, beans, dried things, that's what there was.
Speaker:I mean, listen, when, uh, now I'm going to be literary, so since I've brought up
Speaker:my academic creds, I get to be academic.
Speaker:So in Light in August, in Faulkner's novel, Light in August, when Laney Grove
Speaker:is walking to this town in York Metopha County, the county that Faulkner made up.
Speaker:She's walking to this town, uh, she goes by a grocery store and
Speaker:she's hungry and she goes inside.
Speaker:She's been walking since Alabama to this Mississippi town and, um, she goes in
Speaker:this grocery, grocery store and she, Orders, uh, 10 of sardines and saltines.
Speaker:And of course she has to stand at the counter and the guy
Speaker:then pulls it off the shelves.
Speaker:His novel was written in the late thirties, but he pulls it
Speaker:off the shelves and hands it to
Speaker:her.
Speaker:That's the way it worked.
Speaker:You went as a customer into the store, you handed your grocery list to the clerk.
Speaker:They went around behind the counter, collected everything
Speaker:up and gave it to you.
Speaker:If you needed.
Speaker:Dairy, produce, or butchered meats, you were in the wrong place there,
Speaker:you had to go to special stores.
Speaker:See, people say they don't
Speaker:like to use Instacart and Peapod and all those kind of things because
Speaker:they say they don't want other people picking their groceries.
Speaker:But that actually used to be the way it always was, is that you did get, you did
Speaker:get groceries that were picked for you.
Speaker:But this is all prior to the coming of, uh, the deeply racist
Speaker:and disgusting Piggly Wiggly.
Speaker:Oh, Piggly Wiggly.
Speaker:But anyway, yes, in 1916, Piggly Wiggly began to change things in the,
Speaker:uh, in the supermarket world, right?
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:they put all the food out for self service.
Speaker:They put it on display.
Speaker:You walked in.
Speaker:1916.
Speaker:They started this.
Speaker:All of a sudden, there were Large displays of apples and oranges and
Speaker:produce and all the canned goods were in shelves on aisles that you could walk
Speaker:up and down and choose what you wanted that had never been done right for
Speaker:if you don't Know why we're groaning at Piggly Wiggly Piggly Wiggly was caught in
Speaker:the late 60s early 70s up charging black people for food in the United States.
Speaker:And it was a kind of a big scandal at the time during the civil rights movement.
Speaker:It still should be a big scandal at every turn.
Speaker:But okay, anyway, let's not get political.
Speaker:Let's, let's, let's talk about what happened after Piggly Wiggly
Speaker:started the self service thing.
Speaker:Well, you'd go in with your own bag, and you would pick up all the
Speaker:groceries that you wanted, but there was something missing from the Piggly
Speaker:Wiggly, and that was the shopping cart.
Speaker:Yes,
Speaker:that was a Big, huge invention.
Speaker:And the shopping cart came along in 1937.
Speaker:It was introduced by Humpty Dumpty stores.
Speaker:And the point of what is the point of the shopping cart?
Speaker:Well, let's say they would tell you it's convenient.
Speaker:Yes, they would.
Speaker:But what is the point is that you'll buy more?
Speaker:That's because
Speaker:it's less for you to carry, right?
Speaker:That's right.
Speaker:If you, you know, listen, when we used to do this in New
Speaker:York, we lived in Manhattan.
Speaker:We would go to Supermarkets and basically there weren't shopping
Speaker:carts in the supermarket.
Speaker:We shopped in, in Chelsea, in Manhattan.
Speaker:There were the handbags, the baskets that you pick up with the handles.
Speaker:And honestly, you know, there's only so much you can fit in
Speaker:there and B it gets really heavy.
Speaker:So it feels limiting.
Speaker:And also you think, Oh, I'm going to have to schlep this home rather than roll
Speaker:this out to my car and drive it home.
Speaker:So shopping carts were.
Speaker:actually an incentive to buy more.
Speaker:The
Speaker:more you could fit in there, the better for the store.
Speaker:So shopping carts got bigger.
Speaker:Think about shopping
Speaker:carts at the big box stores at Costco.
Speaker:The point is so you'll load it up.
Speaker:We go to Costco every now and then, and I am always amazed at the size of that cart.
Speaker:First of all, I'm a tall guy.
Speaker:I'm six, four, and the The cart is high for me, like the bar across it
Speaker:comes mid chest, and I look at some of these little old ladies shopping
Speaker:there, and they're like, they're like driving a chopper motorcycle with
Speaker:their hands up in the air on the cart.
Speaker:It's kind of like ridiculous.
Speaker:You
Speaker:know, I always say that you can't go in Costco, they should just charge
Speaker:your credit card 200 when you walk in the store, and then everything
Speaker:after that, you know, there's just whatever that you spend beyond 200.
Speaker:But that's because part of it is because the cart is so big,
Speaker:you throw things in there.
Speaker:You do.
Speaker:And you feel like, well, Well, I haven't bought that much, and then you
Speaker:go up to the register and it's 300.
Speaker:So it is part of an incentive of buying more, and you might be surprised
Speaker:to know that by this point already, coupons were a feature of stores.
Speaker:Uh, the first coupon was actually invented by Coca Cola in 1887,
Speaker:if you can believe it or not.
Speaker:Isn't that crazy?
Speaker:It was, uh, it was an adventure.
Speaker:Advertising home run instant success, but it wasn't until the creation of
Speaker:the Nielsen Coupon Clearinghouse.
Speaker:What is the
Speaker:Nielsen Group?
Speaker:Well, it's basically a
Speaker:consolidator of coupons.
Speaker:And so the Nielsen, uh, the Nielsen Coupon Clearinghouse consolidated
Speaker:coupons across manufacturers.
Speaker:And this led to the explosion.
Speaker:Explosion of coupons across North America and even in Europe
Speaker:because stores have to get reimbursed for that, right?
Speaker:They're giving you 50 cents off 75 said they want their money back.
Speaker:So that's how that
Speaker:happened Let's let's just stop there a minute So, let me just say that
Speaker:now things have changed a great deal and I am married to someone who is A
Speaker:coupon hound and Bruce does not clip.
Speaker:We don't do that Even take a newspaper.
Speaker:Goose does not do what my mother did, which is go to the
Speaker:newspaper and clip the coupons.
Speaker:Bruce instead pulls up to the supermarket.
Speaker:He opens the supermarket's app, whichever one he's at, and he
Speaker:preloads the coupons onto his app.
Speaker:And then he shops with his phone, right?
Speaker:You scan with your phone.
Speaker:I
Speaker:do.
Speaker:And there are coup.
Speaker:We've talked about this a number of times.
Speaker:This is the way to save money at a store.
Speaker:There are exclusive savings and coupons.
Speaker:On the apps that you can't get if you don't use the app.
Speaker:And if you have a frequent shopper and you have your customer
Speaker:number, you get targeted specials.
Speaker:There are times when I'll be in the store and it'll say, we have a special
Speaker:offer for you, Bruce Weinstein.
Speaker:Now, maybe other people are getting it too, but a free cake.
Speaker:You know, 20 off your next purchase.
Speaker:Those are huge things.
Speaker:And if I didn't have the app, I wouldn't get them.
Speaker:So really
Speaker:honestly, if you shop at Safeway, Kroger, Albertsons, Whole Foods, the
Speaker:big Y, any of the big supermarket chains, Ralph's, wherever you shop
Speaker:and wherever you go, think about.
Speaker:Adding the app to your phone and then when you pull up to the supermarket,
Speaker:open the app and pre load what's on sale.
Speaker:Seriously, this is a serious way to
Speaker:save a lot of money.
Speaker:And Mark says that I like to shop on the apps.
Speaker:I do.
Speaker:And it's interesting.
Speaker:My credit card is pre loaded in there, too.
Speaker:So when I go to check out, I scan a code and out I go.
Speaker:But did you know that until the late 20th century.
Speaker:50 percent of all purchases were made by check.
Speaker:Yeah, my mother always Do you remember that?
Speaker:Yeah, I do.
Speaker:My mother always wrote a personal check at the supermarket.
Speaker:And
Speaker:always for more money than this, you get it back.
Speaker:It was sort of like an ATM.
Speaker:She never did that?
Speaker:I did that.
Speaker:I did that when I was first out of college, but my mother
Speaker:wouldn't have ever done that.
Speaker:My mother would have always just written the check for whatever it was.
Speaker:I remember having to hand your driver's license over, and they would write your
Speaker:driver's license number on the check.
Speaker:It was a
Speaker:huge thing.
Speaker:People used supermarkets almost like banks.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:When I was in grad school in Madison, that's when I started going to like
Speaker:a supermarket and I got a check cashing card and I would go to the
Speaker:customer service desk and cash.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:Maybe there was a 50 limit.
Speaker:I don't even remember what it was, but I would cash a personal check to get cash.
Speaker:We should say that a big innovation that happened around this time is
Speaker:in 1986 and that is when Kroger introduced the idea in Atlantis.
Speaker:self checkouts and this wasn't until 1986 and let me just tell you a little
Speaker:story about this when I was a little kid I'm really old and when I was a little
Speaker:kid, we would go to the Safeway by our house in Dallas, Texas And there were
Speaker:several and this is the days when there were several full time always there.
Speaker:Check out ladies.
Speaker:And they were ladies were and mother had her favorite.
Speaker:I even remember to this day, Edith.
Speaker:And there was the two ones that I'm going to like were Edith and Charlene.
Speaker:But my mother liked Edith better.
Speaker:And so my mother would literally stand in a longer line to get
Speaker:to Edith to check her out.
Speaker:My mother even had her favorite checkout lady, and there were
Speaker:no self checkouts at all.
Speaker:So this wasn't actually a thing.
Speaker:thing until the late eighties at Kroger's in Atlanta, which of course
Speaker:now, you know, it's everywhere.
Speaker:When I was a kid, there were checkout ladies too, but there was also at
Speaker:every checkout line a bag boy and there was somebody bagging the
Speaker:groceries and I, and you're being
Speaker:gendered, but it was gender.
Speaker:It was a gender.
Speaker:It was a
Speaker:boy.
Speaker:And I remember I couldn't have been more than seven or eight,
Speaker:but I remember the first time we went in and there were no longer.
Speaker:people to bag the groceries and I remember the checkout people asking my
Speaker:mom to bag them and she's like, no way.
Speaker:My mother refused to do so.
Speaker:Sure.
Speaker:Your mother would say, no, she's going to, I doesn't
Speaker:even pump her own gas.
Speaker:No, she doesn't.
Speaker:My
Speaker:sister does it for her, but She was like, I am not bagging my own groceries.
Speaker:Follow Bruce's mother for more financial advice.
Speaker:Um, so, because when my
Speaker:sister pumps it, my sister pays for it.
Speaker:Follow Bruce's mother for more financial
Speaker:advice.
Speaker:So, um, it's an interesting, uh, of the self checkout and what all that involved.
Speaker:And you know, there's a whole controversy now about using self checkout, about
Speaker:using the QR code to check out.
Speaker:You're putting people out of work, and it is true.
Speaker:Uh, there's, without a doubt, there is no way that you can
Speaker:retain the number of employees if people are doing it themselves.
Speaker:I know that there's a lot of political statement about self checkouts, and
Speaker:I'm not going to condemn you for using them or not using them because
Speaker:I use them, And I don't use them.
Speaker:I alternate, but I just think you should be aware of what's going on when you
Speaker:use the convenience of self checkout.
Speaker:You should just be aware that you're helping the store save money.
Speaker:That's what you're doing.
Speaker:You are now you might wait on a shorter line, though, you might.
Speaker:And what I don't like about self checkout is how scrutinized you are.
Speaker:I feel like I'm they're constantly watching.
Speaker:Am I stealing from them?
Speaker:See, then it's like, I don't want to feel like I'm, I feel like
Speaker:I'm in prison
Speaker:when
Speaker:I'm self checkoutting.
Speaker:So, so this gets into the modern trends.
Speaker:And so, one of the modern trends is, I don't know if you know
Speaker:this, but self checkouts are starting to be removed from stores.
Speaker:This hasn't really hit the grocery stores yet, but it is hitting places like Target
Speaker:and other places, who are Considering pulling out self checkouts, and this
Speaker:has to do with theft, uh, Walgreens, drugstores, CVS, they're starting to
Speaker:reconsider the self checkout because of stuff that walks out of the store.
Speaker:And I remember reading articles when self checkout first came in.
Speaker:In the modern day.
Speaker:And people were talking about, you know, the kind of theft in the stores.
Speaker:But the amount of theft did not equal the savings on the employees.
Speaker:But it's gotten to a point now, especially at bigger stores where people are
Speaker:walking out with expensive makeups and other things that it is now costing
Speaker:them more money than they're saving.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And I think that that's a really wild turn of it.
Speaker:I don't think there's If you could really predicted that stores would
Speaker:consider now pulling out self check out.
Speaker:Um, even the big box stores are talking about it now of pulling out
Speaker:self checkout like Costco and BJ's.
Speaker:Because, again, there's so much that walks out.
Speaker:Now, Costco is a little, uh, what, when we say more, um, uh, watchful.
Speaker:There's some, uh Self checkout, there are too many lines and somebody is
Speaker:really carefully monitoring you.
Speaker:And then of course you have to go past the guy or the woman to go, or whoever
Speaker:to go out and they check your list.
Speaker:They do.
Speaker:But every self checkout, even at Safeway and Stop and Shop, there's a camera in
Speaker:that Check out machine because I have had problems sometimes where something
Speaker:didn't scan or the machine jammed up.
Speaker:And so the person had to come over to help me and they instantly pull up the video.
Speaker:And there you are scanning your stuff and they slow it down to say,
Speaker:Oh, you didn't scan that right.
Speaker:So one of the big changes that is on the horizon that it is expected
Speaker:it's coming now is happening because of Amazon's ownership of Amazon
Speaker:go and ownership of Whole Foods.
Speaker:Two big changes here.
Speaker:One is the Amazon's big notion of dynamic pricing, which is coming.
Speaker:And this is that, in fact, nothing is really priced in the store.
Speaker:You can price it by using your phone and qr ing it.
Speaker:But what happens in dynamic pricing is that the thing is priced based
Speaker:on your past Purchase history.
Speaker:So let's say you're a person who now we know because we've data mind you,
Speaker:we know you like leafy greens, you like spinach is in collard greens and all that.
Speaker:Let's just pretend.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So what happens now is in dynamic pricing, the Price for that will be
Speaker:slightly higher for you than it would be.
Speaker:Let's say I hate leafy greens, but for once I'm going to try spinach
Speaker:and I buy some spinach, the price for me will be lower as an incentive
Speaker:to come back and buy it again.
Speaker:So this dynamic pricing model is coming.
Speaker:The Amazon hopes to roll it out even to car sales.
Speaker:They hope to roll it out across the world, but it is coming and it is already
Speaker:starting to happen at Amazon stores.
Speaker:Let me say this.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:About that.
Speaker:I understand dynamic pricing, if you want to call that, for cars.
Speaker:Because basically, everyone goes into a car dealership and walks
Speaker:out with the same car with the same features for a different price.
Speaker:And that's based on your ability to negotiate.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I got problems already, but go on.
Speaker:Well, okay, but I'm okay with that, your ability to negotiate.
Speaker:Or you go to like when Saturn was around, you could buy a Saturn because
Speaker:they always said no negotiating.
Speaker:Yeah, okay.
Speaker:So
Speaker:what's the point?
Speaker:And
Speaker:the point is.
Speaker:You don't negotiate in the supermarket, right?
Speaker:So the fact that three people are gonna reach for the same bottle of ketchup
Speaker:in the same store And it's gonna be different prices for each of them.
Speaker:I don't like that.
Speaker:I, uh, um, I don't really like it, but I have other reasons.
Speaker:You have this thing that you think it's unfair, which I
Speaker:actually don't think it's unfair.
Speaker:It
Speaker:is unfair.
Speaker:You should be able to
Speaker:I don't think it's unfair.
Speaker:You think it's unfair.
Speaker:Okay, but it's it.
Speaker:These are both opinions.
Speaker:Yours isn't the right opinion that it is unfair.
Speaker:You think it's unfair.
Speaker:I don't think it's unfair.
Speaker:But what I see is the potential for mischief.
Speaker:I see the potential for racial pricing.
Speaker:I see the potential for gender pricing.
Speaker:So I'm going to price things lower because men tend not to be the shoppers.
Speaker:And so if it's a man doing it, it prices it lower.
Speaker:I see all kinds of problems here.
Speaker:If you don't know, this began with the Amazon bookstores, the brick
Speaker:and mortar bookstores that Amazon has put up so that let's say they,
Speaker:of course, have data mind you.
Speaker:And they know that you don't.
Speaker:buy many biographies.
Speaker:And then let's say you walk in and you buy the big Ulysses S.
Speaker:Grant biography.
Speaker:It's going to price it lower than somebody who constantly buys biographies
Speaker:because, of course, the idea is to incentivize you to come back.
Speaker:I use that word incentivize, incentivize you to come back and buy more biographies.
Speaker:But this is coming to food stores and it's coming fast.
Speaker:It is.
Speaker:I mean, airlines have been doing this forever.
Speaker:They are.
Speaker:Two different people go to look for the same flight on different
Speaker:computers, even at the same day.
Speaker:You're going to get a different price based on how often you look
Speaker:at them, how often you travel, how often you've been to that city.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:And in fact, I will often, this is often the case with me.
Speaker:I just tell you that I go see my mom in St.
Speaker:Louis from New England.
Speaker:And I have found that I, you know, I can search for a flight pass on
Speaker:my app, uh, through like, through the American app and I can search
Speaker:for a flight on the days I want.
Speaker:And then in order to buy that ticket, I go to my laptop, I clear my browser history,
Speaker:I empty everything and dump my cash.
Speaker:And then I look for it again and it's a different price.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's huge.
Speaker:usually lower at that point than it is on my app.
Speaker:So this is coming.
Speaker:And the other thing that's coming is of course, what we
Speaker:might call the grab and go.
Speaker:And this is Amazon's not to smash and grab.
Speaker:No, this is Amazon's big grab and go.
Speaker:And that is that not, there's no checkouts that you have preloaded the credit
Speaker:card into your app or into your phone.
Speaker:phone that the store is monitoring everything by weight and camera
Speaker:by shelf sensors and my cameras.
Speaker:They see what you pick up instantly rings on the app, what you put in your car, what
Speaker:you put back, all of that kind of stuff.
Speaker:And then you just walk out.
Speaker:Um, you don't necessarily check out.
Speaker:You are done, done and did.
Speaker:This already exists in a number of Whole Foods because, you
Speaker:know, Amazon owns Whole Foods.
Speaker:And the last time Mark and I were in Washington, D.
Speaker:C., we went into a Whole Foods and it gave us the option, would you
Speaker:like to do the Amazon Go experience?
Speaker:And we didn't.
Speaker:We chose not to.
Speaker:Anything
Speaker:that's an experience, I don't want.
Speaker:I can tell you.
Speaker:But we saw it.
Speaker:There were a few.
Speaker:thousand cameras in the store watching everybody who agreed
Speaker:to do this and probably everyone who didn't agree to do it.
Speaker:And it watches what you pick off of shelves.
Speaker:The shelf sensors know you picked it up.
Speaker:The shelf sensor knows if you put it back.
Speaker:And let's just say that, um, there are issues here too.
Speaker:I don't want to be the old guy who says everything new is bad, but let me say
Speaker:there are issues here too, because what it's doing is it's data mining you.
Speaker:And so it knows that let's say you picked up.
Speaker:this bottle of vanilla and then you put it back on the shelf.
Speaker:So I almost guarantee you that the next time you go in that store, there's
Speaker:going to be a coupon for vanilla or it's going to say, Oh, vanilla is
Speaker:on sale today because it knows what you looked at and then put back.
Speaker:Not only that, you're going to start seeing ads for vanilla in your social
Speaker:media feed because it knows you were in the store looking at vanilla.
Speaker:Of course.
Speaker:Or if you never visit the cheese section and then one day you do, do you know
Speaker:it's going to incentivize you to go back to the cheese section another day.
Speaker:It's basically data mining you as a data point.
Speaker:It's convenient though.
Speaker:Let's face it.
Speaker:If you're a very, very busy person, you want to go in the store, you want to
Speaker:grab three pints of ice cream, a couple of bananas and some grapes and go,
Speaker:well, great, then it'll work for you.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And I think that it's also great for everyone.
Speaker:It's great for DoorDash.
Speaker:It's great for the places that you can use to shop for because those
Speaker:people can just go in the store.
Speaker:They're not going to be as picky as you are.
Speaker:They can pick the things up and just run out and frankly, do
Speaker:more transactions more quickly
Speaker:and make them a little more money.
Speaker:So I do agree.
Speaker:That's a wonderful use for it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And so I, I think these are all coming our way.
Speaker:I think that, also, if you look at some of the trends, one last thing, I know
Speaker:this has gone on a long time, but if you look at some of the trends, some
Speaker:of the trends are making claims that we're going back to what is called the
Speaker:bifurcated or dissected supermarket.
Speaker:That is, different stores that sell different things.
Speaker:This is the meat store, this is the produce store, this is the this store.
Speaker:And I think that, I think that the kids, particularly the TikTok
Speaker:generation, is particularly interested in this kind of experience.
Speaker:The cheese store, the this store, the that store.
Speaker:Right, exactly.
Speaker:And I think that some of the trends suggest that what we're going to
Speaker:is, as you well know, a diversified and two tiered system in which most
Speaker:of us can shop at the big chain stores or even the big box stores.
Speaker:And then those of us with more disposable income can shop at smaller
Speaker:specialty stores that have been bifurcated you want to say it, that
Speaker:they've been broken out and it's going, uh, uh, the, the idea is is heading
Speaker:towards this kind of two tier system.
Speaker:I mean, you know, I mean, to be stupid, Elon Musk is not
Speaker:going to walk around target.
Speaker:So
Speaker:Elon Musk has never shopped a day in his life.
Speaker:I know what
Speaker:I say to be stupid, but the whole point is that somebody who makes A big,
Speaker:big chunk of change, 000 a year isn't necessarily going to go in Ralph's or
Speaker:Safeway or wherever it is you shop.
Speaker:And so they're going to go in these little specialty stores, whereas
Speaker:the rest of us will be in these big, giant warehouses with their own
Speaker:dynamic pricing and grab and go and coupons and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker:It's a really weird place we're getting into.
Speaker:Before we get to the last part of our podcast, which is what's
Speaker:making us happy in food this week.
Speaker:Let me say that it would be great if you could follow us on social media.
Speaker:There's a Facebook group, Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Speaker:We both are on Facebook under our own names.
Speaker:We're on Instagram under our own names.
Speaker:Bruce is at bruceandmark.
Speaker:com A Weinstein.
Speaker:I'm just under my own name, Mark Scarborough, and we have a TikTok
Speaker:channel, Cooking with Bruce and Mark, where you can actually watch
Speaker:us making recipes for each other.
Speaker:There is a YouTube channel, Cooking with Bruce and Mark, but it's a
Speaker:little more abundant at this point.
Speaker:There's not much being posted on YouTube, but, um, it does exist.
Speaker:It's out there.
Speaker:And there
Speaker:are.
Speaker:Hundreds of videos on it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:There are hundreds of videos on the YouTube channel, fewer on the
Speaker:TikTok, but still, nonetheless, you can find us on social media and we
Speaker:would love to connect with you there.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:The last and traditional segment of our podcast.
Speaker:What's making us happy in food this
Speaker:week?
Speaker:I'm going to circle back to our one minute cooking tip of using chopsticks.
Speaker:And go back to this.
Speaker:You told how you learned to use chopsticks in China out of necessity.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:I was digging through a cabinet trying to find a deck of cards the other day, and
Speaker:I found a game called the chop suey game.
Speaker:Oh, my God.
Speaker:I have had this since childhood.
Speaker:Oh, my God.
Speaker:And this made me so happy.
Speaker:It's the most insane thing you have ever seen.
Speaker:So on
Speaker:the cover of this box is a bridge table with four people sitting at it.
Speaker:A little girl.
Speaker:A little boy, some old woman with curlers in her hair.
Speaker:Curlers.
Speaker:Cur literally curlers.
Speaker:And an older man who looks like he's probably a retired police officer.
Speaker:Or a bus driver.
Speaker:Or a bus driver.
Speaker:In a white t shirt.
Speaker:And they're playing this game called the chop suey game.
Speaker:And may
Speaker:I say, he's got Some kind of hat on that's either the bus driver
Speaker:hat or the policeman hat so and yes They're playing this game And so what
Speaker:the game consists
Speaker:of the only thing could be better from the 1970s if is if he were
Speaker:smoking Or the old lady were smoking.
Speaker:I think
Speaker:she was okay.
Speaker:So on there is this miniature Plastic wok that you wind up and it turns
Speaker:and inside this wok are little pieces of differently shaped plastic.
Speaker:Yeah, geometrically shaped, like squares and spheres.
Speaker:And pyramids, and
Speaker:you have to pick them up with chopsticks.
Speaker:So I had to learn to use chopsticks as a child.
Speaker:And put them in your rice bowl.
Speaker:As the wok spins.
Speaker:As the wok turns.
Speaker:And the stranger the piece, the more difficult it is to pick up, the more
Speaker:So the way you add up your points is when the walk is done and everyone
Speaker:has all their pieces, you have a menu and you match your shape piece on
Speaker:the menu to what it costs and whoever had the most expensive meal wins.
Speaker:Oh, that's always the way it is.
Speaker:Whoever has the most expensive meal wins.
Speaker:And so
Speaker:I learned to use chopsticks as a child.
Speaker:playing the chop suey game.
Speaker:So what's making me happy this week also involves chopsticks,
Speaker:but not in the same way.
Speaker:We've been going to New Haven a lot lately and not to be overly personal
Speaker:on the podcast, but we've been going to New Haven a lot to go to Yale because
Speaker:I've been having some health problems.
Speaker:But without Delving further into that, let me say that one of the delights
Speaker:of going to this nightmarish, uh, uh, medical appointments is finding
Speaker:myself able to eat lunch afterwards.
Speaker:And we went to Mecha Noodle Bar in New Haven, Connecticut, uh,
Speaker:M E C H A, Mecha Noodle Bar.
Speaker:And we had ramen this week after my appointments.
Speaker:And wow, the ramen was so good.
Speaker:I got brisket ramen with Beef Tendon and Bamboo Shoots.
Speaker:It was so, and spicy ramen too.
Speaker:And it was so delicious.
Speaker:I sat there at that table thinking, Ah, this makes that trip to New Haven
Speaker:totally worthwhile to be able to eat this
Speaker:ramen.
Speaker:and Bruce had these beef tendons.
Speaker:Big chunks of short rib meat.
Speaker:And of course I had to pick the beef fat out of his bowl.
Speaker:And I gave him some more of my tendon because I had so
Speaker:much gelatinous tendons, just
Speaker:little bits of beef jelly.
Speaker:Oh, it was
Speaker:so good.
Speaker:It was so satisfying and comforting.
Speaker:That was great.
Speaker:And so a shout out to mention noodle bar.
Speaker:I think they're a chain across Boston.
Speaker:And Massachusetts, Connecticut, you can find them all around.
Speaker:And, um, you know, good ramen is a wonderful thing to find.
Speaker:So that's our podcast for this week.
Speaker:Thanks for joining us and being on this food journey with us.
Speaker:We certainly appreciate your spending time with us across the podcast landscape.
Speaker:You can check us out, as I said, on social media.
Speaker:And if you would rate or even review this podcast, that
Speaker:would be absolutely fantastic.
Speaker:And I am shooting a video of.
Speaker:Pickled rhubarb this week.
Speaker:That video will be up on our Facebook group, cooking with Bruce
Speaker:and Mark and on our TikTok channel, cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Speaker:So check those videos out and we'll see you back here for another episode
Speaker:of cooking with Bruce and Mark.
