Espresso: The Truth Behind The History of Supermarkets - Franco Fubini, Natoora

0:02Yeah, so supermarkets really take hold as you say 70 years ago in the 50s. yeah uh the first one was piggly wiggly i think a funny name for a supermarket still around those guys what piggly wiggly wiggly yeah whereabouts is it is it in it's somewhere on the east coast a little bit south i i don't know exactly but they're they're still they're still around the brand is still there so that started in like i don't know 1913 or 1916 something like that it was the first time that you know you used to go this whatever the market the supermarket was It wasn't a supermarket back then, but you used to go buy your food and you'd ask the, you know, the gentleman who ran the store, owned the store, and they would serve you.

0:40So Piggly Wiggly was the first one to say, we're going to do self-service. You go in and you pick your own food. Yeah. So supermarkets then really take hold in the 50s. That's when like supermarket culture as we know it, that's the beginning of it. And what happens with supermarkets is that they take advantage of our inbuilt habits. Habits, psychology, the way that we behave, the way that we consume. Habits are changing. It's going to the habits bit because I think we've reversed the habits to make the change. So World War II happens. Women go out into the workforce. they come back and by then things have changed right you start getting a lot more um to two income households where both man and woman are going out into the workforce that means less time to cook that means that convenience starts becoming a habit right or a desire a need whatever you want to call it right convenience starts becoming interesting um with less time to cook, some of the cooking and culture.

1:53And obviously this happens in the U S where it's a little bit like the UK gastronomy wasn't at is has never been as ingrained as it has been in a culture like the Italian or, um, the Japanese. So we lose the cooking at home, start losing a lot of that. We want convenience and pricing becomes much more important pricing and choice. So the supermarkets latch onto this and say, okay, if I can build a shop that has more range, where I can also provide convenience with some of the food that I sell, I can make it accessible by making it affordable and pushing down prices, it's going to connect with consumers.

2:39And it did. So our shopping went from going to independent stores into supermarkets because they provided the range, the price, the convenience. So you fast forward to like, I don't know, the 80s, the 90s, you know, we are shopping becomes, we go once a week to the supermarket, buy what we need. You know, we drive and particularly in the US, you drive, park your car, buy your groceries, drive back home. And that is the way that we shop today. You either walk to the supermarket if you're in the city or you drive to the supermarket and load up your car and you usually go once a week. Now things are changing a little bit, but essentially that's the habit that was formed.

3:18But we took, we said the supermarkets, not just the supermarkets, but also what happened with a lot of the chemical industry that in the post-war period divert their manufacturing capacity to one, chemical farming, and two, the manufacturing of food additives. We get into this industrialization of food, where we start producing food again, because it provides convenience. So you can get, you know, biscuits. You don't have to bake your own cookies for your kids. You can just buy a pack. So we start, industries start shifting and supermarkets and industry, I don't know, they didn't collude, but they work together to say, hey, how do we develop a system where you guys are manufacturing food?

4:04We're going to promote this manufactured food that's convenience at the forefront. And then our diets start to change. we start moving into these ultra processed foods. So you end up in a system where we consume a lot of processed foods. So it could be cookies, cereals, um, I don't know, ready meals, right. And you do that in a supermarket environment that is pushing, pushing you to shop from the center of the supermarket. So the, the non-fresh rather than the perimeter, which is where you tend to find the meat and fish counters and produce that then led into how that fed through to the consumption of produce the the lack of seasonality and produce and you know again pushing pushing habits and convenience so you have blueberries year round strawberries year round is what do you think like what's the the human sort of incentive with that is it greed like how do we get to this fucked up situation is it is it our our desire for people at the top who want to like their self-interests like because i think there is it's kind of unintended consequences from from that angle not from like sort of not from like the nefarious ceo angle i don't mean like that i mean like stepping almost zooming out and seeing like is our desire for progress or also our achilles heel does that make sense yeah what's your take on it i think what it so one angle is the consumer angle right why did consumers accept it and i think the evolutionary answer to that is we like convenience.

5:32Yeah. Right. Don't walk too far from the fire to get your berries. Exactly. You will, you will, if you can avoid walking upstairs, you will. Right. Yeah. So great. Right. I don't need to cook or I can get a packet of biscuits. Right. I can go to the supermarket and do my shop all in one go rather than going into five stores. Fantastic. Right. You've given consumers something that they're going to just like the bliss factor, like chocolate, It hits those trigger points. So yeah, we'll eat a bag of Doritos in one go. So one evolutionary element is the desire for convenience. And I think the other one is the fact that we need to eat to survive.

6:16And we are naturally inclined to eat and store calories. So if I can engineer food that you're going to eat more of which is exactly what happened i'm going to eat more of it because you know that's how we've been designed to evolve it's adaptive really like yeah yeah if you're being a no like a bit of a bit of a fat fuck back in the neandroid date i can't say it days was very advantageous right but it's just now yeah yeah it says now like it's fucked because there's so it's just there's yeah it's it's interesting how you're saying the incentives from the consumer angle. What about the incentives from - From the business.

6:57From the business. Like, what does that tell us about human nature? Is that our desire for, again, I think it probably boils down to, like, protection, really, like, ultimately. Yeah, I think - Protection of self, not of others. I think it's the capitalist system, right? Yeah. As you said, maybe, I don't know, you maybe can call it greed. I don't necessarily call it greed. I think there's a, you know, if you think of Sam Walton, I don't think he was greedy. I think he was an entrepreneur. He was Walmart founder. Yeah, exactly. He was the Walmart founder. He just loved growing his business. There's a lot of incredible things from a business perspective that you can learn from how he built Walmart and how he scaled it in a massive way in a very short space of time.

7:47If you look at the numbers, if you look at the growth, sidetracking a bit, But if you look at the growth of Walmart, you know, in this first 20, 30 years, it was just insane. Like they got to billions of revenue in a very short space of time. So one of my poor Charlie's almanac, which was Charlie Munger's book, he was Warren Buffett's like right hand man. He's got a great thing I love, which is like, don't slam McDonald's because those people slam McDonald's. he was like on from the quality of the the food and stuff yes that's like horrendous right but actually if you look at it from this what his one law of life is be be reliable a bit like be consistent right because the amount of kids who were probably working were probably you know it was either it was either they could have they had two paths who were either going to go down like sort of the drug route or like just a uh not the right route mcdonald's taught the amount of people and kids it's taught to be reliable and be on time it's like that and that is just a core fundamental thing it's like we often just look at it and i'm not something i mean i love a big mac i'm not gonna lie to you but like there are and i think you're right there's these um the whole sort of capitalist thing it does provide a lot of good for people as well you know and it's um it's but with the food it's like the system it isn't great two months free yeah that's what espresso sponsors unleashed are offering they are supply chain gurus and offer inventory management that talks to your econ and accounting software it's helped islands cut admin time in half get granular clarity on your margins know where your stock is don't miss availability brands like candy kittens tarquins gin minor figures and trip all use unleashed and i reckon you should too as i said two months free in the show notes click there and you're gonna get two months for free