Samizdata

A couple of weeks ago, non-resident Samizdatista Alice Bachini pointed to this Telegraph piece in praise of supermarkets in general and the Tesco chain in particular, which explains that supermarkets help us to save time and money, make life easier (particularly for women), and provide a tremendous range of stuff much easier to buy at all sorts of odd hours if necessary, that Tesco provide a fine online service for people who want it, and that all round these are really good things and should be applauded. (Oddly enough, my fellow Samizdatista Jonathan Pearce wrote a similar piece between my starting and finishing this piece). Now this is a good article – it even takes a brief time out to denounce the Common Agricultural policy as evil – and on the whole I couldn’t agree more. However, there is one important issue that the author (Alice Thomson) missed. Midway through the article, she says the following

Supermarkets are always accused of sacrificing quality for quantity. Actually, because they buy in bulk and have a rapid turnover, it often means that their fruit is fresher than their competitors’. At Tesco yesterday, I counted six varieties of autumn apples, four from Britain.

Because they have such huge buying power, they can also take a gamble on exotic produce. The old corner shops were great for a packet of cigarettes, but they’d never have sold fresh basil. Supermarkets have made us more rather than less adventurous.

The result is entirely true. Supermarkets today contain a great many more lines than was the case a couple of decades ago, particularly fresh foods. But she is wrong about the reason. The reason why supermarkets are able to provide so much better products is not about buying power. It is instead almost entirely about the benefits that have been obtained by supermarket chains developing complicated computer systems to handle their logistics.

I will return to this, but for now a digression into economics. → Continue reading: Why supermarkets are good, and what this has to do with the productivity paradox

A new Sainsbury’s supermarket has opened near where I live in Pimlico, central London. Very good it is indeed. Just about every food obtainable that I would ever want plus lots more. I made my first trip the other day and it triggered off some thoughts about what these big food chains represent in our culture.

First off, the customers looked genuinely excited, cheerful. It may seem weird that in an age of abundance where we take such things for granted, but the opening of this store seems to have created quite a buzz in the area, rather like the opening of a multi-plex cinema. Shopping for many people is an extension of leisure activity rather than just about the utilitarian business of buying food for the table.

The neo-Luddites in our midst claim to despise all this. Supermarkets, they say, force smaller shops out of business and these big stores’ buying power squeezes the margins of suppliers. To the first charge, I say that if small stores are indeed being forced under, it has more to do with the burdens of regulation and tax which necessarily weigh more heavily on small firms than on larger, more established ones. And secondly, the increased buying power of large stores is indeed a fact, but that also means the consumer gets to benefit. And a big store’s brand-name visibility means the owners of the business have to fret constantly – and they do – about product quality. Let’s face it, if you buy a tin of beans from Megastore Inc and it turns out to poisonous, then think multi-zillion quid lawsuit. If it is bought from Uncle Fred Cornershop, probably not.

And a final point. Supermarkets, it seems to me, have played a considerable part in the liberation of women from traditional household chores, and hence made it easier for women to leave the home and go into work. If we had no superstores and only small stores, then shoppinig would take much, much longer, and hence put even more of a strain on family life where most couples have to be earners out of financial necessity.

Of course the anti-globalistas are none too keen to focus on the essentially conservative, dare I say, reactionary nature of what their hatred of big business means. No reason for us to be shy, however.

Right, off to explore the wine counter.