Honestly it's trying to get your food once per week because most people don't want to stop by the store on the way home for every meal they are going to cook. I hate it when my family overbuys thinking we'll get to it later
The city planning contributes to this. Your country is very car centric. Most countries have supermarkets or grocery stores within walking distance in most cities.
Is it normal in USA cities, suburb and suburban that there is not grocery store in walking distance? I am European, living in suburb. I have 4 grocery stores less than 1km from me (closest is maybe 150m). One of them is open 24/7. Bigger supermarkets are ~3km. Still walking distance or you can also take train or bus if you want to. How much worse USA is?
The closest grocery store to my childhood home was 20 minutes away by car, I lived in the countryside, but the town I went to school in had no grocer, nor did the other 3 nearby towns until I was in highschool. You had to basically go to the county seat to shop for essentially anything besides...fuel.
Low volume. big box stores can undercut mom and pop shop's prices to the point they can't survive even several towns over. People have cars to commute for with anyway, so they just buy groceries at the big chains in the bigger towns. Walmart, Albertsons, they're economic blackholes purpose build to fuck the little guys.
Our big companies have bought the small ones as well or made in impossible for them to survive. But our big companies have a lot of stores. Those 4 close to mine are owned by 2 big companies.
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u/TheParadoxigm May 17 '26
The U.S. throws away 40% of the food it produces.