Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America Hardcover – May 16, 2017

I adored this book because I live a short walk from Heinens store #04, so I got the scoop on a place I spend an hour a week. (And on the creation of the amazing downtown store, the site of a million Instagram posts.)However, it reads like something of a hastily edited pastiche. To get to the good stuff, you must navigate a few chapters’ worth of undergraduate term paper on the food manufacturing industry. This is clumsily pulled together from sources, and while he quotes the best sources, they are already thoroughly quoted in a thousand Web and magazine pieces.The “scoop” on how the Heinens chain is run is fascinating and well presented. It is anecdotal -- based on a smallish chain with a middle and upper class clientele -- but an irresistible, and privileged, inside look at a secretive industry. And when Ruhlmann does let his writing flow, masterfully working in a memoir, it’s wonderful.Overall highly recommended to anyone who would like to learn about this fascinating business which is so much a part of our lives.

The grocery store seems like such a boring and mundane subject to write about….how hard can it really be. Order products, stock the shelves, let customers pick, check them out and repeat. That, however, is far from the way grocery stores work. In fact, the stores and business are so much more complex than it seems they should be.Grocery stores have a history that goes back to the area of around the 1930s in America. That is when what we consider the grocery store, as we know it, seems to have originated. And anyone who saw one of those would never believe what they have morphed into today. Even the grocery stores I shopped in with my mother in the 1960s are a far cry from what the stores have become today.The author uses a medium sized, family owned chain in the Cleveland, Ohio area as the chain to study. Be assured that there are great differences between these size chains and the mega chains that dot the countryside, and the author is quick to point out those differences. The biggest difference is the level of customer involvement and the ability to respond to customer demands.The author covers the store from every department, explaining the difficulties in operating those areas and how the stores decide at what should be stocked. It is a truly amazing look at the work that goes into how the stores operate and how complicated the dance is between getting fresh food in at the right time and working to avoid spoilage.My one complaint about the book was the focus on the hippie doctor that runs their wellness department. The author seemed to spend more time on him than needed, and truthfully, I wonder how many other chains even employ someone like him. It seemed a little over done, but otherwise the book was wonderful.I would recommend this book to any foodie who wants to know where their food comes from or the general reader who is curious about the operation of the grocery store they shop at on a regular basis.

Although this book focused on one grocery store , it provided good insight into how grocery scores in america operate. Not a business book, not a food book, but an interesting read.

I admit that this kindlebook that is Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America by Michael Ruhlman piqued my curiosity even though I am fortunate to reside with my husband in an area with multiple grocery stores within easy access of public transportation: Giant, Whole Foods, Aldi’s, Lidl,Costco, Shoppers,Safeway, etc. A sampling of the details included in this kindlebook include: the author’s father loved to go grocery shopping, the country’s first grocery stores in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries carried about two hundred products, during the final decades of the twentieth century referenced in a 2014 Consumer Reports article the average supermarket had quadruple nine thousand items (by 2008), info on early 1930s origins of the King Kullen supermarket chain, starts on page 59 of a business consultant originally Orlando Florida based who had worked with Bristol Farms in Southern California, Ball’s food stores in Kansas, Lund&Byerly’s in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area,Festival Foods, Roche Bros supermarkets in the Boston area/Dorothy Lane Market in Dayton Ohio, a section on page 92 titled Breakfast The Most Dangerous Meal of the Day, authors reference to a type of salmon grown in the Pacific ocean on page 113, a section that starts on page 140 part III the center aisles which follows another title a few of the twenty thousand new products for your consideration for instance the author’s reference to breakfast bar shelves that include Nature Valley-General Mills, Quaker-Pepsi-Co,the authors experience/take with sampling microwavable frittata, and much more.

I have read almost all of his books and this one is probably the least interesting. The research seems pretty anecdotal. Spend your money on his charcuterie book instead.

great book

Very fine book - informative and down-to-earth.

Ce livre resume d'une manière assez synthétique et facile à lire, le parcours de notre nourriture et son évolution dans le marché.

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