Shopping

I promised a few pictures of the New Year preparations from my local supermarket, so there you go.

In the second picture you can see one of the huge stacks of snacks sold from large bins. All of this is very similar to western Christmas shopping, where Finnish supermarkets have stacks upon stacks of chocolate boxes, except people aren't that into chocolate here. But they are into snacks.

I frequently note how the other shoppers in supermarkets are content to load their basket to the brim with goodies. Sweet drinks, bisquits, candy and various other snacks like flavoured chicken or dry octopus are huge hits. Groceries not so much. Actually, I'm often toting the healthies basket or pushing the cart with most actual food with it. It's because people do their grocery shopping mostly in wet markets, but are affluent enough to buy the nice stuff too. So they make a trip to the mega mart and load on the goodies.

The market knows this. The local Auchan has a almost everything, and you really don't need another shop unless you really want some specific hard-to-find items. But snacks and candy? Rows, stacks, shelves, piles and then some. Surely it is a case of people buying what is abundant in the shops, but the shops have to shelve what people want. And judging by the square meters of junk food I can guess what they really buy. It'll be a few years still before people get more used to supermarket shopping. That, or they will have to - I don't think the wet markets can really compete with the giants, not for long anyway. They will of course have customers who need to buy only the most basic goods, who save on every purchase as much as they can, but later there will be a point where most city people realize the big shops have clean goods at a cheap price, not only New Year goodies.

OP Out.