{"id":56384,"date":"2021-01-09T17:26:48","date_gmt":"2021-01-09T22:26:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=56384"},"modified":"2021-01-09T17:26:48","modified_gmt":"2021-01-09T22:26:48","slug":"we-still-need-alternatives-to-supermarkets-perhaps-now-more-than-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=56384","title":{"rendered":"We still need alternatives to supermarkets \u2013 perhaps now more than ever"},"content":{"rendered":"
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We still need alternatives to supermarkets \u2013 perhaps now more than ever<\/span><\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n

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If you were a child in the \u201850s and \u201860s, you will remember that food shopping meant traipsing round several specialist shops whilst your mother chatted to the knowledgeable shop staff about what was available that week. But even by then, this way of buying food was already in decline. In March 1948,\u00a0the London Co-operative Society had opened\u00a0Britain\u2019s first\u00a0fully self-service store<\/a>\u00a0in Manor Park, East London. And this changed everything.<\/p>\n

The massive expansion and dominance of supermarkets has had profound impacts on most aspects of our lives, sometimes positively, but certainly not always. By 2019, the traditional independent retailers made up just 5% of the entire food sector.<\/p>\n

2019 share of UK food market:<\/a><\/p>\n

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The rise of the supermarkets had a devastating impact on the local independent specialist food shops.<\/p>\n

Butchers<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 in 1960, there were some\u00a043,000 butcher\u2019s shops in the UK<\/a>; by 2019, it was\u00a0nearer 6,000<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Fishmongers<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 in the late 1940s, there were around\u00a08,000 fishmongers<\/a>, and today there are\u00a0about 950<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Greengrocers\u00a0<\/strong>\u2013 from\u00a043,000 in 1950<\/a>, by\u00a02018 there were 2,500<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And, as the national economy grew, so\u00a0the average proportion of household income we spent on food dwindled from 33% in 1957 to 16% in 2019<\/a>, although this masks significantly higher proportions for low income families.<\/p>\n

Food as a Social Event<\/strong><\/p>\n

Past generations had a far better understanding of how their food was produced than we do and eating together was a major social event to be savoured. Being the first industrialised country, in the UK we have had more time to lose the folk memory of rural life and producing food, and with it the social aspect of eating together as families…<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n

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We still need alternatives to supermarkets \u2013 perhaps now more than ever If you were a child in the \u201850s and \u201860s, you will remember that food shopping meant traipsing round several specialist shops whilst your mother chatted to the knowledgeable shop staff about what was available that week. But even by then, this way […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[30816,1912,6510,6867],"class_list":["post-56384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-bob-kennard","tag-food-production","tag-food-system","tag-sustainable-food-trust"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56384"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56385,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56384\/revisions\/56385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}