Hey, I'm Bruce Weinstein, and this is the podcast Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Speaker:And I'm Mark Scarbrough, and Bruce and I are veteran cookbook
Speaker:writers, as you well know.
Speaker:This is our food and cooking podcast, all about one of the passions in our life.
Speaker:Bruce has a passion for knitting, and I have a passion for literature.
Speaker:Bruce has published knitting books, and he's got patterns for sale on
Speaker:his own website, bruceweinstein.
Speaker:net.
Speaker:I've got a podcast that is slow walking through Dante's cookbook.
Speaker:Comedy, the divine comedy, although Dante only called it comedy.
Speaker:That's a whole story.
Speaker:I've got a podcast about that.
Speaker:You can check us out wherever you get your podcast from, or you can check out Bruce's
Speaker:patterns for sale on his own website, but we're not talking about any of that.
Speaker:We're back to our main focus, which is food and cooking.
Speaker:We've got a one minute cooking tip about.
Speaker:eating greasy Cheetos.
Speaker:Yes, believe it or not.
Speaker:We want to talk about the evolution of grocery stores and what has happened to
Speaker:grocery stores over the years and where they are probably going in the future.
Speaker:And we'll tell you what's making us happy in food this week.
Speaker:So let's get started.
Speaker:Our one minute cooking tip now.
Speaker:I actually saw someone doing this on TikTok and it was brilliant if you're
Speaker:going to eat greasy Cheetos or Doritos or things that stain your fingers yellow
Speaker:from the cheese or those messy snacks.
Speaker:Nacho cheese Doritos and that kind of stuff and Cheetos and I don't
Speaker:know what chicken liver Fritos.
Speaker:I don't
Speaker:even know.
Speaker:Eat them with chopsticks.
Speaker:I'd never even thought of that.
Speaker:It's brilliant.
Speaker:It keeps your finger clean.
Speaker:Now.
Speaker:These people were using it to feed a toddler, right?
Speaker:So they were giving a toddler Cheetos.
Speaker:But it works for adults.
Speaker:It
Speaker:does work.
Speaker:I love it.
Speaker:You sit there with a bag of Cheetos and chopsticks.
Speaker:There's one problem is that we have a podcast that basically drops hard
Speaker:in the United States and Canada.
Speaker:And most people don't know how to use chopsticks.
Speaker:So there is a problem right there.
Speaker:You know what?
Speaker:Go to Amazon.
Speaker:And look for baby chopsticks and they'll have a spring action and you can get
Speaker:the same ones that little kids learn on and just eat Cheetos with chopsticks.
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:I mean, I have to admit that the first time I learned to use chopsticks was
Speaker:the first time I went to Asia because it was like, use chopsticks or die.
Speaker:So, use chopsticks or don't eat.
Speaker:Starve to death.
Speaker:Right, so, um, it was a whole thing.
Speaker:But you can find all kinds of, uh, chopstick.
Speaker:Primers online.
Speaker:And in fact, let me also say that those are great things to get for
Speaker:your kids, because knowing how to eat with chopsticks is important in
Speaker:an increasingly globalized world.
Speaker:All right, before we get to the next segment of our podcast, let me
Speaker:say that we are I have a newsletter comes out about every other week.
Speaker:Not so much lately, but on Mondays, usually, uh, it's kind of start back
Speaker:up again because we're done with our book and we've turned it in.
Speaker:I'm sure you've heard two reams of paper on absurd amount of work.
Speaker:We'll tell you our
Speaker:hundred and 25
Speaker:recipes grow and 137 photos.
Speaker:We'll tell you all about that up ahead.
Speaker:But in future podcasts, but right now, uh, the newsletter is about to start up again.
Speaker:If you want to get in that, go to cooking with bruceandmark.
Speaker:com or just bruceandmark.
Speaker:com you'll find a way to sign up for the newsletter there.
Speaker:It's not necessarily connected to this podcast.
Speaker:Sometimes recipes from this podcast appear there, but you can find out other
Speaker:things about living in new England, about being cookbook writers, about the
Speaker:process of selling cookbooks, things that are interesting in our lives, our
Speaker:food finds, all kinds of things there.
Speaker:I do not capture your name or your email.
Speaker:You can unsubscribe it.
Speaker:every turn of the way, and I do not let the provider capture it either.
Speaker:Check that out at CookingWithBruceAndMark.
Speaker:com.
Speaker:Okay, up next, segment two, the evolution of the North American grocery store.
Speaker:If you've ever watched an episode of Little House on the Prairie Oh,
Speaker:God.
Speaker:Wait, yeah, great.
Speaker:I set this up as this big historical thing, and so now
Speaker:you're going to talk about TV.
Speaker:Go on.
Speaker:Well, yeah.
Speaker:Do go on.
Speaker:The academic in me is fainting.
Speaker:The Olsons owned the General Store.
Speaker:Oh my
Speaker:gosh.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Do come on.
Speaker:And
Speaker:that General Store is exactly what markets were like until the early 20th century.
Speaker:Yes, it's true.
Speaker:They mostly stocked non perishables.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Early canned goods, flour, beans, dried things, that's what there was.
Speaker:I mean, listen, when, uh, now I'm going to be literary, so since I've brought up
Speaker:my academic creds, I get to be academic.
Speaker:So in Light in August, in Faulkner's novel, Light in August, when Laney Grove
Speaker:is walking to this town in York Metopha County, the county that Faulkner made up.
Speaker:She's walking to this town, uh, she goes by a grocery store and
Speaker:she's hungry and she goes inside.
Speaker:She's been walking since Alabama to this Mississippi town and, um, she goes in
Speaker:this grocery, grocery store and she, Orders, uh, 10 of sardines and saltines.
Speaker:And of course she has to stand at the counter and the guy
Speaker:then pulls it off the shelves.
Speaker:His novel was written in the late thirties, but he pulls it
Speaker:off the shelves and hands it to
Speaker:her.
Speaker:That's the way it worked.
Speaker:You went as a customer into the store, you handed your grocery list to the clerk.
Speaker:They went around behind the counter, collected everything
Speaker:up and gave it to you.
Speaker:If you needed.
Speaker:Dairy, produce, or butchered meats, you were in the wrong place there,
Speaker:you had to go to special stores.
Speaker:See, people say they don't
Speaker:like to use Instacart and Peapod and all those kind of things because
Speaker:they say they don't want other people picking their groceries.
Speaker:But that actually used to be the way it always was, is that you did get, you did
Speaker:get groceries that were picked for you.
Speaker:But this is all prior to the coming of, uh, the deeply racist
Speaker:and disgusting Piggly Wiggly.
Speaker:Oh, Piggly Wiggly.
Speaker:But anyway, yes, in 1916, Piggly Wiggly began to change things in the,
Speaker:uh, in the supermarket world, right?
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:they put all the food out for self service.
Speaker:They put it on display.
Speaker:You walked in.
Speaker:1916.
Speaker:They started this.
Speaker:All of a sudden, there were Large displays of apples and oranges and
Speaker:produce and all the canned goods were in shelves on aisles that you could walk
Speaker:up and down and choose what you wanted that had never been done right for
Speaker:if you don't Know why we're groaning at Piggly Wiggly Piggly Wiggly was caught in
Speaker:the late 60s early 70s up charging black people for food in the United States.
Speaker:And it was a kind of a big scandal at the time during the civil rights movement.
Speaker:It still should be a big scandal at every turn.
Speaker:But okay, anyway, let's not get political.
Speaker:Let's, let's, let's talk about what happened after Piggly Wiggly
Speaker:started the self service thing.
Speaker:Well, you'd go in with your own bag, and you would pick up all the
Speaker:groceries that you wanted, but there was something missing from the Piggly
Speaker:Wiggly, and that was the shopping cart.
Speaker:Yes,
Speaker:that was a Big, huge invention.
Speaker:And the shopping cart came along in 1937.
Speaker:It was introduced by Humpty Dumpty stores.
Speaker:And the point of what is the point of the shopping cart?
Speaker:Well, let's say they would tell you it's convenient.
Speaker:Yes, they would.
Speaker:But what is the point is that you'll buy more?
Speaker:That's because
Speaker:it's less for you to carry, right?
Speaker:That's right.
Speaker:If you, you know, listen, when we used to do this in New
Speaker:York, we lived in Manhattan.
Speaker:We would go to Supermarkets and basically there weren't shopping
Speaker:carts in the supermarket.
Speaker:We shopped in, in Chelsea, in Manhattan.
Speaker:There were the handbags, the baskets that you pick up with the handles.
Speaker:And honestly, you know, there's only so much you can fit in
Speaker:there and B it gets really heavy.
Speaker:So it feels limiting.
Speaker:And also you think, Oh, I'm going to have to schlep this home rather than roll
Speaker:this out to my car and drive it home.
Speaker:So shopping carts were.
Speaker:actually an incentive to buy more.
Speaker:The
Speaker:more you could fit in there, the better for the store.
Speaker:So shopping carts got bigger.
Speaker:Think about shopping
Speaker:carts at the big box stores at Costco.
Speaker:The point is so you'll load it up.
Speaker:We go to Costco every now and then, and I am always amazed at the size of that cart.
Speaker:First of all, I'm a tall guy.
Speaker:I'm six, four, and the The cart is high for me, like the bar across it
Speaker:comes mid chest, and I look at some of these little old ladies shopping
Speaker:there, and they're like, they're like driving a chopper motorcycle with
Speaker:their hands up in the air on the cart.
Speaker:It's kind of like ridiculous.
Speaker:You
Speaker:know, I always say that you can't go in Costco, they should just charge
Speaker:your credit card 200 when you walk in the store, and then everything
Speaker:after that, you know, there's just whatever that you spend beyond 200.
Speaker:But that's because part of it is because the cart is so big,
Speaker:you throw things in there.
Speaker:You do.
Speaker:And you feel like, well, Well, I haven't bought that much, and then you
Speaker:go up to the register and it's 300.
Speaker:So it is part of an incentive of buying more, and you might be surprised
Speaker:to know that by this point already, coupons were a feature of stores.
Speaker:Uh, the first coupon was actually invented by Coca Cola in 1887,
Speaker:if you can believe it or not.
Speaker:Isn't that crazy?
Speaker:It was, uh, it was an adventure.
Speaker:Advertising home run instant success, but it wasn't until the creation of
Speaker:the Nielsen Coupon Clearinghouse.
Speaker:What is the
Speaker:Nielsen Group?
Speaker:Well, it's basically a
Speaker:consolidator of coupons.
Speaker:And so the Nielsen, uh, the Nielsen Coupon Clearinghouse consolidated
Speaker:coupons across manufacturers.
Speaker:And this led to the explosion.
Speaker:Explosion of coupons across North America and even in Europe
Speaker:because stores have to get reimbursed for that, right?
Speaker:They're giving you 50 cents off 75 said they want their money back.
Speaker:So that's how that
Speaker:happened Let's let's just stop there a minute So, let me just say that
Speaker:now things have changed a great deal and I am married to someone who is A
Speaker:coupon hound and Bruce does not clip.
Speaker:We don't do that Even take a newspaper.
Speaker:Goose does not do what my mother did, which is go to the
Speaker:newspaper and clip the coupons.
Speaker:Bruce instead pulls up to the supermarket.
Speaker:He opens the supermarket's app, whichever one he's at, and he
Speaker:preloads the coupons onto his app.
Speaker:And then he shops with his phone, right?
Speaker:You scan with your phone.
Speaker:I
Speaker:do.
Speaker:And there are coup.
Speaker:We've talked about this a number of times.
Speaker:This is the way to save money at a store.
Speaker:There are exclusive savings and coupons.
Speaker:On the apps that you can't get if you don't use the app.
Speaker:And if you have a frequent shopper and you have your customer
Speaker:number, you get targeted specials.
Speaker:There are times when I'll be in the store and it'll say, we have a special
Speaker:offer for you, Bruce Weinstein.
Speaker:Now, maybe other people are getting it too, but a free cake.
Speaker:You know, 20 off your next purchase.
Speaker:Those are huge things.
Speaker:And if I didn't have the app, I wouldn't get them.
Speaker:So really
Speaker:honestly, if you shop at Safeway, Kroger, Albertsons, Whole Foods, the
Speaker:big Y, any of the big supermarket chains, Ralph's, wherever you shop
Speaker:and wherever you go, think about.
Speaker:Adding the app to your phone and then when you pull up to the supermarket,
Speaker:open the app and pre load what's on sale.
Speaker:Seriously, this is a serious way to
Speaker:save a lot of money.
Speaker:And Mark says that I like to shop on the apps.
Speaker:I do.
Speaker:And it's interesting.
Speaker:My credit card is pre loaded in there, too.
Speaker:So when I go to check out, I scan a code and out I go.
Speaker:But did you know that until the late 20th century.
Speaker:50 percent of all purchases were made by check.
Speaker:Yeah, my mother always Do you remember that?
Speaker:Yeah, I do.
Speaker:My mother always wrote a personal check at the supermarket.
Speaker:And
Speaker:always for more money than this, you get it back.
Speaker:It was sort of like an ATM.
Speaker:She never did that?
Speaker:I did that.
Speaker:I did that when I was first out of college, but my mother
Speaker:wouldn't have ever done that.
Speaker:My mother would have always just written the check for whatever it was.
Speaker:I remember having to hand your driver's license over, and they would write your
Speaker:driver's license number on the check.
Speaker:It was a
Speaker:huge thing.
Speaker:People used supermarkets almost like banks.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:When I was in grad school in Madison, that's when I started going to like
Speaker:a supermarket and I got a check cashing card and I would go to the
Speaker:customer service desk and cash.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:Maybe there was a 50 limit.
Speaker:I don't even remember what it was, but I would cash a personal check to get cash.
Speaker:We should say that a big innovation that happened around this time is
Speaker:in 1986 and that is when Kroger introduced the idea in Atlantis.
Speaker:self checkouts and this wasn't until 1986 and let me just tell you a little
Speaker:story about this when I was a little kid I'm really old and when I was a little
Speaker:kid, we would go to the Safeway by our house in Dallas, Texas And there were
Speaker:several and this is the days when there were several full time always there.
Speaker:Check out ladies.
Speaker:And they were ladies were and mother had her favorite.
Speaker:I even remember to this day, Edith.
Speaker:And there was the two ones that I'm going to like were Edith and Charlene.
Speaker:But my mother liked Edith better.
Speaker:And so my mother would literally stand in a longer line to get
Speaker:to Edith to check her out.
Speaker:My mother even had her favorite checkout lady, and there were
Speaker:no self checkouts at all.
Speaker:So this wasn't actually a thing.
Speaker:thing until the late eighties at Kroger's in Atlanta, which of course
Speaker:now, you know, it's everywhere.
Speaker:When I was a kid, there were checkout ladies too, but there was also at
Speaker:every checkout line a bag boy and there was somebody bagging the
Speaker:groceries and I, and you're being
Speaker:gendered, but it was gender.
Speaker:It was a gender.
Speaker:It was a
Speaker:boy.
Speaker:And I remember I couldn't have been more than seven or eight,
Speaker:but I remember the first time we went in and there were no longer.
Speaker:people to bag the groceries and I remember the checkout people asking my
Speaker:mom to bag them and she's like, no way.
Speaker:My mother refused to do so.
Speaker:Sure.
Speaker:Your mother would say, no, she's going to, I doesn't
Speaker:even pump her own gas.
Speaker:No, she doesn't.
Speaker:My
Speaker:sister does it for her, but She was like, I am not bagging my own groceries.
Speaker:Follow Bruce's mother for more financial advice.
Speaker:Um, so, because when my
Speaker:sister pumps it, my sister pays for it.
Speaker:Follow Bruce's mother for more financial
Speaker:advice.
Speaker:So, um, it's an interesting, uh, of the self checkout and what all that involved.
Speaker:And you know, there's a whole controversy now about using self checkout, about
Speaker:using the QR code to check out.
Speaker:You're putting people out of work, and it is true.
Speaker:Uh, there's, without a doubt, there is no way that you can
Speaker:retain the number of employees if people are doing it themselves.
Speaker:I know that there's a lot of political statement about self checkouts, and
Speaker:I'm not going to condemn you for using them or not using them because
Speaker:I use them, And I don't use them.
Speaker:I alternate, but I just think you should be aware of what's going on when you
Speaker:use the convenience of self checkout.
Speaker:You should just be aware that you're helping the store save money.
Speaker:That's what you're doing.
Speaker:You are now you might wait on a shorter line, though, you might.
Speaker:And what I don't like about self checkout is how scrutinized you are.
Speaker:I feel like I'm they're constantly watching.
Speaker:Am I stealing from them?
Speaker:See, then it's like, I don't want to feel like I'm, I feel like
Speaker:I'm in prison
Speaker:when
Speaker:I'm self checkoutting.
Speaker:So, so this gets into the modern trends.
Speaker:And so, one of the modern trends is, I don't know if you know
Speaker:this, but self checkouts are starting to be removed from stores.
Speaker:This hasn't really hit the grocery stores yet, but it is hitting places like Target
Speaker:and other places, who are Considering pulling out self checkouts, and this
Speaker:has to do with theft, uh, Walgreens, drugstores, CVS, they're starting to
Speaker:reconsider the self checkout because of stuff that walks out of the store.
Speaker:And I remember reading articles when self checkout first came in.
Speaker:In the modern day.
Speaker:And people were talking about, you know, the kind of theft in the stores.
Speaker:But the amount of theft did not equal the savings on the employees.
Speaker:But it's gotten to a point now, especially at bigger stores where people are
Speaker:walking out with expensive makeups and other things that it is now costing
Speaker:them more money than they're saving.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And I think that that's a really wild turn of it.
Speaker:I don't think there's If you could really predicted that stores would
Speaker:consider now pulling out self check out.
Speaker:Um, even the big box stores are talking about it now of pulling out
Speaker:self checkout like Costco and BJ's.
Speaker:Because, again, there's so much that walks out.
Speaker:Now, Costco is a little, uh, what, when we say more, um, uh, watchful.
Speaker:There's some, uh Self checkout, there are too many lines and somebody is
Speaker:really carefully monitoring you.
Speaker:And then of course you have to go past the guy or the woman to go, or whoever
Speaker:to go out and they check your list.
Speaker:They do.
Speaker:But every self checkout, even at Safeway and Stop and Shop, there's a camera in
Speaker:that Check out machine because I have had problems sometimes where something
Speaker:didn't scan or the machine jammed up.
Speaker:And so the person had to come over to help me and they instantly pull up the video.
Speaker:And there you are scanning your stuff and they slow it down to say,
Speaker:Oh, you didn't scan that right.
Speaker:So one of the big changes that is on the horizon that it is expected
Speaker:it's coming now is happening because of Amazon's ownership of Amazon
Speaker:go and ownership of Whole Foods.
Speaker:Two big changes here.
Speaker:One is the Amazon's big notion of dynamic pricing, which is coming.
Speaker:And this is that, in fact, nothing is really priced in the store.
Speaker:You can price it by using your phone and qr ing it.
Speaker:But what happens in dynamic pricing is that the thing is priced based
Speaker:on your past Purchase history.
Speaker:So let's say you're a person who now we know because we've data mind you,
Speaker:we know you like leafy greens, you like spinach is in collard greens and all that.
Speaker:Let's just pretend.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So what happens now is in dynamic pricing, the Price for that will be
Speaker:slightly higher for you than it would be.
Speaker:Let's say I hate leafy greens, but for once I'm going to try spinach
Speaker:and I buy some spinach, the price for me will be lower as an incentive
Speaker:to come back and buy it again.
Speaker:So this dynamic pricing model is coming.
Speaker:The Amazon hopes to roll it out even to car sales.
Speaker:They hope to roll it out across the world, but it is coming and it is already
Speaker:starting to happen at Amazon stores.
Speaker:Let me say this.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:About that.
Speaker:I understand dynamic pricing, if you want to call that, for cars.
Speaker:Because basically, everyone goes into a car dealership and walks
Speaker:out with the same car with the same features for a different price.
Speaker:And that's based on your ability to negotiate.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I got problems already, but go on.
Speaker:Well, okay, but I'm okay with that, your ability to negotiate.
Speaker:Or you go to like when Saturn was around, you could buy a Saturn because
Speaker:they always said no negotiating.
Speaker:Yeah, okay.
Speaker:So
Speaker:what's the point?
Speaker:And
Speaker:the point is.
Speaker:You don't negotiate in the supermarket, right?
Speaker:So the fact that three people are gonna reach for the same bottle of ketchup
Speaker:in the same store And it's gonna be different prices for each of them.
Speaker:I don't like that.
Speaker:I, uh, um, I don't really like it, but I have other reasons.
Speaker:You have this thing that you think it's unfair, which I
Speaker:actually don't think it's unfair.
Speaker:It
Speaker:is unfair.
Speaker:You should be able to
Speaker:I don't think it's unfair.
Speaker:You think it's unfair.
Speaker:Okay, but it's it.
Speaker:These are both opinions.
Speaker:Yours isn't the right opinion that it is unfair.
Speaker:You think it's unfair.
Speaker:I don't think it's unfair.
Speaker:But what I see is the potential for mischief.
Speaker:I see the potential for racial pricing.
Speaker:I see the potential for gender pricing.
Speaker:So I'm going to price things lower because men tend not to be the shoppers.
Speaker:And so if it's a man doing it, it prices it lower.
Speaker:I see all kinds of problems here.
Speaker:If you don't know, this began with the Amazon bookstores, the brick
Speaker:and mortar bookstores that Amazon has put up so that let's say they,
Speaker:of course, have data mind you.
Speaker:And they know that you don't.
Speaker:buy many biographies.
Speaker:And then let's say you walk in and you buy the big Ulysses S.
Speaker:Grant biography.
Speaker:It's going to price it lower than somebody who constantly buys biographies
Speaker:because, of course, the idea is to incentivize you to come back.
Speaker:I use that word incentivize, incentivize you to come back and buy more biographies.
Speaker:But this is coming to food stores and it's coming fast.
Speaker:It is.
Speaker:I mean, airlines have been doing this forever.
Speaker:They are.
Speaker:Two different people go to look for the same flight on different
Speaker:computers, even at the same day.
Speaker:You're going to get a different price based on how often you look
Speaker:at them, how often you travel, how often you've been to that city.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:And in fact, I will often, this is often the case with me.
Speaker:I just tell you that I go see my mom in St.
Speaker:Louis from New England.
Speaker:And I have found that I, you know, I can search for a flight pass on
Speaker:my app, uh, through like, through the American app and I can search
Speaker:for a flight on the days I want.
Speaker:And then in order to buy that ticket, I go to my laptop, I clear my browser history,
Speaker:I empty everything and dump my cash.
Speaker:And then I look for it again and it's a different price.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's huge.
Speaker:usually lower at that point than it is on my app.
Speaker:So this is coming.
Speaker:And the other thing that's coming is of course, what we
Speaker:might call the grab and go.
Speaker:And this is Amazon's not to smash and grab.
Speaker:No, this is Amazon's big grab and go.
Speaker:And that is that not, there's no checkouts that you have preloaded the credit
Speaker:card into your app or into your phone.
Speaker:phone that the store is monitoring everything by weight and camera
Speaker:by shelf sensors and my cameras.
Speaker:They see what you pick up instantly rings on the app, what you put in your car, what
Speaker:you put back, all of that kind of stuff.
Speaker:And then you just walk out.
Speaker:Um, you don't necessarily check out.
Speaker:You are done, done and did.
Speaker:This already exists in a number of Whole Foods because, you
Speaker:know, Amazon owns Whole Foods.
Speaker:And the last time Mark and I were in Washington, D.
Speaker:C., we went into a Whole Foods and it gave us the option, would you
Speaker:like to do the Amazon Go experience?
Speaker:And we didn't.
Speaker:We chose not to.
Speaker:Anything
Speaker:that's an experience, I don't want.
Speaker:I can tell you.
Speaker:But we saw it.
Speaker:There were a few.
Speaker:thousand cameras in the store watching everybody who agreed
Speaker:to do this and probably everyone who didn't agree to do it.
Speaker:And it watches what you pick off of shelves.
Speaker:The shelf sensors know you picked it up.
Speaker:The shelf sensor knows if you put it back.
Speaker:And let's just say that, um, there are issues here too.
Speaker:I don't want to be the old guy who says everything new is bad, but let me say
Speaker:there are issues here too, because what it's doing is it's data mining you.
Speaker:And so it knows that let's say you picked up.
Speaker:this bottle of vanilla and then you put it back on the shelf.
Speaker:So I almost guarantee you that the next time you go in that store, there's
Speaker:going to be a coupon for vanilla or it's going to say, Oh, vanilla is
Speaker:on sale today because it knows what you looked at and then put back.
Speaker:Not only that, you're going to start seeing ads for vanilla in your social
Speaker:media feed because it knows you were in the store looking at vanilla.
Speaker:Of course.
Speaker:Or if you never visit the cheese section and then one day you do, do you know
Speaker:it's going to incentivize you to go back to the cheese section another day.
Speaker:It's basically data mining you as a data point.
Speaker:It's convenient though.
Speaker:Let's face it.
Speaker:If you're a very, very busy person, you want to go in the store, you want to
Speaker:grab three pints of ice cream, a couple of bananas and some grapes and go,
Speaker:well, great, then it'll work for you.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And I think that it's also great for everyone.
Speaker:It's great for DoorDash.
Speaker:It's great for the places that you can use to shop for because those
Speaker:people can just go in the store.
Speaker:They're not going to be as picky as you are.
Speaker:They can pick the things up and just run out and frankly, do
Speaker:more transactions more quickly
Speaker:and make them a little more money.
Speaker:So I do agree.
Speaker:That's a wonderful use for it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And so I, I think these are all coming our way.
Speaker:I think that, also, if you look at some of the trends, one last thing, I know
Speaker:this has gone on a long time, but if you look at some of the trends, some
Speaker:of the trends are making claims that we're going back to what is called the
Speaker:bifurcated or dissected supermarket.
Speaker:That is, different stores that sell different things.
Speaker:This is the meat store, this is the produce store, this is the this store.
Speaker:And I think that, I think that the kids, particularly the TikTok
Speaker:generation, is particularly interested in this kind of experience.
Speaker:The cheese store, the this store, the that store.
Speaker:Right, exactly.
Speaker:And I think that some of the trends suggest that what we're going to
Speaker:is, as you well know, a diversified and two tiered system in which most
Speaker:of us can shop at the big chain stores or even the big box stores.
Speaker:And then those of us with more disposable income can shop at smaller
Speaker:specialty stores that have been bifurcated you want to say it, that
Speaker:they've been broken out and it's going, uh, uh, the, the idea is is heading
Speaker:towards this kind of two tier system.
Speaker:I mean, you know, I mean, to be stupid, Elon Musk is not
Speaker:going to walk around target.
Speaker:So
Speaker:Elon Musk has never shopped a day in his life.
Speaker:I know what
Speaker:I say to be stupid, but the whole point is that somebody who makes A big,
Speaker:big chunk of change, 000 a year isn't necessarily going to go in Ralph's or
Speaker:Safeway or wherever it is you shop.
Speaker:And so they're going to go in these little specialty stores, whereas
Speaker:the rest of us will be in these big, giant warehouses with their own
Speaker:dynamic pricing and grab and go and coupons and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker:It's a really weird place we're getting into.
Speaker:Before we get to the last part of our podcast, which is what's
Speaker:making us happy in food this week.
Speaker:Let me say that it would be great if you could follow us on social media.
Speaker:There's a Facebook group, Cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Speaker:We both are on Facebook under our own names.
Speaker:We're on Instagram under our own names.
Speaker:Bruce is at bruceandmark.
Speaker:com A Weinstein.
Speaker:I'm just under my own name, Mark Scarborough, and we have a TikTok
Speaker:channel, Cooking with Bruce and Mark, where you can actually watch
Speaker:us making recipes for each other.
Speaker:There is a YouTube channel, Cooking with Bruce and Mark, but it's a
Speaker:little more abundant at this point.
Speaker:There's not much being posted on YouTube, but, um, it does exist.
Speaker:It's out there.
Speaker:And there
Speaker:are.
Speaker:Hundreds of videos on it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:There are hundreds of videos on the YouTube channel, fewer on the
Speaker:TikTok, but still, nonetheless, you can find us on social media and we
Speaker:would love to connect with you there.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:The last and traditional segment of our podcast.
Speaker:What's making us happy in food this
Speaker:week?
Speaker:I'm going to circle back to our one minute cooking tip of using chopsticks.
Speaker:And go back to this.
Speaker:You told how you learned to use chopsticks in China out of necessity.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:I was digging through a cabinet trying to find a deck of cards the other day, and
Speaker:I found a game called the chop suey game.
Speaker:Oh, my God.
Speaker:I have had this since childhood.
Speaker:Oh, my God.
Speaker:And this made me so happy.
Speaker:It's the most insane thing you have ever seen.
Speaker:So on
Speaker:the cover of this box is a bridge table with four people sitting at it.
Speaker:A little girl.
Speaker:A little boy, some old woman with curlers in her hair.
Speaker:Curlers.
Speaker:Cur literally curlers.
Speaker:And an older man who looks like he's probably a retired police officer.
Speaker:Or a bus driver.
Speaker:Or a bus driver.
Speaker:In a white t shirt.
Speaker:And they're playing this game called the chop suey game.
Speaker:And may
Speaker:I say, he's got Some kind of hat on that's either the bus driver
Speaker:hat or the policeman hat so and yes They're playing this game And so what
Speaker:the game consists
Speaker:of the only thing could be better from the 1970s if is if he were
Speaker:smoking Or the old lady were smoking.
Speaker:I think
Speaker:she was okay.
Speaker:So on there is this miniature Plastic wok that you wind up and it turns
Speaker:and inside this wok are little pieces of differently shaped plastic.
Speaker:Yeah, geometrically shaped, like squares and spheres.
Speaker:And pyramids, and
Speaker:you have to pick them up with chopsticks.
Speaker:So I had to learn to use chopsticks as a child.
Speaker:And put them in your rice bowl.
Speaker:As the wok spins.
Speaker:As the wok turns.
Speaker:And the stranger the piece, the more difficult it is to pick up, the more
Speaker:So the way you add up your points is when the walk is done and everyone
Speaker:has all their pieces, you have a menu and you match your shape piece on
Speaker:the menu to what it costs and whoever had the most expensive meal wins.
Speaker:Oh, that's always the way it is.
Speaker:Whoever has the most expensive meal wins.
Speaker:And so
Speaker:I learned to use chopsticks as a child.
Speaker:playing the chop suey game.
Speaker:So what's making me happy this week also involves chopsticks,
Speaker:but not in the same way.
Speaker:We've been going to New Haven a lot lately and not to be overly personal
Speaker:on the podcast, but we've been going to New Haven a lot to go to Yale because
Speaker:I've been having some health problems.
Speaker:But without Delving further into that, let me say that one of the delights
Speaker:of going to this nightmarish, uh, uh, medical appointments is finding
Speaker:myself able to eat lunch afterwards.
Speaker:And we went to Mecha Noodle Bar in New Haven, Connecticut, uh,
Speaker:M E C H A, Mecha Noodle Bar.
Speaker:And we had ramen this week after my appointments.
Speaker:And wow, the ramen was so good.
Speaker:I got brisket ramen with Beef Tendon and Bamboo Shoots.
Speaker:It was so, and spicy ramen too.
Speaker:And it was so delicious.
Speaker:I sat there at that table thinking, Ah, this makes that trip to New Haven
Speaker:totally worthwhile to be able to eat this
Speaker:ramen.
Speaker:and Bruce had these beef tendons.
Speaker:Big chunks of short rib meat.
Speaker:And of course I had to pick the beef fat out of his bowl.
Speaker:And I gave him some more of my tendon because I had so
Speaker:much gelatinous tendons, just
Speaker:little bits of beef jelly.
Speaker:Oh, it was
Speaker:so good.
Speaker:It was so satisfying and comforting.
Speaker:That was great.
Speaker:And so a shout out to mention noodle bar.
Speaker:I think they're a chain across Boston.
Speaker:And Massachusetts, Connecticut, you can find them all around.
Speaker:And, um, you know, good ramen is a wonderful thing to find.
Speaker:So that's our podcast for this week.
Speaker:Thanks for joining us and being on this food journey with us.
Speaker:We certainly appreciate your spending time with us across the podcast landscape.
Speaker:You can check us out, as I said, on social media.
Speaker:And if you would rate or even review this podcast, that
Speaker:would be absolutely fantastic.
Speaker:And I am shooting a video of.
Speaker:Pickled rhubarb this week.
Speaker:That video will be up on our Facebook group, cooking with Bruce
Speaker:and Mark and on our TikTok channel, cooking with Bruce and Mark.
Speaker:So check those videos out and we'll see you back here for another episode
Speaker:of cooking with Bruce and Mark.