The corporatisation of the corner store/milk bar
"Both mundane and iconic, milk bars were the lynchpin of our childhoods, the comfortable constant there to convert your weekly pocket money into treats forbidden at home. Their sign-plastered facades dotted neighbourhoods like scenes from an Arkley painting, tying together a mishmash of streets and houses into a bright and familiar suburbia." Dominic Powell - Smart Company
Long, long ago, every little village in the world and every little district of a town had a store that sold everything. Sure there were specialist stores too - the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker et al. but there was always a store that sold all the things you might suddenly run out of or that stocked little treats for the children. In more recent times they were sometimes post offices as well, or video stores and they always sold newspapers. Now they are all gradually closing down, like the newspapers and post offices themselves, the videos are long gone, and being replaced by small supermarkets and convenience stores like Woolworths Metro brand.
Is this a bad thing or is it just a sign of changing times? And is it a kind of paradox that the low scale business of the corner store is migrating to the large scale business of the supermarkets? Even hypermarkets. In France the major hypermarket chains, also have a mid-range supermarket brand, and a tiny, village shop kind of brand as well. Here is one of those small ones in the beautiful village of La Garde-Freinet in southern France.
Johnny Depp may have shopped here, as he had a house just outside the village I believe. I don't know whether he still does. The point is, that although the small village/corner store is disappearing, the need for the services it offered is still there. And we don't want to travel a long way to get it. And that need is increasingly being supplied either by the large companies or groups of independent owners. The store shown above, for example, is owned by a large Dutch company, and others in France are owned by the four hypermarket chains - Carrefour, Leclerc, Auchan and Géant. Here we have IGA, some of whose stores are large, and some of which are really quite small. Small enough to qualify as a corner store. Like the one near my son's old flat in Abbotsford. There are numerous stores like the one above, in France and Italy, and probably throughout Europe. We have shopped in lots of them. They tend to be sort of arranged like mini supermarkets, but with a haphazard kind of air, and obviously run by a family who are sometimes minding their children whilst minding the shop. The service is personal - friendly enough if you are a stranger, family like if you are a local. So whilst money may be going into the pockets of the huge supermarket companies, you still have the personal service of the corner store.
People go on and on about the loss of the milk bar and the village shop, but let's face it they were expensive - they still are. Even the ones owned by the big companies tend to have higher prices. And they didn't always have what you wanted, or the quality of the produce may not have been as good. Don't assume that because the fresh vegetables you buy in such a store are sort of more 'real' looking. It doesn't mean they are good. One little village shop in Italy that we frequented had a very low quantity of fresh fruit and vegetables and they were always somewhat tired looking. They probably only had a delivery once a week. In a large supermarket the quality will be much better, because of the turnover and the strictures that the companies put on their suppliers.
It's before my time but I gather, that here in Australia anyway, milk bars were also sort of cafés that sold milk shakes, ice-cream sundaes and coffee. They were gathering places for the young. That died a long time ago with the advent of the fast food chains and the shopping malls, and the soaring number of cafés and bars.
“It is not a concept that can sustain itself independently. A suburban corner ‘milk bar’ doesn’t sell milkshakes anymore, they are simply now corner stores with flavoured milk in a fridge, papers which are on the decline, cigarettes which are also on the decline and grocery items which can be purchased from any servo or supermarket for a fraction of the price,” Eamon Donnelly
Only in the remoter parts of our country and in the poorer parts of the world can they hang on in the same form.
Initially it wasn't just the supermarkets who had the direct impact on the demise of the milk bar. It was more likely the rise of the petrol station convenience store and chains such as 7/11. Open for long hours and conveniently there when you bought your petrol. Again, in France, I think it is slightly different. The hypermarkets themselves sell petrol - well they have a petrol station in the car park, which does not have a shop attached. Yes you come across the occasional petrol station with a shop attached, but on the whole these would be restricted to the service centres along the autoroute.
Nowadays of course, these two are owned by the supermarket chains, though 7/11 still hangs in there in spite of bad publicity about how it pays, or doesn't pay its employees. The prices are still higher though - except for the confectionery and the soft drinks.
What brought me to write this article however, was yesterday's discovery that Coles was about to launch a range of convenience foods including deconstructed smashed avocado toast. This is how Coles justified this new range:
“Coles research has found that 33 per cent of customers don’t know at 5pm what they’ll be having for dinner that night, and around 50 per cent say they don’t have time to cook from scratch — so we are developing more fresh, innovative products including food-to-go and meal solutions.”
England is well ahead on this front with their meal deals and other complete meal options. So far in Australia that kind of thing has been restricted to frozen TV dinners, and semi-cooked/chilled things like lasagne. So it is interesting to see this development. Which it seems is aimed at a specific market - mostly the inner city dwellers, or commuters passing on their way home, where it is far too expensive to set up a major supermarket.
Both major supermarket chains Coles and Woolworths have opened dozens of smaller convenience store-style shops throughout metro regions to occupy high-density areas in Australia’s largest cities.... News.com
"the smaller stores, particularly the Woolworths Metro, have a specific range of products aimed at the demographic of the area they’re located in ... We have thousands and thousands of consumers living in the range of the CBD and that land is very expensive to get a full supermarket into ...
Catering for busy city workers, Milson Point train commuters, tourists visiting the area and local residents looking for quick and easy ‘grab and go’ shopping options, the new Woolworths Metro offers a curated and contemporary range.” Gary Mortimer QUT
So it's increasingly becoming a case of 'location, location, location." Canny businessmen and small IGA owners are doing it too
“If you are by a busy suburban train station [or] gym, customers want food prepared, heated or microwaved, or already heated from us,” Tony Ingpen IGA owner
I'm not sure whether I approve of all of this or not. Probably not because it's sort of encouraging people not to cook, even more than now. Already they patronise cafés for breakfast, lunch and dinner, or order in their über eats. And now the supermarkets are doing it too so that there is no longer even the social interaction of the café. As one writer on this topic said - the really canny ones just buy an avocado and some bread to toast at home.
It is interesting though, and the fact that the supermarkets are going small scale does seem to imply that there is an inbuilt need for small, personal food shopping. For even in a supermarket, if it's small, and it has the same staff all the time, then a personal relationship can be built up. Here in Eltham you find that, over time, you get to recognise and know the staff in the supermarkets. It used to be convenient to have a little village shop nearby in case you forgot to buy something - after all you probably didn't have as much storage space at home, or a fridge and so you needed to shop more frequently. Now you can shop just once a week and store it all safely at home. The overflowing supermarket trolleys that you see are testament to this.
And here's a final piece of information.
Coles selling smashed avocado on toast isn’t the only interesting result of Australia’s convenience kick either. Cinema giant Hoyts has been delivering popcorn and choc tops through UberEats since last December, in case consumers want to have a traditional movie experience at home." Smartphone's Company.com
