Grocery Supermarket

Many years ago the little boy of a friend of mine couldn’t pronounce “grocery store” – he called it “goashie tore.” That was cute, but what’s not so cute or childish about a grocery supermarket is that it’s the place where most of us buy our foods. Originally, a supermarket was a composite of different stores, only one of them sold groceries. Others that came to join the world of supermarkets are butcher shops and bakeries and delis and even perhaps special dairy stores.

Where are the days of the milkman, the man who early in the morning left bottles of mils and cartons of eggs and even butter and sour cream at your door? You might as well inquire about the snows of yesteryear. And where are the old open-market places with the stalls where farmers who came up with buggies from some nearby farm sold their fresh produce? They have gone the way of all flesh – along with all those butcher shops that once were found on the main street and even on side streets in the commercial districts of cities or towns or even villages.

Today’s groceries are to be found in your urban and suburban supermarkets – with their tell-tale signs, such as large parking lots and those enclosures where you are supposed to return your shopping carts after you are done loading up your car’s trunk with your weekly purchases. Today, you shop for your groceries in a supermarket.

And what you find there are the usual departments: beginning with produce and moving on to meat and seafood. Experts tell you to shop the periphery of your supermarket – that’s where the whole foods are: your fruits and vegetables and your meats and fishes and your dairy products and your cheeses all the way to the other end where you’ll find frozen foods, too.

In the middle aisles, you’ll find your processed foods, which are said to be not as healthy as the whole foods in the grocery store. Here’s where your canned foods are and your canned soups and your canned sardines and kippers, etc., but also your cereals and your juices.

In the middle aisles, you’ll also find other products – your non-food items, such as paper towels and toilet papers and cleaning supplies and mouth washes and tooth brushes and tooth pastes, as well as specialty diet foods along with the over-the-counter drugs, usually located in the area where the supermarket’s pharmacy is usually located.

So when you say, “grocery supermarket,” you are saying a lot. Your entire life’s needs are basically to be found here – well, with the exception of furniture and electronics – the supermarket will also sell you toasters and coffee makers and food processors and other things related to eating: glassware and pots and pans.

Most of them will also carry wines and beers and spirits. So, yes, when it comes to a grocery supermarket, you’ll find just about anything that you and your family needs in terms of food and other things that your household requires to run smoothly.