Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Unavailable
Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America
Unavailable
Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America
Unavailable
Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America
Audiobook11 hours

Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America

Written by Michael Ruhlman

Narrated by Jonathan Todd Ross

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

In Grocery, bestselling author Michael Ruhlman offers incisive commentary on America's relationship with its food and investigates the overlooked source of so much of it-the grocery store.
 
In a culture obsessed with food-how it looks, what it tastes like, where it comes from, what is good for us-there are often more questions than answers. Ruhlman proposes that the best practices for consuming wisely could be hiding in plain sight-in the aisles of your local supermarket. Using the human story of the family-run Midwestern chain Heinen's as an anchor to this journalistic narrative, he dives into the mysterious world of supermarkets and the ways in which we produce, consume, and distribute food. Grocery examines how rapidly supermarkets-and our food and culture-have changed since the days of your friendly neighborhood grocer. But rather than waxing nostalgic for the age of mom-and-pop shops, Ruhlman seeks to understand how our food needs have shifted since the mid-twentieth century, and how these needs mirror our cultural ones.
 
A mix of reportage and rant, personal history and social commentary, Grocery is a landmark book from one of our most insightful food writers.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateMay 16, 2017
ISBN9781524783754
Author

Michael Ruhlman

Michael Ruhlman is the author of award-winning cookbooks and nonfiction narratives. He is the author of chef Thomas Keller’s seminal The French Laundry Cookbook as well as the highly successful series about the training of chefs: The Making of a Chef, The Soul of a Chef, and The Reach of a Chef. He is also the author of The Elements of Cooking and Ratio. Ruhlman has worked at The New York Times and as a food columnist for the Los Angeles Times. He has attended the Culinary Institute of America and is the author of eighteen books—about food and cooking, and also such wide ranging subjects as a pediatric heart surgeon and building wooden boats. Michael lives with his wife in New York City and Providence, Rhode Island.

Related to Grocery

Related audiobooks

Modern History For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for Grocery

Rating: 3.59375 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

64 ratings11 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Mostly a great book about Hainan's market, a private supermarket from Ohio. The author is a food lover and talks about every corner of the grocery store and how we as consumers have helped it evolve into a cornucopia of flavor and color. I hadnt realized that frozen meals are declining and prepared meals are growing as the supermarket has become a place to gather over a glass of fancy wine and high quality cheeses. The best chapter is calked, Shopping with my Doctor, and is worth a second listening for its excellent advice. The doctor believes that the glyphosate used as weed killer in grain crops is destroying people's digestion. Such things as yogurt and pro biotics are reccomended to counter this possibility. The author has other books and I may read or listen to some of them.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Like grocery stores themselves, Michael Ruhlman’s Grocery is all over the place, stuffed to the rafters, with numerous departments and unexpected items. It is a lot of memoir, a smattering of rants, endless lists, and a bunch of behind the scenes negotiating. Like a grocery, there’s something for everyone.Because he doesn’t have a horse in this race, Ruhlman can be neutral or critical as needed. He slams the food desert of the center aisles of supermarkets, yet admits he buys some of this poison himself because he likes it. He is critical of agriculture, but finds much to praise in a new generation of farmers who prize quality over quantity. And he digs at medicine and nutritionists in a front al attack: “Fat isn’t bad, stupid is bad.” We learn the economics of the business, how size matters, how grocers find products, and how they run their stores. The business has changed dramatically in our lifetimes. We might not have noticed because we’re in those stores every week. It’s a trillion dollar business in the USA. From the hot take-out meals (and even restaurants and bars) to the organics and the gluten-free, the mix is anything but stagnant. And it’s up to 40,000 items now, from the 5000 when he was a child. Beef sales are way down, fish is way up. Fruit is no longer seasonal. Frozen food is still blah, and there are still hundreds of sugary breakfast cereals and snack foods to wade through. Sadly, grocers are forced to stock them all because customers will go elsewhere if their particular variety is AWOL.There are aspects he has missed, like what grocers do with stale-dated foods. There’s nothing about community involvement, how the stores weave themselves into the fabric of the neighborhood. There’s no mention of all the games grocers have played, like specials and Green Stamps and loyalty programs. Or home and online shopping. And he never addresses customer complaints, like why there are 24 checkout lanes when only four are ever open at once. And it really could use some photos.Grocery is a kind of love letter to Cleveland, Ruhlman’s hometown. He goes back to the grocers of his youth, and makes them the focal point of the book. On the one hand it is cloying, but on the other he had to make some grocer his example, so why not the chain he grew up loving? The people are dedicated, passionate and talented, and the stores are institutions. Overall, Grocery is a rare insight into the state of the business and the state of our food.David Wineberg
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A behind the scenes peek at the operation of a grocery store. And of the overall management and strategies of grocery stores nationwide. I have to confess, of all the jobs I held in my career, all the way up through the upper levels of a federal law enforcement agency, the one I loved the most was as a simple "bag boy"/clerk in my local grocery store while in high school. To this day, I get a feeling of satisfaction out of bagging my own groceries. In this, I felt a kinship with the author's father, who said "When I retire, I think I'm going to bag groceries". There is so much information in this book, I don't know where to start! If you have ever wondered about where the food in your store comes from, Ruhlman explains it very well.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is much more than a history of the grocery store; it is also a behind-the-scenes look at how a modern grocery store is operated and managed, and the industry’s continuous evolution.Through interviews with the owners of Heinens, a Midwestern grocery chain, we learn about the workings of different departments and even learn the real reason why the dairy and freezer cases are at the rear of the store. (I always thought it was to make me walk past the snack aisle!) There is an entire section on avoiding the center aisles of the store and why you should shop the perimeter. I found it amazing that we are headed towards a society where almost no one cooks anymore. Entire prepared Thanksgiving dinners can be purchased from the local grocery store, something almost unheard of a decade ago.The author’s personal stories and memories combined with his extensive research of the grocery industry make this an interesting and absorbing read. His description of the grocery store in the 1960s brought back my own childhood memories of grocery shopping as a Saturday morning family outing.Audio production . . .The narration was performed by Jonathan Todd Ross in a pleasant, clear voice with smooth pacing. This was an easy-to-follow narrative and a good selection for audio. Non-fiction is a good choice for new audio listeners or for listening in the car as there is no complex plot or characters to remember.I read both print and audio and found my time listening to be a perfect choice for multitasking.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Absolutely fascinating--tons of details, information, ideas. And it makes me want to visit Cleveland just to SEE the Heimen's grocery story within what used to be the Cleveland Trust Building.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    My Dad was a grocer/meat cutter and I worked in his stores from junior high through college. I enjoyed the book and thought of my father often when reading it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A little hard to be objective - I thought all this time I was the only one! I LOVE grocery shopping! It is without exaggeration the highlight of my week. I can fathom that some people might not love it, but consider it a "chore"? Would rather sit at home and click things online and have them delivered? Just suck all the joy out of life, why don't you! And not only that, but Ruhlman traces his love of grocery shopping back to supermarket visits with his Dad - ME TOO! Periodic mass grocery shopping for the household was my Dad's task, too, and I loved being his helper. He made everything a game; and it didn't hurt that he too had a liberal hand in allowing me to toss into the cart any manner of dessert and snack items I wanted (because he loved them too). He did occasionally raise a very feeble protest against the sugary cereals me and my sibs insisted on eating – but he lost that battle one time when he brought home Whole Wheat Total and tried to claim it was “all they had.” We refused to eat it. We probably ate donuts or instant breakfast or pop-tarts instead. But I should get back to the book. It has history, it has plenty of cultural and nutritional commentary, it has a big focus on the small Cleveland chain of grocery stores patronized by Ruhlman throughout his life, but it also has further digressions where Ruhlman channels his inner Michael Pollan to take us on in-depth exposes, interviews with experts, and adventures which reveal the underside of the simple act of grocery shopping. I was on the edge of my seat throughout almost all of it... though I have to admit he lost me a couple of times, such as when he spent a chapter on supplements. Supplements!? Who cares! That's not food! And likewise when he spent a chapter traipsing through the woods with some dippy guy who talked about how we absorb healing chemicals just by being present in the forest. Again... THAT'S NOT FOOD. And I'm sorry, one more quibble. As I said, I did appreciate his talking about his experiences with his Dad. But I think that in place of the endless "My Year Of..." books we were subject to a decade ago, now we all have to deal with "Coming to Terms with the Death of My Parent When You Thought All You Were Going to Learn about was Hawks/Whales/Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail/Supermarkets." Every non-fiction book these days seems to have to have a connection to the author's dead mother or father. I know, it sucks to lose your parents. Lots of things remind you of them. By all means, tell me about dear old Mom/Dad. But then they always get so maudlin and overwrought about it! S/he's dead, I know, it's very sad. That's exactly why you don't have to tell me that much about it. Ever heard of "nuff said'? So, indeed, supermarkets ARE amazing. He references a New York Times Magazine article from 1996 that I distinctly remember reading and trying to share with my friends; similar to this book, it talked at lengths about the modern miracle that is the supermarket, and engaged in some cultural commentary and comparison as the writer visited some other styles of food procurement, such as some kind of farmer's market/open-air market in Spain, if I remember correctly... and that was cool too. Farmer's markets are awesome too. But that doesn't detract at all from my love of the supermarket. The friends with whom I tried to share my excitement over this article, were, I recall, definitely non-plussed, unfortunately. Ruhlman also weighs in here and there with his opinions on best nutritional practices, which are nicely inconsistent. He has a beef against the misguided notions that eggs are bad for you and fat is bad for you (I forget which one of those gets his goat the most). He has plenty bad to say about processed food, but also doesn't hesitate to tell us all the less-than-chef-worthy things he loved in his childhood and to which he still doesn't seem totally averse. My biggest takeaway was a quote from one of his interviewees, on the topic of how bad processed food is, and restaurant food is, and practically everything is, unless you bring it home and cook it yourself... bad for you inherently healthwise, and bad for you because its convenience leads you to eat too much of it. The quote was, more or less: "You want a diet? Eat anything you want - but cook it yourself." I love it! I could eat cookies and brownies and pasta Bolognese and all my favorites, so long as I cooked them myself, which would be a joy anyway. But I'd miss my frequent restaurant meals. And occasional Chinese/Vietnamese takeout. And occasional pizza. And... so this really wouldn't work for me. What a joy this book was! I can hardly shut up about it. And I just ended up liking Ruhlman enough to want to read more by him - it seems he's written a lot. I see lots of food books coming into my Kindle in the year ahead!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    When I finished this book, my plans were to give it a 3 1/2 - star review. That was until I attended a January 2019 book forum in Buffalo where internationally-known retail consultant Burt Flickinger III critiqued Ruhlman's work, pointing out a number "inside baseball" discrepancies that the casual reader wouldn't have recognized unless they, too, were experts in the retail food arena. Flickinger liked the book, but took issue with a number of its conclusions. This critique aside, I did enjoy most of the book. Ruhlman provides context to a number of fascinating topics, including how stores maximize efforts to capture as many shopper dollars as possible and how the organic food craze has affected supermarkets. "Grocery" also provides interesting insights into different food sectors, including modern farming and the beef industry. But too much of the book felt inappropriately "me-focused" as Ruhlman went into great detail about his personal likes and dislikes, his dad's fascination with grocery stores and other nuggets that fall into the "TMI" arena.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Excellent story, not only about the evolution of the grocery store in the US (and its future), but about the changes in our relationship with food- not just fuel, sometimes medicinal, often awful...but always a part of our daily lives. Ruhlmann is a wonderful writer- lucid and interesting.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This isn't a history of the grocery store, but a kind of survey about our grocery stores and where the food comes from. There's a lot of interesting information (mostly gleaned through the inner workings of a local Cleveland chain). Unfortunately, some sections are weak because Ruhlman uses them as his personal soapbox and makes poorly sourced claims about health and science. For example, a doctor's belief that glyphosate is the cause of poor gut flora, some waffling on GMOs, and health claims for food. The book also suffers from handwringing over lazy Americans who don't cook, which would be the solution to all our problems.

    I really loved the stories about his father and the grocery store, though.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The buying and selling of America is focused on a very select few companies, specific individuals. The story seems to be more of a dedication to the author's deceased father than about the grocery culture.