Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America Hardcover – May 16, 2017

This book is a talented mix of history, statistics, personal memories, and reflections about food and how we shop it. Michael Ruhlman sure knows how to write! If you're looking for a dry, purely business-focused book, this isn't it. But if you want to learn a lot about supermarkets, it's a great choice.My favorite part? The author’s story about his late father—the man who kept a carrot in the inner pocket of his suit and would take a bite during business meetings. It was both adorable and touching. The nostalgia and love for his dad is felt throughout the book...All in all, this is a passionate account of food, the love of food, and the systems that bring it to us. Great read!!!

The grocery store seems like such a boring and mundane subject to write about….how hard can it really be. Order products, stock the shelves, let customers pick, check them out and repeat. That, however, is far from the way grocery stores work. In fact, the stores and business are so much more complex than it seems they should be.Grocery stores have a history that goes back to the area of around the 1930s in America. That is when what we consider the grocery store, as we know it, seems to have originated. And anyone who saw one of those would never believe what they have morphed into today. Even the grocery stores I shopped in with my mother in the 1960s are a far cry from what the stores have become today.The author uses a medium sized, family owned chain in the Cleveland, Ohio area as the chain to study. Be assured that there are great differences between these size chains and the mega chains that dot the countryside, and the author is quick to point out those differences. The biggest difference is the level of customer involvement and the ability to respond to customer demands.The author covers the store from every department, explaining the difficulties in operating those areas and how the stores decide at what should be stocked. It is a truly amazing look at the work that goes into how the stores operate and how complicated the dance is between getting fresh food in at the right time and working to avoid spoilage.My one complaint about the book was the focus on the hippie doctor that runs their wellness department. The author seemed to spend more time on him than needed, and truthfully, I wonder how many other chains even employ someone like him. It seemed a little over done, but otherwise the book was wonderful.I would recommend this book to any foodie who wants to know where their food comes from or the general reader who is curious about the operation of the grocery store they shop at on a regular basis.

Ruhlman’s one of the best food writers out there. Here he takes us inside the fascinating history and operations of the modern grocery store. You wanna understand America? Understand groceries!

In the United States grocery stores are so commonplace that we generally take them for granted and rarely think about them and just how important they are. Michael Ruhlman grew up in Cleveland with a father who loved grocery stores, and eventually took such an interest in them himself that he wrote "Grocery," this volume that looks at these important places from just about every angle.Ruhlman discusses some of the history of the retail food business going back more than a century. Twentieth-century giant A&P rose and eventually fell, and change in the industry has been constant—Walmart and Whole Foods have been drivers of change in recent decades. The author focuses on Heinen's, a Cleveland-area chain, and recalls their history in Northeast Ohio. "Grocery" notes how competition between stores and chains of stores affect decisions of individual grocers.Healthy eating is en vogue in some quarters in America today, and the author describes how chains such as Heinen's make room for healthier products on their shelves to compete with other retailers. Ruhlman talks with the consultant physician for Heinen's on a trip through the store, discussing the poor eating habits of many in the last forty or so years and how they contribute to food-related illnesses, focusing much attention on the detrimental effects of excess sugar.Ruhlman has chapters in the book about the meat, produce, and frozen foods departments, looking at the operations of each. The author also notes how food producers get their products on grocery store shelves and looks at the forces likely to change grocery stores in the near future, including the rising market for prepared foods, hydroponic farming, and the impact of Amazon.com.The book closes by discussing the opening of a new Heinen's location in downtown Cleveland and just what the opening of a sizable grocery store can do for such an urban area. This volume even goes over how groceries should be properly bagged and debunks some of the myths about how grocers supposedly try to trick customers. "Grocery" is a thorough look at a topic some might wrongly think mundane, and those of us who worked in a grocery store at some point during high school or college would find the book an especially good read.