I believe (based on nothing but a whim) that us shopping culture is based on buying supplies (shopping for a week or more) while the European shopping culture evolved more from daily supplies from the market. Rural Europe would be the same i guess, but old cities was made for daily commerce
I lived in a couple of countries on Europe and the daily and bi-daily shopping is only really for people who live in big cities and commute by public transport and will pass by a small grocery shop on their way home from work.
As far as I can tell most people do a single weekly shopping generally by driving to a supermarket or even hypermarket either on the weekend or at the end of a working day, hence the popularity of such large surfaces.
Even in places like The Netherlands people have side bags on their bicycles and can just cycle to a supermarket once or twice a week if they don’t feel like driving there and bring the shopping on the side bags.
From my own experience with my grandparents (farmers in Portugal), rural food planing timeframes are even longer than a week, as people relied (at least 50+ years ago) on preserved meats and longer duration things like dried pulses, certain fruits, and staples like potatoes for months or even a whole year and then add in season fruits and vegetables and even just go outside and pick up whatever was ripe then from a plot next to their home (so, for example, make soup with some salted pork bellies and chipeas from their food stores and some spinach and carrots picked up from from a farming plot near the house).
Anyways, even in Europe doing a weekly shopping is generally more convenient.
Mind you, it’s great when you live inside a big enough city and you can just hop out of the tram a stop or two early on your way home and go by a mini-market to buy, say, some milk and fresh vegetables, but that’s not how it generally works for most people, mainly because even in a big city, unless you live right by the store it’s more time efficient to do one big grocery shopping a week were you can go to bigger places with more selection.
I believe (based on nothing but a whim) that us shopping culture is based on buying supplies (shopping for a week or more) while the European shopping culture evolved more from daily supplies from the market. Rural Europe would be the same i guess, but old cities was made for daily commerce
I lived in a couple of countries on Europe and the daily and bi-daily shopping is only really for people who live in big cities and commute by public transport and will pass by a small grocery shop on their way home from work.
As far as I can tell most people do a single weekly shopping generally by driving to a supermarket or even hypermarket either on the weekend or at the end of a working day, hence the popularity of such large surfaces.
Even in places like The Netherlands people have side bags on their bicycles and can just cycle to a supermarket once or twice a week if they don’t feel like driving there and bring the shopping on the side bags.
From my own experience with my grandparents (farmers in Portugal), rural food planing timeframes are even longer than a week, as people relied (at least 50+ years ago) on preserved meats and longer duration things like dried pulses, certain fruits, and staples like potatoes for months or even a whole year and then add in season fruits and vegetables and even just go outside and pick up whatever was ripe then from a plot next to their home (so, for example, make soup with some salted pork bellies and chipeas from their food stores and some spinach and carrots picked up from from a farming plot near the house).
Anyways, even in Europe doing a weekly shopping is generally more convenient.
Mind you, it’s great when you live inside a big enough city and you can just hop out of the tram a stop or two early on your way home and go by a mini-market to buy, say, some milk and fresh vegetables, but that’s not how it generally works for most people, mainly because even in a big city, unless you live right by the store it’s more time efficient to do one big grocery shopping a week were you can go to bigger places with more selection.