Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America

Manager's Special in Cleveland David Wineberg 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 . Educational and Entertaining I bought this book to educate myself on the world of grocery retailing as I'm in the middle of the interviewing process with a medium-sized grocery store chain based in North Carolina (that was mentioned once in this book). I've been in retail advertising for over 20 years, working in categories of everything from lawn mowers to women's performance apparel, but never groceries. The book isn't just educational, it's thoroughly entertaining, as well. I didn't realize how much I invested in Ruhlman's relationship with his father until the last two chapters. It got me. I loved this book from be. Eric Mayforth said Superb Examination of the Grocery Business. 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—Walmar

Grocery examines how rapidly supermarkets - and our food and culture - have changed since the days of your friendly neighborhood grocer. In Grocery, best-selling 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. Ruhlman proposes that the best practices for consuming wisely could be hiding in plain sight - in the aisles of your local supermarket. A mix of reportage and rant, personal history and social commentary, Grocery is a landmark book from one of our most insightful food writers.. 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. 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. 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-20th century and how these needs mirror our c