Welcome to the world of hypermarkets, where the aisles are endless, and choices overwhelming. Start manoeuvring your cart through a sea of indecision, all while being astounded by the sheer volume of products you never knew you needed. In an age where climate is at the centre of discussions, float around a sea of plastic packaging!

Shopping experience

The first word coming to mind when speaking about Unilever (worth 130b$) or Walmart (worth 475b$) is mastodons. You are probably familiar with hypermarkets, their long alleyways, the abundance of choice, the poor music taste. Upon stepping into them, you feel small, an ant in the anthill. Pick up the shopping basket, start browsing, get yourself lost. You start picking up items, one may even wonder: Do I really need those 500 rolls of toilet paper, maybe 300 should last me long enough in case of an apocalypse? But, that’s another day’s topic. 

After browsing for an hour or so, your basket is full, some apples, a few vegetables, possibly some meat or vegetal protein, and a huge amount of unnecessary but just in case products. You are at the finish line, either a self-checkout register, or possibly even worse, some cashier, looking over worked, dark circles under the eyes which would make an eclipse jealous, mechanically scanning articles until the shift is over. Well done, you can now insert your credit card, and leave. No human interaction was required, or offered to you, shopping online would have provided the same experience, minus the walk in a big metal box you just shopped into.

Social aspect of shopping

Some of you might have forgotten, or maybe never experienced, the social bonds created by local shopkeepers. Allow me to share a memory, I was shopping for apples, and the farmer who had grown those apples wanted to explain to me the process of growing trees, harvesting them, ensuring that every apple would be of good quality. Where was the touchpad to skip the dialogue? All jokes aside, for some, perhaps even you, this might not be of importance. I do think that socializing with the people providing our food is quite essential, and also helps educate us about our food. The standardized shopping experience provided by hypermarkets, providing contactless payment, and socialless shopping, is leading us to a decreased sense of community. Especially in smaller towns, which used to host a sensation of belonging to a community, which is now fading to the impersonal shopping experience provided by hypermarkets. 

A key part of cities, is to provide infrastructure to socialise, it might be pubs, bowling, theatres, cinemas, but also shops. If you do enjoy a cold beer, you might go to the pub, if you go regularly, you might even know a few people and this is completely normal, your local pub is made with human relationships in mind. This leads us to our next topic…

Optimize, optimize, optimize

Now, I would like to ask of you to imagine with me, let’s create a “HyperPub”, optimize for profit, reduce risks, maximize beer per hour metric. Firstly, we get rid of the bar tender, nobody needs an unreliable worker when you can get a nice touchpad which issues orders to an automated beer delivery system, which can work 24/7. Speaking about delivering beers, glasses are quite unpractical, you need to wash them, replace them when broken, also you need to collect them back, so many steps, let’s rationalize costs by delivering beer in a plastic container. You get your beer, drink it, and throw the container, perfect! We still have one issue, people take space, we do not want to have unused space. Let’s put tables and chairs on a conveyor belt, a beer should take 5 minutes to drink, we connect the belt to the exit, now our customers are directly shown the exit after drinking their beer.

This might seem absurd, to be fair, it is to some extent, but you probably get the idea, they are some things you might not want to automate. Taking time, and not optimizing, is sometimes necessary. I have never heard anyone advise me to run during a walk in the park in order to increase the average square meters of park discovered per minute. Nor have I met anyone telling me they are listening to their favourite music at 5 times speed to increase their favourite music listened per minute metric. Similarly, grocery shopping, in my opinion, is not something you want to optimize.

You might have noticed, in our  “HyperPub” we removed the bar tender, replaced by an automated system. It is also becoming a standard in Hypermarkets, you can argue that it is for the best. Indeed, polyvalent jobs in hypermarkets are quite harsh, moving heavy loads, scanning products, and other extremely repetitive and demanding tasks are performed all day long. Which might explain why the cashier is not engaging in conversation, or it might also be the performance quotas required by the company, which are often barely possible to attain as a human being.

Conclusion

Next time you consider where to shop, think about supporting your local merchants. Not only, you could rediscover the dreadful feeling of personal interaction, but you are also investing in your community’s economy. For the motivated ones, they might consider joining or starting a local food cooperative. These initiatives not only provide direct support to local farmers and businesses but also help preserve the unique character of your city. By choosing to shop locally, you contribute to a sustainable model that values people over profit.

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