Grocery stores don't always know their customers
Real estate matters as much as the available inventory, especially for the five senses of vegans and vegetarians
When you look at the image above, does this make your stomach grumble? Does it make you hungry? No? What about this next one?
Still fish. Still tomatoes. But a different view. Can you smell the fish? Does the second photo look like it smells better than the first one? Probably.
But for vegetarian and vegan shoppers, neither one of these first two photographs does a thing for us. It doesn’t make us want to run to the nearest grocery store or even peruse our refrigerators. These next three probably will though.
I can smell the oranges. I rarely meet a grape I don’t like. And I’ve eaten a banana on a daily basis for as long as I can remember.
And I’m willing to leave my Noom “orange foods” in shambles for a box of dark chocolate strawberries. I can smell and taste the fruit and chocolate through my computer screen.
This is one of many reasons I enjoyed writing about culinary therapy so much. When the professor explained “chocolate meditation” sessions, I was already sold without even participating. But I cringe at the magazine page every single time I look at my article. The image chosen for the culinary therapy piece: fish and potato wedges. Do pescatarians even actively imagine smelling this?
Years later, I still remember how hard I fought to get the Managing Editor and graphic designer to change the featured image. Smelling fish while doing therapy makes absolutely no sense. To them, it was just a “pretty” picture. I hate it.
And I feel the same way about Cermak Fresh Market’s placement of raw seafood and meat near the vegetarian and vegan frozen food aisles of their stores. If they wonder why that vegan and vegetarian inventory never gets sold, it’s not the high prices. It’s the real estate they used to feature those items to potential customers.
It may not be this way in all locations, but the Rogers Park Chicago location has frozen Gardein, Morningstar and a few other veg-friendly, frozen items neatly placed in a small freezer section — with the smell of animal insides and raw fish less than 15 feet away near the butcher area. I’ve walked by there twice and almost vomited. Nowadays, I beeline to get away from that area of the store altogether and go to other grocery stores to buy these same products.
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If you walk a few feet over at Cermak Fresh Market, the smell of raw meat and fish is less pronounced near the Field Roast, Daiya and Tofurky choices. But you can still get a good whiff of meat. And it’s more than obvious that neither the managers nor the employees know how to cater to animal-friendly consumers or actually are vegetarians or vegans.
If anyone in the store did, they’d realize why that frozen food aisle always looks untouched. Over the past year, I’ve never even seen another person touch that set of freezer doors. I could set up a tent, put a clothespin over my nose, eat my strawberries and am fairly certain I’d be in no one’s way. Meanwhile, I’m always trying to reach my arm in or squeeze by to “get just one thing” at Whole Foods Market (or my decades-long Red Card shopping at Target pre-boycott). Same goes for Jewel, Mariano’s and Morse Fresh Market. There is always a random omnivore, vegan or vegetarian nosing around in the veggie-friendly food aisles — but never at Cermak Fresh Market.