How have grocery stores changed since you were a kid?

[slo]

I’ve been thinking about this since I first saw the thread and I honestly don’t remember much about grocery stores during my childhood. My mom was a stay at home mom, so she always went when I was at school and I don’t remember how the stores were when I was under 5 years old.

During the summer, my mom and my neighbor’s mom would go to the store when the other mom was home to be with my friend and I. So I didn’t go on school breaks either.

My mom probably saved a lot of money going without kids - no one to bug her about buying stuff

 

[BrianL]

One thing that they used to have in the grocery stores were these volumes of educational books/small encyclopedias. They would be like a series, and a new one would pop up every so often. We would get them, because it was never hard to convince my mom or grandmother to buy us a book - and I am thankful for that upbringing. We had a bunch of those!

 

[LuvOrlando]

One thing that they used to have in the grocery stores were these volumes of educational books/small encyclopedias. They would be like a series, and a new one would pop up every so often. We would get them, because it was never hard to convince my mom or grandmother to buy us a book - and I am thankful for that upbringing. We had a bunch of those!

Mine were always Science related but I found this someone else posted. Many of my elderly family relatives would pick them up for all the cousins as gifts, we'd get these and pencils with our names.

 

[BrianL]

Mine were always Science related but I found this someone else posted. Many of my elderly family relatives would pick them up for all the cousins as gifts, we'd get these and pencils with our names.

Yeah, the ones we would get in the 80's were science type books with grey covers (not thick, but may have been labeled as an "encyclopddia") . One had the space shuttle on it I know. It's the same concept though. I just know that I loved spacve stuff (like most 80's kids) and I would have been instantly attracted to that book (though there wer others - one with a frog maybe?). Like I said, when a kid actually wanted a book, it was something to be encouraged in our household.

EDIT: a little digging on Google tells me that these were definitely the kinds of books we had a collection of - all bought from the grocery store:

 

[Cogswel_Cogs]

Well some stores I can ring my own items. In a couple of years I will be able to take the bottles out boxes in the store room.

 

[Moliphino]

There was no alcohol in them. Now my local grocery store has a full three aisles.

 

[goofyernmost]

The biggest change for me is that now I have to pay for whatever I leave with.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

There was no alcohol in them. Now my local grocery store has a full three aisles.

Along the same lines it would be day of week and time of day it could be sold although this is due to laws changing. You'd see covers over the beer when it was not legally allowed to be sold. In our case only beer 5.9% and below can be sold at a grocery store (up until just before the pandemic it was only 3.2% beer). In the early 2000s you used to not be able to purchase on Sunday. Most places don't allow until 9am or so in a grocery store which was only done several years back (a restaurant can be as early as 6am), some are noon on Sunday for grocery store (the previous rule).

 

[tvguy]

Fresh food now covers a really small area. There are mostly aisles of prepared, unrefrigerated things. Also, there is almost no meat on the bone sold anymore. I asked the "butcher" why and he said it's demand -- nobody wants the bones. But I just figure it's because they don't do the meat cutting in-house anymore and they make more money selling bones for fertilizer or broth. I miss my bone-in pot roasts.

We discovered that with turkey as well. Outside Thanksgiving and Christmas time, the only turkey they usually carry is ground turkey. When my wife sees a boneless turkey breast in the meat case, she buys it. Makes no sense to me as they sell chicken parts, breast filets etc, but not turkey. Butcher says people just don't buy turkey outside the holidays anymore but says the boneless turkey breasts used to be sold year round. .

 

[tvguy]

There was no alcohol in them. Now my local grocery store has a full three aisles.

Used to be that several of the chain grocery stores were open 24 hours, because in those days they used to have all the stocking done overnight so there were employees there anyway so why not make a few sales too? That went away with covid and now stocking is done during normal business hours. I worked 11 pm to 7 am for 25 years so it was handy to be able to stop at the store on the way to work. And a very common work shift in my industry was 3 pm to 11:30 pm a lot of those workers would do their grocery shopping after work. I remember one co-worker who had stayed late to chat with me and other co-workers called to say to never let her stay that late again. She got to the check out at 2:01 am and had to put her beer back, because they can't sell alcohol from 2 am to 6 am.

 

[disneyseniors]

No, key word in my post. "had". Been decades since I have seen them, however, it appears both companies still are in operation running customer incentive programs for stores, but those incentive programs are no long stamps. I guess they provide the software and support for those rewards cards so many stores have.

Darn! I was back in the 70's again for a while with hopes of someone getting stamps, lol.
I'll read more carefully next time

 

[disneyseniors]

Biggest thing I miss are baggers who would happily run out groceries to the car for a tip. Trader Joes attempts to do with when not too busy but another store here in Massachusetts, Market Basket, has baggers now. I don't go a ton but the past few times it seems like the store is using bagging as an opportunity to train and integrate special needs young adults into the workforce and it's nice to see.

Also, where did all the food scales go so I could weigh my apples and bananas? I haven't seen scales in a while.

I didn't know that was a "thing". We've always had baggers who take your purchases to the car. They never ask for a tip, but I always tip them. Of course, Walmart doesn't have this so I see where you are going. I should say that our family owned stores still have carry out service.

 

[Smugpugmug]

I vividly remember grocery stores having mini daycare centers in them when I was a kid. I remember my sister and I being dropped off there while my mom shopped. It was a small room by the entrance and it had a table with coloring supplies and a TV. Nothing fancy and it could fit like, 5 or 6 kids max.

There was no alcohol in them. Now my local grocery store has a full three aisles.

Grocery stores in my area do not have alcohol as it's illegal. My neighbors drive to the Costco in a neighboring state so that they can buy liquor.

 

[jimmymc]

1. Every store used to have a live lobster tank. I haven't seen one in years.

2. No more coupon dispensers in the aisles. Sometimes items have codes you can scan or coupons taped to them from the manufacturer.

3. For a while, there were no self-scanners. Then there were four of them and they were only for 12 items or fewer. Now there are 16 total, vs 3-4 regular cashiers during normal days. You can also grab a scan gun at the entrance and do it yourself, which makes checkout much faster.

 

[disneyseniors]

Coupons were a big thing in the 70's. It became a project to find coupons and collect them to use. You could get them in newspaper, magazines, at the stores, and in the store circulars, to name a few places. It was always fun to watch the cashier ring up your coupons and watch the amount go down, down.....

 

[barkley]

There was no alcohol in them. Now my local grocery store has a full three aisles.

still can't get the hard stuff at stores in our adjacent state and we've only been able to for about a dozen years (though most people here go 'next door' to the adjacent state's state run liquor stores b/c we have a sin tax that adds 20.5% tax to the cost ).

 

[barkley]

Coupons were a big thing in the 70's. It became a project to find coupons and collect them to use. You could get them in newspaper, magazines, at the stores, and in the store circulars, to name a few places. It was always fun to watch the cashier ring up your coupons and watch the amount go down, down.....

Sundays were the day when mom got the ads from the paper and started cutting coupons/plotting her list. wasnt uncommon for her to call friends and start negotiating coupon trades (I LOVE the scene in the movie 'mr mom' where Michael Keaton and all the neighborhood moms are playing poker for grocery coupons-it WAS the housewive's currency ).

 

[Skippy918]

Sundays were the day when mom got the ads from the paper and started cutting coupons/plotting her list. wasnt uncommon for her to call friends and start negotiating coupon trades (I LOVE the scene in the movie 'mr mom' where Michael Keaton and all the neighborhood moms are playing poker for grocery coupons-it WAS the housewive's currency ).

I remember helping my mom cut coupons from the Sunday paper. I only use the store coupons these days. Heb has the paper coupons hanging by the item on sale.

I do remember when I visited my cousins, if we shopped at Publix, they would load the groceries in the car. Back in NY, we had to bag our own.

 

[AppleDumpling]

there were far fewer choices and varieties of fresh produce

It was much more regional and seasonal back then. For example, in the northeast, we couldn’t get fruit such as oranges or grapes in the winter, but now they’re available year-round. And there is certain produce that I never had as a child, including avocado and pomegranate, which wasn’t commonly sold around here.

I think the stamps varied regionally. We had "Quality" stamps, and you did get a bunch from the grocery store and pasted them into books. My grandmother at one point worked at the store where you would go cash them in for available merchandise.

We had S&H green stamps, Triple S blue stamps, and plaid stamps. Different stores had different stamps (and some gas stations also gave them out). My family got several baseball gloves and a camping stove by redeeming stamps.

Many people paid with a check those days too. I don’t remember the criteria for acceptance. Maybe we had to fill out an application.

I was still writing checks for groceries until at least the early 2000’s. At my regular store, you had to fill out a form once and they gave you a check cashing card.

There was no alcohol in them. Now my local grocery store has a full three aisles.

This varies a lot by state. We only have beer in the supermarket, no wine or hard liquor.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Grocery stores in my area do not have alcohol as it's illegal. My neighbors drive to the Costco in a neighboring state so that they can buy liquor.

We can have beer up to 5.9% but wine and hard alcohol is not allowed to be sold in grocery stores including clubs like Sam's and Costco but we do have plenty of liquor stores that sell beer (higher abv content allowed than a grocery store), wine and hard alcohol. Technically that's probably easier to just go to the liquor store than to go across the state lines to Missouri to a grocery store but there are a few unique situations.

One of which is a specific Hy-Vee location where the grocer store is on the Kansas side and they put a Hy-Vee wine and spirits location (where normally it would be a section in the Hy-Vee store) on the Missouri side (who doesn't have the same alcohol laws like we do and is less strict) just across the street (the street being State Line Road), the black line is the state line