Open Writing

In previous columns, I have commented several times on how, in America at any rate, goods and services are marketed to death. I keep thinking that there cannot be any more new ways that products can be promoted, but daily I’m proved wrong. The avalanche of print and electronic media advertising is sometimes overwhelming, and it’s not just the sheer volume and ubiquity of it that is so burdensome, but also the endless nuancing of the smallest features.

I thought we’d reached the end of the road when the US Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), which proudly declares its self “commercial free,” started to include segments supplied by their business funders in their TV programming. The segments are indistinguishable from regular commercials. The PBS rebuts criticism by saying that they are “not beholden” to their funders and do not endorse the products featured in the segments. Yeah, yeah, yeah!

Recently, another marketing “high point” was reached when the Geico car insurance company started to air commercials within commercials. The “host” commercial is fictitious, but is convincingly real until, towards the end, the well known Geico mascot (a talking gecko with a faintly Cockney accent) appears, and states that the characters in the fake commercial could have saved themselves a bunch of money had they insured with Geico. Fascinating isn’t it?

The latest buzz-word here in food marketing is “fresh.” I guess “organic” is passé. I recently received a flyer from our local supermarket telling me that certain fruits and vegetables are just now coming into season locally, so I should please look out for local brands. For me, the supermarket shopping experience is akin to cleaning house or washing dishes – you know you’re going to have to do it again pretty soon, so get it over with as quickly as possible.

This of course precludes browsing, but dutifully I started to examine every piece of fruit and bag of potatoes or carrots, looking for labels with farm names that might mention a town nearby; or even perhaps as far afield as 100 miles away. Well, unless you consider that California, a mere 2,700 miles away, is more local than say Chile or Taiwan, then I was out of luck. These supermarketers know not of fresh, or local.

When I was a kid, “fresh” meant you or a neighbor had just gathered it or dug it up. Or that it was delivered to the door by the milkman, who had grown it, and had harvested it no more than 24 hours before. “Fresh” in a store meant moist soil on the root vegetables, droplets of dew or rain still in the hearts of the lettuce and cabbage, and more than the occasional caterpillar or slug still alive and in motion. It also meant that items were only available for a month or two at most while in season.

Though most people wouldn’t say it out loud, I suspect they secretly hate supermarkets. I’m prepared to admit that I do. They are the most soulless way ever devised to get foodstuffs to the most people in the least amount of time. We have these huge stores the size of airplane hangers that appear to be full of every commodity anyone could ever need. But on a given day, just try to locate the one item you simply have to have to make a recipe and you’ll be disappointed.

Lately, I’ve noticed that somebody knows we hate supermarkets because they have started to open non-supermarket supermarkets. We have one in our town. First the name – it’s called “Fresh Market.” There’s that word “fresh” again. Once inside you will see the same “local” produce from California that you would in a conventional supermarket, but it’s a dollar a pound more.

You’ll be offered the same fish from Taiwan, but again at a price premium. You’ll see loose Darjeeling tea, quaintly packaged in a tin box, cookies from England, chocolate from Switzerland, but no breakfast cereals or laundry detergent. Nor will you see bacon or eggs or beer. To further separate themselves from identification as a supermarket, the proprietors, in their wisdom, do not allow carts to be pushed out to the parking lot, though they will “assist” you, if required.

In many American states, there is another kind of non-supermarket chain, evocatively called “Trader Joe’s,” though I’m not sure what that name evokes. Possibly the kind of place you might stumble across on a Caribbean island, or perhaps the faint memory of a terrific meal you once had at a “Trader Vic’s” Polynesian restaurant. I’m uncertain how to describe Trader Joe’s stores. Funky comes to mind, though that’s the kind of adjective that only the speaker knows the definition of.

In Trader Joe’s you’ll find three kinds of curry sauce, lemon grass, Yak butter (just joking), pate, prepared wok dishes, organic ice cream, goat cheese and a host of other cute things. You will also be offered, depending on the location of the store, Two Buck Chuck’s pretty good wine at around three dollars a bottle with tax. But you will not find cough medicine, band-aids, cleaning materials, breakfast cereals etc. After all, what do you think this is, some kind of supermarket?

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