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I was talking to a friend and complaining that the nearest grocery store is 3km from me, he says that Europeans consider that a reasonable distance to the store and I'm just being lazy.

I don't have a car, I don't have a bike, and the bus only comes by every four hours. Am I being unreasonable for not wanting to carry groceries 3km in 30C weather, or is my friend full of shit? Neither of us have been to Europe.

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[–] faythofdragons@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Oh geeze, we don't make a distinction between a supermarket and a grocery store either, lol. Most 'grocery stores' in the US are apparently supermarkets because they sell stuff like dog food and laundry detergent? I don't think we have any stores that do just produce, at least not in the few states I've lived in.

Going off the wiki link, it looks like I have a hypermarket ~25km away.

[–] Dasus@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Well no, not just produce. You'll find a section for general shit even in the smaller stores. Like tape, glue, underwear (at least for women, usually really thin cotton ones and I'm furious they don't sell the same for men, but I've still used them very comfortable). You can find basic household items like cleaning stuff and diapers and everything you need. but like the selection of tapes or glues won't be anything akin to a proper department store or a hardware store.

You can definitely find dog food and laundry detergent in all stores. And I mean it, I've worked in a bunch basically Kwik-E-Mart style shops and they all had those as well

But hypermarkets will be like almost on the level of specialised hardware stores in their selection of actually usable things. And they'll have bikes and whatnot.

Basically the sizes go with the square footage of the market in Finland at least, I don't think it's to due with what is being sold. And at one point only smaller stores were permitted 247 opening hours or sunday opening hours, whereas larger stores would only be open from 7-21 or something. Nowdays they're actually open 247 as well.

But they can only sell alcohol from 09 to 21

[–] faythofdragons@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, the store I'm thinking is a hypermarket sells groceries, but also clothing, toys, furniture, garden plants, tools, etc. We still call it a grocery store, lol.

My town's store doesn't even have its own bakery department or meat counter, but the bigger one next town over away has a bank branch and a starbucks inside, but doesn't sell the range of the big one mentioned above.

Is that close to the grocery > supermarket > hypermarket scale?

[–] Dasus@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Most people would still say they're going to a grocery store, they wouldn't specify "hypermarket".

It's mostly to due with sizes. There's three levels, and the leading chains in Finland both (or "all" before one got bought up by the second biggest and now there's generally only two) have a small store, which have their own names, Sale/Alepa and K-market, then there's the larger ones, S-Market and K-Supermarket (formerly KKK-supermarket, really), and then the largest ones, Prisma and K-Citymarket.

It used to be only the small grocery stores had the longest opening hours, but some years ago they released those regulations and now even the hypermarkets are 247. But the small and medium sized usually don't. Some small ones are in larger cities, I think.

But yeah it's generally just about the size, and "just" supermarkets not having department store shit as much. Like the supermarket K-Supermarket 1.2km away from me has their own fish& meat counter for instance.

The grocery store near me has a pharmacy, but the hypermarket has a pharmacy, a few restaurants, large deli and meat counters, and of course an a liquor store as in a government store that sells specifically alcohol. They're allowed to sell any alcohol, whereas grocery stores are just allowed to sell drinks up to 8%, and that's up from like 4.9% for the most of my life. Some years ago they changed it so grocery stores can sell up to 5.9, then when that didn't break society, it took like 2 years for the limit to change to 8%. And I'm pretty sure someone's gonna push for it to go to like 14 so we got proper wines in grocery stores.

The 8% crap is just awful wine. But drinkable if you carbonate it a tad. Sounds weird perhaps but I enjoy it.

Anyway the department store part of the hypermarkets is often kinda meh. Like if you want electronics or something, you'll usually go to a store that specialises in them. Like a large electronic store for clothing store or whatever. But you can sometimes get decent deals or some store brand clothes for a nice price. But like in general electronics, hardware, general hardware. There's kind of a lot of places with a lot of stores like that.

Like 2km from me by bike is an IKEA and then lots of similarly sized stores selling hardware / electronics / and always a few competing ones. Like there's several furniture stores within literally a stones throw from the ikea parking lot. (You'd have to be pretty good at throwing, but I maintain the assertion. Like frisbee golf throwing distance, definitely.)

Same with electronics stores. Like three huge stores in the same area, all within like 2-3min drives from each other. Some almost next door to each other.

Also hardware stores.

And sports stores.

Tons of others.

There's even I think like a horse-supply store, but that's a bit to the side. Not as mainstream.