The Cultural Supermarket

When you are used to the way products are organised and displayed on the shelves of supermarkets you don’t really think or expect that things might be different in a neighbour country; but I can assure you that they are; or some of them at least.

Let’s take a simple example (some supermarkets might do things differently from what I am about to describe but this is what I have noticed): in many supermarkets in France, the fresh fruit and vegetables section is located at the centre of the supermarket whereas in most British supermarkets I have been to (with the exception of the few Tesco I have “visited” and which were a bit more like French supermarkets), fresh fruit and vegetables are the first thing you see when you get in.

These aren’t the only items that you can find in a different part of the supermarket. At least fruit and vegetables belong to a whole (sometimes rather big) section that you can’t really miss. Now think about a single, “rare” item.

I was young and naïve at the time. I thought that nothing could be worse than choosing what butter brand I was going to buy. Well, on another day when I was craving American-style pancakes, I undertook a trip to the supermarket in a quest for maple syrup.

In my French brain, finding maple syrup is easy: it is in the same aisle as honey, chocolate spread and jam, and/or in the “food of the world” section of the supermarket. In addition to that, since my first grocery shopping trip I had got a bit more used to British supermarkets. So what could possibly go wrong? However, that day proved that I still had loads to learn about the British mind and the organisation of supermarket shelves. In short, it took me 20 minutes to do my normal shopping and another 30 minutes to find the maple syrup, which was with the tinned fruits and custard (and the only reason why I eventually found it is because after swallowing my pride and accepting defeat, I asked a shop assistant). I wonder how I didn’t think of it myself?! Because I’m French, pardi! and my mindset is different, I suppose.

That day, besides learning where to find maple syrup and, incidentally, to put my pride aside and ask for help in a shop, I learnt that cultural differences aren’t only expressed through languages and the way people speak, they don’t show only through the music we listen to and the way we dress, they also affect people’s logic and therefore the way things are organised and displayed in shops.