Grocery Stores

I used to live in huge apartment complex, where there are approximately 1,000 households. In the plaza, there is a single building having a bunch of stores. This time, I'd like to touch on what the grocery stores in Korea look like.

We have lots of grocery stores like the penny candy stores, which is run by the individual owner. To put it another way, they run the stores in such a small way that they do not hire either an extra casher or more.

As a rule, I barely go to the small grocery stores because of their high price and limited kinds of goods. Instead, I usually go shopping to E-mart, one of big wholesale businesses in Korea. Once in a while, however, I go to the small store in our appartment complex just in that case either I am in urgent need of something or it is too late to get to the large stores. They are convenient for our neighbor so it is so useful in emergency. For these reasons, their stores are quite well run.

In the United States, every single grocery store is run in different way. They are chain- stores which have the name values such as Vons, Wholefood, Safeway, and so on. Apparently, customers could benefit from a competitive price among large (wholesale) stores.

Strickly speaking, I've never seen any a mom-and pop store throughout whole my staying in the United States. In theory, less competitiveness in the grocery market might cause them to close their stores. Small stores can undoubtedly no longer keep their business. Nevertheless, I am a little bit surprized to see almost every grocery business get industrialized.