kerouac

Just in case you thought the French buy most of their food at lovely street markets, here are the latest statistics (Dec 2007) for where grocery purchases are made in France:

Carrefour 24.4%
Leclerc 17.1%
Intermarché 12.3%
Auchan 12.1%
Casino 10.5%
"other" - 23.6%

Therese

And these stores are every bit as packed with frozen convenience foods and junk as US or UK grocery stores.

adrienne

Very interesting. Do you think the quality/freshness of cheese and produce is the same in supermarkets as in the street markets? Or do the French shop mainly in supermarkets for the convenience, the ability to buy paper products/ canned or package goods/ perishables in one place.

adrienne

IMHO the quality of junk food is better (and more interesting) in France than in the US.

Cathinjoetown

My friends in southwest France (several couples and singles) do a mix of local shopping and the Wal-Mart type stores you listed. The French love a bargain as well as anyone, if not more. It's a shame as more and more small villages lose their boulangeries and bucheries but I don't see a change. What hasn't changed much, at least in the country, is buying wine directly from the vintner.

Cowboy1968

kerouac... Maison de la France will probably put you on a black list for telling this nasty "secret"

hanl

I agree it's a bit of a myth that people go skipping off to the market every morning to buy fresh food in France.

My ex-boyfriend's family in Quimper didn't *ever* go to the local market and would get in their car and drive 15 minutes to the supermarket just to buy a baguette, even though there was a bakery a five minute walk from their house. (And they are by no means atypical, from my experience!!)

Dukey

"Just in case you thought the French buy most of their food at lovely street markets"

you mean the people who have never BEEN there????

Makes perfect sense and we noticed the obvious activity at the Carrefours and other similar places when we were in France last year staying down near Bordeaux.

I really DO hope all these people who have decided we need "food police" would get over themselves, however.

avalon

I'm surprised Picard wasn't on the list!

Therese

You can't get the bulk of your groceries at Picard, just the frozen stuff.

But there are some real odd items at Picard. Frozen sushi, anybody?

Tulips

Yes, but the Casino where I shop when in France, has a huge selection of fantastic fresh fish, wonderful cheeses, charcuterie. MUCH better than my local Delhaize here in Belgium.
And if you are ever at the Cap 3000 shopping center, near Nice airport, have a look at the fresh foods in the supermarket there. There is a lot of 'convenience food' there too, but really good quality.

Therese

In case you'd like to browse the Picard web site: http://www.picard.fr/

travelbunny

..most of my friends who live in Paris go to a supermarket and buy all their staples but they still buy most of their bread, cheese, green vegetables, fruit and cheese at small local markets.

flanneruk

Last time I looked Carrefour had 24% of the <b> packaged grocery </b> market.

This excluded products such as bread, meat, fruit and veg and most forms of charcuterie, fish, and dairy. The &quot;other&quot; 23.6% Kerouac mentions refers to the share of packaged soup, tinned veg and the like held by other grocery stores.

The data Kerouac's shown us tell us nothing about French people's buying (or not) of fresh food from markets and specialists. Specialist bakeries, for example, accounted for 6.7% of all food spending in 1999 and 6.4% in 2006, according to France's National Statistics Institute. That spending - like the amount spent at butchers, fishmongers, delis, greengrocers and all the other specialists that make food shopping rather more of a a pleasure in France than dealing with Leclerc's rusty trolleys and obnoxious staff - isn't in the data Kerouac's quoting.

Underhill

Ah, but the frozen foods in French supermarkets are far, far better than those here at home (with a minor exeption for Trader Joe's). I drool just walking past the displays in French markets. Then there are all those wonderful cheeses and pastries--dinner party with little effort.

jdc26

Bookmarking - Tulips thanks for the posting about the Cap 3000 shopping center for fresh foods. I will be in Nice for 1 week at the end of September and will be renting an apartment. I can pick up my groceries from there on my way from the airport.

genabee6

I stayed in Paris in May near the Bastille, and went to one of the grocery stores there (can't remember the name!) but I found the BEST rolls ever. They were prepackaged and all you had to do was warm them up, but they were great!! I'm missing them back in the states!

d_claude_bear

The Champion near our apartment was just jammed with shoppers every Saturday morning--almost all of them who filled their personal shopping carts to drag the purchases home. And we found the local Picard to have a great variety of easy-to-&quot;cook&quot; frozen items. But the very best breads and pastries were from small boulangeries/patisseries.

blackduff

Every morning I buy my bread at a village~population 9,800. This village has eight or nine bakeries in this village. Two butchers are there too and both have three employees each. Two large fruit stands plus a few other smaller shops which sell fruits too.

Certainly there are other shops too. Twice per week there's a formal market with foods and clothes.

Carrefour opened nearby two years back and it's busy too. Yet, there's lots of people who buy direct in the village. Some don't have transport to Carrefour. Some do not like Carrefour. And some buy both locally as well as Carrefour.

My house has two adults, two large dogs and a small cat. I haven't calculated how much money is spent at the local shops. I buy most fruits and veggies locally. I buy half of our breads are from the boulangeries. We used to have a nice cheese shop but they closed the door.

Carrefour has some advantages but the local shops are good too. The fruits are inspected each morning and the bad ones are dumped. You pay extra for the best fruits.

So, how can any tracking decide what the French buy. My purchases are fairly common. Maybe I buy a bit too much but the items bought would be consistant with the French.

Carrefour is the best for staples. Champion is close by my house, so we buy some things there too. Yet, I'm a local purchaser.

Blackduff

Therese

&quot;Some don't have transport to Carrefour.&quot;

And there you have it. Cars will ruin the rest of the world just as they ruined the U.S. The U.S. had the misfortune to be richer earlier.