The ORIGINAL Sunday rule was indeed due to religion, but just because people used to work 6 days a week and Sunday was the only day off as a concession to the church. But you are correct, PalenQ -- religious service attendance is indeed only 8% in France, and this goes for the Muslim and Protestant population as well. Apparently the Jewish population of France has a giant 10% synagogue attendance.

I'm as big a fan of hypermarchés as anyone, but when oh when are the French going to learn to engineer a shopping cart that turns properly?

If they can build the Millau bridge, how come they can't get something as simple as a shopping cart right?

What's wrong with your shopping cart? When I get a defective one, I just trade it in for one that rolls properly.

Perhaps you are using one of the new electronic ones whose wheels block if you try to go beyond the parking lot?

Ok, dumb question of the day:

Do you need a membership card to get inside?

No not for any hypermarches in France i know of - but more and more are going to a Carrefour card like we have in U.S. to get the advertised discounts. These are free i think but the average tourist won't bother with one and pay more at times.

Kerouac - do you know if it's true that hypermarches can't sell things under cost as i've heard - no loss leaders to get folks in the store?

kerouac, StCirq is doubtless talking about the carts where all four wheels swivel. Someone had to think very hard to come up with such an inept design.

Anselm

Exactly, Anselm. I've never been in a supermarket in France that didn't have them. It's impossible to make a tight turn in them, and in the parking lot it's like bumper cars.

I am trying to imagine what you are talking about and I can't.
I have used shopping carts in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Brazil, France, Belgium, Spain, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Germany, Morocco, Egypt, South Africa, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Tahiti -- those are the countries that I can think of -- and I have never noticed any difference in handling. What am I missing?

Hmmm, I wonder whether StCirq and I are the only ones who have ever noticed? I can't vouch for every shopping cart (or trolley) in France, but I have intimate knowledge of the carts at the Carrefours in Uzes and Issoire and the Leclercs in Apt and Castlenaudry (I think I may have just spelled that incorrectly). On those carts all four wheels swivel. At my local Super Store or Sobeys in Canada, only the front wheels swivel. These carts can be turned easily, but the back end never attempts to go sideways.

Here's hoping more than two of us have ever noticed ...

Anselm

Is there a Hypermarche in Nice or only in the Paris area? I want to go to one.

Sunday closings remain the law only because of labor unions, even though both employers and employees generally are willing to work on Sunday.

There was a famous case years ago with IKEA in which the store remained open on Sunday and just paid the fines, because it made so much more money on Sundays (30% of the weekly sales, IIRC), that it turned a profit even with fines. The Sunday employees were volunteers and were paid extra for Sunday work. But then the unions went to court to force the store to close and succeeded. So the store laid off the Sunday staff, since it no longer had work enough for them. What a great union, eh?

The law allows "cultural" venues to remain open on Sunday, in certain cases. Stores profit from this by putting tiny "exhibitions" of art or just about anything in some small corner of the store. They are then allowed to keep the entire store open on Sunday. Works very well, and since nobody but the unions really opposes Sunday openings, anyway, little attempt is made to stop it.

Ikea is still open every Sunday.

Scatcat, hypermarkets are everywhere in France. Plenty in the area of Nice.

kerouac:

Thanks, I will find one while I'm in Nice in May. I love to check out the grocery markets in different countries.

I believe Carrefour is the largest in the world, with Walmart 2nd - at least that what my macro/microeconomic book said last year.

Wal-Mart is a bigger company than Carrefour, but Carrefour has greater international presence than Wal-Mart.

I would assume that that is what is being referred to in the book.

Book is wrong or outdated as i've seen numerous listings of the world's largest retailer and WalMart is always listed first and Carrefour 2nd. May have been different few years ago as i believe WalMart is expanding much more than Carrefour.

And as articles i've read Carrefour is indeed in a very competitive market in France itself, where it's market share has been nibbled at by competitors and even foreign discounters like Aldi.

Hmmm, kerouac. That's kind of amazing you've never noticed the impossible-to-steer French carts, but I guess we must travel in different LeClerc circles :)

I've been griping about them for more than 15 years! Included mention of them in numerous trip reports, even. About 5 years ago the Intermarché in Le Bugue did a major renovation, including bringing in new carts, and I thought "Finally, there will be steerable carts!" No such luck. The new ones were just bright, shiny, bigger replicas of old mind-of-their own carts.

The shopping-cart-mystery; I haven't seen one of those four-wheel-steering-carts either...... Not in France, not in the Netherlands, not every where else in the world.....
I always thought that all shopping-carts were more or less alike...sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller, sometimes steel, sometimes plastic (or what looks like plastic!).

I shall pay better attention next time I am shopping at a hypermarche in France!

I don't think Ikea is open on Sundays outside of the Ile de France region.

Me too. Perhaps some of us just have better steering skills? ;)

(I was replying to TommieG when hanl sneaked in.)

You are probably right, hanl -- and definitely so as concerns Ikea in Alsace-Moselle, a region which still suffers from the German religious laws. But the whole Ikea Sunday battle was fought over stores that were already open on Sunday in the Paris metropolitan area, and Ikea won.

Kerouac, I only know about Ikea being closed on Sundays in some parts because when we moved to Lyon from Paris, I planned to buy a whole load of furniture from there, got up early on a Sunday morning to beat the crowds, drove all the way out there... and it was shut. Grr.

It's closed on Sunday because you people in the provinces spend all day Saturday at the hypermarket in order to spend all day Sunday sitting at the table stuffing yourselves at those family feasts! ;)

kerouac and TommieG, the mystery deepens, LOL. I'll take a photograph of the next one I encounter and post it on PBase for you when I get back.

Anselm

PBase? Photobucket I guess, but then....

The hunt for the four-wheel-steering-shopping-cart (FWSSC) will retunr rigth after the break!

What Google can't do; I foudn out what PBase is...... www.pbase.com.....

A little Wikipedia on shopping carts:

'Shopping carts are fitted with four caster wheels, which can point in any direction to allow "easy" maneuvering. However, when any one of the wheels jams, the cart becomes extremely difficult to handle. Note that some carts only have swivel caster wheels on the front, while the rear ones are locked. This presumably improves the steering life of the cart, at the expense of maneuverability.'

Now I am relly stating to doubt myself.....do shopping carts in the Netherlands use the 2 or 4 wheel-swivel-system...... I honestly don't knwo anymore......can't wait to go shopping again!

The FWSSC doesn't let me go; is this a picture of one: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afbeelding:Winkelwagen.jpg

Then I think that in the Netherlands we also use the four-way-swivel (because it is a Dutch picture).....
Besides the odd jammed wheel, I can't say it bothered me...... But now I probably can't stop thinking about it and the next time in the supermarket it will probably go wrong!

Maybe this is why Americans have trouble maneuvering the shopping cart:
http://tinyurl.com/2tcrlp
:)

ohmygoodness...how DID that picture of me turn up on the internet?!

Ha, ha....although this also looks like a four-wheel-swivel..... :-)

TommieG ... thanks for finding that picture. You can clearly see that the rear wheels swivel in the same manner as the front wheels. Now all we need to do is find one with a Leclerc or Carrefour label on it.

I think the fellow who designed that cart goes to the grocery store on weekends and laughs his head off at people trying to steer one of those things around a corner.

Anselm

Speaking of shopping carts...

for years now Carrefour and French hypermarches and those in other many other countries have required you to put some coins in a thing on the cart to disengage it from the rack and when you bring it back you get the coins back.

Wonder why cost-cutting American hypermarches haven't turned to that simply device to cut down on cart loss and cart retrieval.

My local supermarket says they lose a whole lot of expensive carts and have to pay someone to retrieve ones folks take to their apartments, etc.

This seems like a no-brainer to me but of course all supermarkets would have to do it ensemble for it to work i guess or the first ones doing it would no doubt lose market share.

That's what I've always read -- that they would lose market share.

The latest shopping cart models in France have an electronic device that locks the wheels if you cross a painted line at the edge of the parking lot. Apparently, shopping carts are a lot more expensive than they look (well, maybe not those gray plastic Wal-Mart models), and it is an investment well spent.

My guess is that French people are just more likely to steal them, making more advanced protections necessary.

>My guess is that French people are just more likely to steal them, making more advanced protections necessary.<

Don't know if that's true. Especially if you read what PalenQ says:
>My local supermarket says they lose a whole lot of expensive carts and have to pay someone to retrieve ones folks take to their apartments, etc.<

So it seems to happen outside of France also.....

In the Netherlands (and Germany, Belgium etc) almost all the shopping carts also use a 50 cents or 1 euro coin before you can disengage them. Only in very quit areas with small supermarkets you still see cart without coins.

My guess is that you see it a lot in Europe, because here we have a lot of supermarkets in more residential areas (although hypermarches are the execption to the rule....). Whereas in the States a lot of supermarkets are located on the outskirts of towns (although there are execptions there too...). People are more likely to take
a shopping cart with them, if they live near a supermarket.

"WalMart is always listed first and Carrefour 2nd. May have been different few years ago as i believe WalMart is expanding much more than Carrefour."

Wal-Mart's "expansion" is entirely in one country, while it's running away from practically everywhere outside Greater America. It gave up Korea and Germany last year, it's fouling up in Japan and it's lost share in the UK since acquiring a competently run business, Asda. For which it blames the "unfair" behaviour of the local market leader (which invested in new sites), and has had the effrontery to ask the UK government to bend the rules so that inept foreigners might find it easier to compete without going to the expense of paying the market price for new locations.

Carrefour's ahead of Wal-Mart in China and Brazil (though in both countries, Carrefour is far smaller than the market leaders), the only serious countries where both operate. Carrefour's growth in China in 2006 was twice as fast as the Bentonville Buffoon's

All of which said, Wal-Mart's not only ahead of Carrefour in sales, but actually had sales greater than the other four mega retailers (Tesco, Carrefour, Metro and Ito-Yokado) combined.

However, practically all Wal-Mart's sales were in one country: its performance everywhere else has been embarassingly bad. Time after time, when entering a new country, it's just shown itself incapable of understanding how to operate - or, in the case of the one country it's at least survived in (the UK), of keeping decent staff or dealing with grown-up competitors without whining about conspiracy theories.

The other three (Tesco, Carrefour and Metro), by contrast, have shown extraordinary sensitivity in understanding new markets and adapting their operations to local peculiarities.

Which the Arkansas Amateurs have shown not the slightest hint of even recognising as a problem. They even blamed their German screwup on German consumers' bizarre lack of interest in having groceries bagged.

That's the trouble with foreign parts. Damn customers don't know how to behave. Can't possibly be the fault of third-rate management, can it?

So, which is better, Carrefour or Auchan? I have a holiday home in Southern Italy and I use the local Auchan frequently. I've just heard they're opening a new Carrefour down the road. Should I switch allegiances?

Frankly, I find them of equal quality. Auchan is perhaps slightly faster at copying new brand name products to create Auchan products, although Carrefour did surprise me with its own litchi-apple soy milk recently, meaning it is willing to start branding some pretty marginal items.

In terms of adapting to local markets, which flanneruk was talking about, I remember reading about 2 major Carrefour adaptations in China, which one does not necessarily spontaneously think of. 1. They learned that all fish must be sold live out of aquariums. The Chinese customers would not buy fish dead on ice. 2. They had to quintuple the size and selection of men's hair dye, as it turns out that Chinese men dye their hair constantly. Nobody outside of the country knew that before.