Thursday, April 12, 2007

Brazilian grocery stores

The supermarkets here in the city are quite good, and frankly, we really didn't think to post about the grocery stores themselves because they are so similar to our North American grocery stores. But as we've been here we've been taking note of the subtle differences that make the stores here special. First of all, food in Brazil is inexpensive--especially the good foods like fruit, vegetables and fresh meat. We can easily afford to dine on fresh exotic salads and fillet Mignon every week if we wish. Another difference is that because labor is cheap here you see many more finishing touches than you would see in cost-conscious North America. Look at these oranges. They were not simply dumped into the hopper. They were individually placed in neat rows. I don't know about you, but I really like that. We were unpleasantly surprised to see that the apples were not neatly lined up on this day. Sometimes you will see someone going around the fruit section making sure that everything looks "just right" all the time.

Of course, I don't like everything in Brazilian grocery stores. This is the milk section of the store. Almost all of the milk sold in Brazil is UHT (ultra high temperature) treated to last as long as possible without refrigeration. (Not every family in Brazil has a fridge.) To get what we would consider "regular" milk you need to find the tiny refrigerated section that has (no joke) about five to twenty 1-litre containers of "Fazenda" (which means "farm") milk. The milk here tastes quite different from back home, but the closer you get to skim, the less variation exists.

Back to nice things. Here is a weak, but vivid example of the attention to detail and the value of appearance in Brazil. Someone took the time to make sure that this entire display of laundry detergent was arranged in a unique way. It probably took a store employee an hour or more to arrange these boxes like this. We have seen far more elaborate displays (some were so elaborate that it made you not want to take an item from it). We have even seen employees measuring their work to make sure that it's just right; we've seen them insert rods into rows of items to make sure that all of the products are in perfect rows all the way to the back; and we have seen them carefully check rows of bottles and cans to make sure that the labels are all facing forward. When you see these time-consuming efforts it does give you a sense of luxury in a very non-luxurious atmosphere. Sometimes different is better.

Funny story. After taking about a dozen pictures in the store (including the Easter egg photos from last post) a young, apologetic store manager came up to me to tell me that I was not allowed to take pictures in the store. Obviously someone had tipped him off that I was up to no good :) I tried my best in Portuguese to explain that I was only taking pictures for my friends back in North America. He seemed to think that this was a good explanation and it did put him at ease somewhat, but he still insisted that I show him the pictures that I took in his store. When I showed him, he couldn't help but grin from ear to ear. I don't think he'd ever used a digital camera before and he was tickled pink to see pictures of his store on my camera. He patted me on the back and let me go. We both went home mildly uncomfortable but happy.