All Lost in the Supermarket

Over the weekend, I was looking for the lime Spindrift at my local Fred Meyer. Fred Meyer is one of those quirky Oregon institutions (est. 1922), now owned by Kroger, which lately has been turning them into ever more generic, un-Oregon spaces. We’ll come to how this affects the beer aisle in due course.

We do most of our shopping at New Seasons (est. 1999), a different quirky, Oregon grocery chain that retains a much more Oregonian identity—but which does not carry Spindrift. They source better produce, and have a more comprehensive selection of local brands. Their prices are a bit higher, but it’s a regular grocery store rather than a boutique emporium for the well-heeled.

Fred Meyer goes for volume. Part of the Kroger approach is to redesign the layout of their supermarkets every few years so regular customers will have to trawl each aisle looking for the now-relocated items they actually want. I’m sure they have conducted many studies showing the benefits of this approach—shoppers stumbling across new items to buy—outweighs the downsides (enraging hidebound get-off-my-lawn shoppers like me).

So there I was, visiting the water aisle on Saturday searching vainly for Spindrift. I was certain it used to be right there—damn those idiots always moving things around. That aisle contained, solely, plastic-bottled still water of a kind that can be obtained from any kitchen tap. Indeed, our beautiful Portland rainwater is stored in the pristine Bull Run Reservoir where nothing leaches into it, unlike those plastic bottles.

No matter—must be in the next aisle. Nope, aisle two contained bottled teas and sports drinks. The next one? Soft drinks. It turns out I was only halfway done with the water-based, non-alcoholic beverages. Fred Meyer now has six aisles devoted to water and soft drinks. (Aisle four, energy drinks and “natural beverage”; aisle five, sparkling water—and, joy!, my lime Spindrift; aisle six, “bottled juice, juice, and juice boxes.”)

Contrast that to the pallid state of the beer aisle. For decades, one side was stocked almost entirely with local beer, with a few regional craft choices at the far end. Mass market lagers were in cold cases on the opposite side. Now the “craft” side has been breached by those garbage “fourth category” beverages*, and horror of horrors, the White Claw has replaced beer in the premium location nearest the side people first arrive in the aisle. The linear feet of local beer has been shrinking for years, and now it has the ignominy of being hidden behind the seltzers. I assume Elon Musk has something to do with it.

I don’t actually know what to make of any of this, except that Americans have gone insane for their liquids, and Kroger seriously disrespects the local beer drinker. (You will be happy to know that New Seasons continues to have an excellent beer case, and features a lot of our smaller, excellent breweries.) Kroger will still earn my Spindrift dollars, but this outrage means they’ll receive little else!

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* Yes, people like what they like and I am not here to Claw-shame. You want a blue seltzer, please enjoy. But these are concoctions of corporate marketing departments and food-science labs, and they are marked by the same artificial flavors, colors, and textures that benight the snack aisles. They are disposable and will be replaced in due course by different arrangements of chemical flavor molecules in 5% alcohol solutions as trends dictate.