This is genuinely a bit ridiculous

[kaberett]

Things the tiny corner shops just over the road from my flat carry, apparently routinely:

• garlic Lurpak
  
• a flavour of innocent fruit juice that neither of the enormous 24-hour supermarkets on my way home does
  
• Kidderton Ash
  
• Little Black Bomber (not wildly over the odds)
  
• live yoghurt
  
• Swedish crispbread
  
• rose water (ditto at neither of the big supermarkets)
  
• string
  
• sink plungers

ET CETERA.

I am not entirely sure I understand London.

Comments

[sidheag]

I'm astonished at the idea of even one enormous supermarket that doesn't have live yogurt (non-live natural yoghurt being rare[eta I'm doubting myself now, but that is right, isn't it?], and natural yogurt being common). Do you really mean literally that, or is it some preferred kind they don't have?

But be that as it may, yay for useful local shops! I used to live on top of one once, in Coventry.

[kaberett]

idk, it's super-fancy organic set live yoghurt? and the two enormous supermarkets around here have an astonishingly limited range given their footprint.

[ghoti]

Innocent fruit juice? *is perplexed, but it might just be that it's 1am*

[kaberett]

Ah, I think what is going on is that that's a brand that hasn't much made it across the pond yet. Innocent Drinks should explain a lot :-)

[milkymoon]

I know we've had similar things happen to us in San Francisco, where you'd find all sorts of random (and lovely) things in corner shops that you wouldn't find in typical supermarkets, only specialist importers and that sort of thing.

[kaberett]

Yep. Only... at least one of these is part of a chain of corner shops??? and has a wider range than any other corner shop I've ever met??? and includes GARLIC LURPAK, I mean, wtf even, who needs GARLIC POSH BUTTER as a STANDARD GROCERY

[sfred]

This is a weird London thing that I haven't got used to either. I like it.

[kaberett]

I think I like it, I'm just baffled. (Also kind of baffled by the bit where the co-op around the corner - which is much smaller than the one I lived next to all last year, which didn't even have aubergines - carries like cassava and kohlrabi and that awful green spiked thing that noldo detests absolutely as standard.)

[sfred]

My impression is that London - maybe as a more pedestrian/public-transporty city than most in the UK? - favours little-and-often shopping in a variety of little shops (because there isn't room to build big ones), so there end up being weird specialisms.

[kaberett]

'cept my baseline is Cambridge, which is super-geared towards pedestrians and cyclists...?

[sfred]

Good point! My baseline is medium-sized cities in Northern England.

[morwen]

my boring guess is that they end up with random things left over in the wholesaler.