The Past and Future of Urban Grocery Shopping

On Saturday mornings, Michael Ruhlman’s father would post up at the family’s breakfast nook in suburban Cleveland, scribbling the week’s grocery list on a legal pad. The lists were rambling, but the younger Ruhlman often wondered if his father derived some pleasure from forgetting one or two things. Those omitted items required a return trip to the supermarket—another chance to gawk at the bounty on the shelves.

In his new book, Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America, Ruhlman—the acclaimed author of Ratio and The Soul of a Chef—backgrounds his familial lore with exhaustive reporting. The result is a sort of love letter to the institution of the grocery store, and to characters who have helped meet a basic and primal need. Over the course of 22 chapters, he chronicles the foundations and the changing face of the grocery industry, from mom-and-pop corner stores to modern monopolies and the outfits that fall somewhere in between.