h a l f b a k e r ySugar and spice and unfettered insensibility.
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If you've ever yearned for the favourite foodstuffs of your childhood only to find they are no longer made, or no longer sold in your area then this is the store for you.
The staff wear starched white shirts, charcoal flannel skirts or trousers and heavy, white cotton aprons and are always cheery.
They always remember your name and ask how your children are doing at school, etc. All purchases are wrapped in thick brown paper and tied with white string. Packages of lollies are always served with a few of the lollies in a seperate bag, free of charge. All drygoods purchases contain an extra halfscoop, for good measure.
Old style gingernut biscuits, sausages made with real beef, Wizz Fizz Sherbert Straws, tinned beef tea, handmade butter toffees and tomatoes with flavour are just a few of the products offered.
No cash registers, all bills are tallied on the packaging paper with the pencil each staff member carries tucked behind one ear. Prices are always rounded down.
Franchises will be available for sale in your area soon.
Like this...
http://www.flambard...k/html/village.html
...only not in a theme park (although this is actually a *good* theme park). [angel, Aug 16 2001]
And not in a museum either.
http://www.york.gov...s/castle/index.html
[angel, Aug 16 2001, last modified Oct 21 2004]
For [Guy Fox]
http://www.cheesemongers.co.uk/
[angel, Aug 16 2001, last modified Oct 21 2004]
Henry Maxwell, Bootmaker
http://www.henrymaxwell.com/about.html
Bespoke shoes, old world service. [UnaBubba, Aug 16 2001, last modified Oct 21 2004]
They say 'sherbet,' not 'sherbert.'
http://www.wizzfizz.../sticky/sticky.html
[mrthingy, Aug 16 2001, last modified Jul 10 2002]
Actually, mrthingy, it's either spelling
http://www.dictiona...ct.pl?term=sherbert
Originally from the Persian sharbat, it can be spelled either sherbet or sherbert. Despite the regionally incorrect spelling on their website (probably the result of the oppressive American MSWord spellchecker) it was sherbert when I was a kid. [UnaBubba, Aug 16 2001, last modified Oct 05 2004]
Like this...
http://www.flambard..._village/index.html
...only not in a theme park (although this is actually a *good* theme park). [angel, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]
[link]
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There was a shop just like this in my town when I was a shaver. 'Wildsmith's', it was called. From three doors away you could smell the grinding coffee, the cloves, the tea. They kept spices in a huuuge array of wooden drawers on the back wall, and a dozen different coffee beans in barrels in front of the counter. They sliced your bacon to your required thickness and wrapped it in greaseproof paper.
It's a trendy clothing store now. :-(
Orgasm-pastry. |
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That's exactly what I meant angel. Smoke-cured bacon and ham, sliced before your eyes. Fresh eggs packed in a small box lined with straw (they would keep for a week on the bench, or 8 weeks in the refrigerator). No sushi rolls in the coldcase, no pop tarts or fruit rollups, just honest, hand-processed goods of exceptional quality, like butter churned on the premises, from the morning's cream from Jim Church's dairy. Mrs. Muller's fruitcakes (made by the old lady who lived over the back fence from the shop) available by the cake, pound or slice. Bread baked that day, and if you got there after 7:30 and before 8:00am it was too hot to pick up. |
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Around where I live, there's a number of deli-style places selling quality, hand-made produce. We even have a cheesemongers (I had to argue for hours with a friend to convince him that "cheesemonger" was an actual word). But nothing quite as whole-heartedly old-fashioned as this. (And, you know, I do actually remember the butcher tallying up the prices by hand on the brown paper packaging, when I were a nipper.) So a croissant for you, UnaBubba, as soon as the cloth-capped grocer's lad delivers them on his bicycle. |
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When I was a 5 year old, there was a young man working as a butcher at the Grocery Store closest to us. 25 years later, he was Assistant Manager of Deli department of Grocery Store I managed - though he no longer wore the white whatchacallit hat butchers used to wear. Still handmarked with the ol' grease pencil on paper - and twine wrapped just like one should - if people preferred their math to have the human touch instead of bar codes we gave them what they wanted - either way - gave the store some character and increased repeat and new business. |
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No croissant for this idea. Have a large currant bun instead UB. |
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This was baked over a hundred years ago! |
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Of course, they still do this kind of thing in much of Europe, except that the cheese, bread, candies, meat, etc. are in separate buildings. Most Americans think the French attack McDonald's out of pure contrariness; they don't understand that they're trying to defend something worth preserving. |
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You'll never find one in UK now. Our imbecilic Euro-laws protect us from such places. |
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I don't remember any of this, but boy does it sound good! |
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It almost seems like a WIBNI when I think of it, but it can't be because I remember going to one of these shops whenever we were in town. There may well be one somewhere, somehow but I'd bet my lefty this would make a killing in the right (read affluent) area of any city where the customers are sick of service consisting of some pimply 17-yr-old with >20 facial piercings shrilling, "Yo, that allya got today?" |
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Not a rant, I just think there could be more to the shopping experience. Think Saville Row tailors, they maintain the standard. See [link] re: bespoke shoes. |
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'S funny, cycles of modernism and nostalgia. In my town little shops spring up selling local produce and baked-on-the-premises bread and brownies and fish from the docks of Newport and Florence a few tens of kilometers away, and then they begin importing stuff from Mexico and Argentina and next thing you know they've gone to some sort of frachised food mart. Either that or gone bankrupt. |
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The Antiquarian Grocer ought to have a butcher that hands out tastes of chipped beef to kids, and also gives away beef kidneys to cat-lovers. (Oregonians in those bygone days did *not* eat kidneys.) Me Mum used to bring home packages of stinky raw kidney which we'd dice up and feed to the cats. My favorite, a big black tom, became terrifically savage over these victuals--woe to any lesser cat that came close whilst he was eating a kidney! |
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So a croissant for you, UnaBubba. Perhaps in another life you will forego high-tech and open a grocery. |
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Just what I need! Another business to soak up my 'spare' time. No thanks, I'll just set up an office as master franchisor. |
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About 4-5 years ago I lived in Clapham, south London and the butcher there was just like this - he made his own sausages and mince, if you asked for bacon he'd get a side of bacon and slice it for you, he'd always have a spare hambone for soup, and he remembered my kids' names. I asked him for suet once and he got a big lump of suet out of his fridge, with the kidneys still in it - very rare to see that now.
Likewise the veg bloke in the market there (Northcote Road) - all prices were rough estimates, but the produce was top-quality, he'd always chuck in a few extra things, and he remembered my kids' names too. He once gave me two big boxes of cherry tomatoes because about a third of each box had gone squishy (I made tomato soup). |
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How far back, historically, would you go? Could we have the sort of dishes served to Roman emperors? Ostrich stuffed with peacock stuffed with capon stuffed with pheasant stuffed with pigeon stuffed with lark stuffed with hummingbird, and all that kind of thing? |
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You can have whatever your heart diseases, CLS. |
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wow. I guess the only memories my folks would have of
this time is getting out of that side of town before it got
dark. |
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[beauxeault] "Of course, they still do this kind of thing in much of Europe..." |
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Yes, that's something like what you get (or, increasingly, got) here in Central Europe when you walk to the corner store. But those little stores with the nice shopkeepers who remember your family and so on are all under pressure from the damned giant markets on the outskirts of town that encourage people to drive miles instead of walk down the street and shop in the neighborhood. I still shop at the corner shops, but one day they'll all fold because people wanted to save 10 cents on corn but spend 10 cents on gas, and I'll have to join the herds at the giant stores where you get impersonal treatment in exchange for saving a few pennies. |
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That's exactly the point of this idea. Taking the time to enjoy the finer things of life. |
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Sure, and I like the intent, but people would get it all wrong. |
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They would be out of town, not actual neighborhood stores, so you'd have to drive there in the big stinking SUV and park in a lot full of similar SUVs, and walk (but not too far, mind you) into Olde Tyme Village Shopping Centre. And the clerk at the grocery would be one of many pimply part-timers, not an actual store owner who practically lives there, so they would have to ID you somehow (retinal scan in some supposedly old-timey stereopticon?) and look you up in a 'personal' file. They would find out that you are Mr Jones with a wife and one point eight kids and you like (according to the checklist) golf and skiing and you read tripe like Tom Clancy and in many other ways you are also very, very average. |
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And so on. You won't ever get the real thing unless you are willing to get out of your car, walk to the family-owned corner store, talk to the owner/cashier/sweeper/stocker, and pay the price no matter what the sales are down at the QuickieGas&TwinkieMart. |
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And if the corner store went back to being this way they would capture sufficient market share, with sufficient buying power, to compete on equal terms. |
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1st rule of sales, pamper your existing customers.
2nd rule, make it inviting enough that you can co-opt your existing customers to become your marketing and advertising force. |
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If those rules applied to this problem, the corner store would never have gone away. |
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//And if the corner store went back to being this way they would capture sufficient market share, with sufficient buying power, to compete on equal terms.// I also wish this was true. |
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What is particularly horrendous about the ubermarkets is how they are responding to the market research telling them that there are many people who sympathise with [UB]. In the UK they are falling over themselves to incorporate *counters* within their shops; *counters* are displays of fresh produce where the customer waits to be served instead of just grabbing stuff on their way past. They are an obvious attempt to restore some of the interaction and humanity that the ubermarkets have found so tiresome in the past but that their customers still yearn for. |
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Naturally these *counters* do not offer the same level of interest and adaptability as the shops described by [UB] because they are simply there to provide an illusion of preparation by hand: consequently they do not offer you anything (cuts of meat for example) that cannot be bought in a packet. They do not expand the choice in the shop as you might be led to believe. |
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ooh, turned into a bit of a rant, sorry. Free markets and choice eh? Tell me another one. |
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I would love a store that sold food of the 1980's. Things like Fruit Wrinkles, Slimer Hi-C, Nerds Cereal, Budget Gourmet Microwave Bags where you add your own chicken. |
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God what the hell is suet? no, not sure I want to know |
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It's the kidney fat from sheep and cattle. It's hard and greasy, so it works well as a cooking fat or in heavy puddings etc. |
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