Longing for the Return to the Butcher, Baker & Green Grocer

Small businesses need our love and support.

I have often complained that Denver is a good example of a food desert. Our neighborhood's national chain grocery store is poorly stocked and gross. The shop is unpleasant to be in. I’ve been shopping there for over a decade, and the staff do not know or acknowledge me because their turnover is staggering. If I buy liquor, I still have to furnish my driver’s license despite the grey hair and wrinkles.

The other national chain competitor is no better; they use something foul to clean their floors, so I only shopped there during COVID since it is so poorly regarded that the shelves still had toilet paper and other essentials.

The “organic” high-end alternatives are not much better. The food is way more expensive, and the packaging might be a little prettier, but the standard of the fresh produce leaves a lot to be desired. I strongly suspect that even if something is grown “organically,” they irradiate it to stop it from spoiling. Strawberries are currently the worst offender; they look all pretty on the outside, but they are white and tasteless inside.

By contrast, visiting my family in Sydney has been a glorious shopping experience! There are fresh fruit and veggie stores, beautiful flower shops, butchers specializing in some pretty weird goodies, and restaurants, bakeries, and coffee shops to suit any palate, style, and budget.

Some sights from Bondi

I understand that the population density is higher where my family lives in Oz, which allows for a large number of stores. However, I think what we really need in the US is a return to the small mom and pop shops you used to have until even the 1990s. It seems so ironic to me that the US proclaims to be the bastion of capitalism, yet, from my travels this year to Switzerland, South Africa, and Australia, I am firmly of the opinion that the free market is dead in America. Instead, this mesh of big business and government increasingly seeks to undermine our freedoms, poison us with substandard products, and limit our choices. Someone coined the term “soviet west” a few decades ago, which is how it feels.

Bring back the little guy who knows his customers: the fruitologist owner who offered my niece his own umbrella so that her baby stayed out of the rain, the coffee shop owner who knows each customer’s quirks, the butcher who understands exactly what cut of meat you are after and the members of your family that it’s going to feed, the small business owner who is personally invested in your wellbeing (sounds a bit like Ad Crucem…).

While we are at it, make them stop with the corporate raiders who destroy businesses on a whim and just for their own profit, without ever suffering the consequences of being laid off.

This sentiment goes for churches, too. Stop with the big-box churches where your pastor doesn’t know your name. Come back to tradition, where the pastor not only knows you but will visit your sick and shut-ins each week to bring them communion, baptize your babies, minister to you in the hospital, and usher you out of this world into the next.

Australian Lutheranism is in a mess, but it was lovely to stumble upon this church during our wanderings this week.