THE SECRET LIFE OF GROCERIES

In his second book, Lorr digs behind the scenes at the grocery store. Much of his discussion centers Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods, his thesis forming as his narrative moves along: “A grocery store is a finely tuned instrument to serve human whim, and the diversity of human whim often allows it to do double duty, serving one through the act of serving another.” Yet a grocery store is also a place where the staff is anonymous and usually not well paid—one man who’s worked a fish counter for years laments that he makes only $15 an hour—and where customer behavior is as spoiled as the ancient bits and pieces of fish and seafood that lie buried under the shaved ice. “One of the first things you realize working retail grocery is that people, in general, are hideous and insane,” writes Lorr in his wide-ranging, entertaining blend of journalism and sociology. The narrative is peppered with interviews with a broad cast of characters, including truck drivers, food entrepreneurs, and cashiers, almost all of them underpaid. The author notes along the way that food prices, in real terms, have fallen by nearly three-fourths in the last century at the expense of food workers. He also looks closely at how stores came to be as they are, with their sometimes-tangled tales—e.g., when “Trader” Joe Coulombe became a wine expert largely so he could ease an alcoholic manager out of his job or how the Memphis-based Piggly Wiggly chain long ago “invited [customers] in to frolic among the abundance” while draining their wallets. In the end, what Kitchen Confidential did for restaurants, Lorr’s book does for supermarkets.

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