The Duchess of Epping goes to Market Basket

I haven’t been here for very long but I can tell you with absolute certainty that the people of New Hampshire LOVE food.  Their infatuation with edibles plays out daily at the local grocery store, Market Basket.

Having previously shopped for groceries at Town and Country on 19^th Street in Bozeman I was used to a small store with cramped aisles, poor lighting, limited choices, minimal flair, and a community feel.  I knew where everything was and it was like a big family reunion every Sunday when I went shopping.  I saw my friends in the aisles, I high-fived the fruit guy to acknowledge the hot new price on red grapes, I checked out at Lynette’s line and got the skinny on the happenings at the store, and I boxed or bagged my own groceries¹.  I loved it!

The Market Basket grocery store in Epping is the polar opposite of Town and Country².  For starters the store is HUGE…  I mean HUGE.  Like if you park at one end of the store and accidentally use the exit on the opposite side you may wear through the soles of your shoes before getting to the car with your groceries.  Your ice cream will most certainly not make it…

There are 23 aisles individually lit with hundreds of fluorescent bulbs that make me wish I had a pair of those tiny tanning goggles to strap on my face while I shop (why do they even put the little round tinted holes in those?  what would you look at if you opened your eyes in the tanning bed?).  The store offers 1400 different varieties of everything you want to buy³.  Aisle 4- Pasta is so long that you feel like you’ve actually walked the Amalfi coast of Italy when you get to the other side.

“Little Italy” of New Hampshire. The leaning tower of Pizza (sauce) is in Aisle 5 and Vati-Can City is in Aisle 2

There is over 400 square feet of shelf-front (endcap included) dedicated solely to dried pastas.  They have a pistachio flavored version of everything in the store, including yogurt (ick) and a type of cookie called ‘Wandies’, that I am guessing are made by a local Italian lady since the package bears a large flapping Italian flag and something written in Italian that surely translates to “Live Free or Die”… “VivereLiberi o Morire”.

There are tons of shoppers in the store at all times⁴– I once found myself sharing the frozen foods aisle with 12 people.  The shoppers at Market Basket seem to be of 2 varieties:

Shopper #1– This accounts for 80% of the shoppers in the store.  They shop like their lives depend on getting out of there with a week’s worth of groceries in just 5 minutes or less⁵.

Shopper #2– The remaining 20% of shoppers have no concept of what is going on in the store around them.  Some of them may not even be aware that they are in a store… they may have just stumbled in during a bout of the munchies 40 years ago and gotten lost in Aisle 21-Breads.

Shopper #2 stands in the middle of the aisle and compares the ingredients of General Mills’ Cookie Crisp and the Market Basket branded Cookie Factory one ingredient at a time.  Then they ponder the big questions like: I can’t have cookies for breakfast but can I have Cookie Crisp? Do I really need the extra gram of fiber in Cookie Factory? What would a cookie factory be like? Is it still 1973?  In the meantime Shopper #1 gets so frustrated they go into something analogous to road rage that I call the “Food Fury”.  People under the spell of the Food Fury move around the store like they are in a rally car race… the wheels of their carts actually skid around the corners of the aisles leaving shards of tile in their wake.  I saw one guy, whose suit and tie indicated that he is most likely a gentleman in the world outside of Market Basket, roll right over a 20 pound bag of rice AND a small child without blinking an eye just so he could get to the burrito shells.

Purchasing food at the Market Basket is like a competitive sport.  The shoppers act like the store might run out of food, which is absolutely absurd considering the entire population of New Hampshire could survive a nuclear holocaust by eating the food on display. At this one store.  Without even touching the stock  they have in the back.  I stood frozen with fear in the onion aisle (yes there is a whole aisle in fruit/vegetables dedicated solely to onions) while something comparable to a rugby match with carts occurred in the adjacent aisle as shoppers tried to get Bananas⁶.  Even the elderly patrons are like this.  The other day when I was purchasing peanut butter I noticed a man in a Handy Cart® electric cart at the other end of the aisle surveying the jams and jellies.  I watched as he stood up from his cart and reached for the top shelf where the glass jelly jars were stacked 2 jars high.  Fearing the bad sitcom moment and simulated laugh track to follow I jogged from peanut butter over to jelly, caught my breath from the exertion, and asked him if he needed some help.  He smiled appreciatively in my direction, sat back down in his cart, and pointed to the Raspberry jam.  I got one down for him, put it into his HandyCart® basket, then commented on how he must really like doughnuts since he had 4 boxes of Entenmann’s old fashioned doughnuts in his basket.   He gave me a sideways glance, which was either to put his good hearing-aid ear closer to me OR to get a good look at me so he could point me out in the doughnut bandit lineup at the police station later that day, then he put his HandyCart’s® pedal to the metal and sped away (sped as fast as a HandyCart® will go- it’s all relative) without another word.  I walked towards the front of the store to checkout and passed the doughnut shelf… loaded with boxes of Entenmann’s old fashioned.

At the front of the store you are faced with another choice, which of the 17 lanes of checkers to go to (each lane with the same candy- I checked them all).  When you get to the checker there is no small talk about what you did this weekend or your surprising purchase of white potatoes this week instead of yams like there was at Town and Country.  These checkers are well-oiled machines.  They move groceries across the scanner so fast they probably have to outfit their belts with black market motors or NOS to keep the groceries moving down the line with enough speed.  Once the food is scanned it is pushed down the adjoining NOS-equipped belt to the waiting bagger.  I once moved into the bagging position out of sheer habit from shopping at Town and Country so long and because there was no bagger there as the food started sailing down the belt.  It was like I altered the space-time continuum by stepping into the bagging position without a red Market Basket vest on.  Everything started moving in slow motion- there was a single beep from the scanner and the lighting fast food assault from the checker stopped, the whole store went quiet as she held my loaf of Arnold’s whole wheat bread in her hand and stared at me in shock.  Less than 2 seconds, but what seemed like a century, later I felt a woosh⁷ and Lionel appeared out of nowhere in front of the rack of plastic bags.  Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, the time-space continuum was restored, and my loaf of Arnolds went whizzing by at warp speed.

The Duchess of Market Basket pageant heels. Just in case the hill people ever have a ball or my fairy godmother stops by. Odds on either happening are pretty slim but I keep the shoes just in case… they might also work with flying monkeys?

Checkout lane #9 is where I met my first friend and my third most favorite person in all of New Hampshire⁸, Merle.  It was my first trip to Market Basket, I was completely overwhelmed by the entire experience, I got to the checkout, and there was Merle (and there he always is because I ALWAYS go to Merle’s line).  Merle, who must be pushing 80, stood at the bagging station looking skittish as the food started flying down the belt.  I smiled at him and he asked me how I was doing (so intuitive Merle is), without wanting to burden him with the tale I related to all of  you above I simply said “I’m doing well Merle and how are you?”.  He replied with “I am SO HAPPY!” I told him I was glad and he said (and I quote) “If I was any happier they’d have to cut me in half!” I had no idea what this meant but when pressed for details he simply repeated “If I was any happier they’d have to cut me in half!” at a higher volume.  He finished bagging my groceries and pushed the cart out into the aisle for me with a flourish while announcing “Your carriage…” I felt like the Princess Kate of Market Basket as I grasped the handle of the cart with my left hand and did my best Miss America wave with my right.  I saw Merle give me a little wink before he turned back towards the checker and readied himself for the next assault.  I walked out of the store into the parking lot waving to the other patrons as I went, though nobody else acknowledged me.  It was only after i reached the pavement that I realized Merle had pointed my ‘carriage’ in the wrong direction as he sent me on my way and I was now on the wrong side of the store… thank goodness I wasn’t wearing my pageant heels.

Took a picture to look like I was holding Luke Skywalker’s prosthetic hand I did. Star Wars nerd I am… Yeeeesss.

1- Except when they had those school kids bagging groceries…  this was the one thing I didn’t love about Town and Country.  Those kids never really got it right.  I always ended up with cracked eggs and smashed bread.  One kid put every canned item I had and a gallon of milk in one plastic bag and put only a single package of bacon in another.  While I also believe that bacon deserves a special spot and recognition for being so delicious I felt like he could have balanced the load a little better.  The thin, stretched plastic handles on the heavy bag practically severed my right arm off at the wrist on the way to the car… I’m lucky the parking lot is so small or I may have ended up with a mechanical hand like Mark Hammil a la Empire Strikes Back.  Regardless of the poor effort put in by the children I always felt obligated to give at least $1 to whatever they were raising money for; 8^th grade trip to Costa Rica, Mrs. Smith’s class goes shopping on Rodeo Drive, Boy Scouts of America skydiving trip… okay so I made those up, but some of the trips were ridiculous.  When I was in grade school we went to the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall… every year.  I even thought about asking Town and Country if I could bag groceries one week to raise money for my vacation.  Why not?

2- If this was Tron and grocery stores were ‘The Grid’ Town and Country would have been invented by free-thinking programmer Kevin Flynn (aka- The Dude)  while Market Basket was invented by CLU, Kevin Flynn’s evil digital twin determined  to create the perfect system, complete with hideous fluorescent track lighting, at any cost.  If you haven’t seen Tron:Legacy you totally just missed that reference and a pretty entertaining movie too.

3- Except for candy, which I found to be extremely lacking.  The people of New Hampshire clearly don’t have a sweet tooth… or enough teeth left to consume chewy candies (either way).  I was appalled that the candy section was not at least as long and diverse as the section reserved for fiber boosting products in Aisle 10.  The name brand candies were outnumbered by Market Basket imitation candies 2 to 1.  I absolutely refuse to touch any imposter candy since -The Great ‘Red Fish’ Let Down of 2012- in which I sat through 2 hours and 49 minutes of The Hobbit without sugary refreshments.  The imitation fish that I purchased had the texture of wax lips from a frightening Halloween in 1986 and a flavor that can only be described as berry hand soap.  I cried over the loss of my sugar induced coma while the little people on the screen threw plates and sang ‘That’s What Bilbo Baggin’s Hates’.

4- Why were they always at the grocery store?  I didn’t know people could possible need and consume so much food.  Last week I realized why people came to the store so much.  They were offering free samples.  Their sample buffet paled in comparison to the free lunch I used to get at the Bozeman Costco each Sunday but there was one sample table drawing a large crowd… beer.  Yes that’s right, they were sampling beer.  And it wasn’t some new exciting Fall Brew or Sam Adams Pumpkin Ale… it was Lime Coors Light.  It drew them in like moths to a flame.

5- Kind of like Supermarket Sweep only there is no teammate there cheering them to “Grab that rump roast!!” or to scream “Saffron, Saffron!” wildly at the top of their lungs while their partner inevitably makes a wrong turn and puts 20 pounds of water softener salt into their cart.  I used to be embarrassed by how much time I spent watching Supermarket Sweep on summer vacation as a kid but now that I have a use for the defensive cart pushing tactics and ruthless aisle elbowing I witnessed on the show I’m no longer ashamed.

6- I don’t know why they were all scrummed up to get at those bananas… they’re a mushy yellow nightmare disguised by a peel.  The fruit in New Hampshire must come from a different country of origin than the fruit in Bozeman.  It has a strange texture and flavor… not a good strange.  It’s not just the bananas either- I certainly wouldn’t high five anyone about the red grapes at this store.  They’re sweet and juicy… once you get through the skin but it’s like gnawing on the knee of a rhinoceros to get in there.  Then once the juice is gone you have to chew the skin like the binding of an ancient leather edition of The Grapes of Wrath.  Those grapes cause me wrath!

7- The kind of ‘woosh’ I imagine that guy on Quantum Leap got when he jumped bodies.  I always felt bad for that guy- as soon as he saved the day and things started getting good he got ‘wooshed’ into another body.  Then Al would show up and smoke a cigar while punching buttons on Ziggy.  This show was way ahead of it’s time technologically because when you think about it Ziggy was very smart phone-esque.   It matters not that Ziggy was made out of Lego building blocks and that the device somehow predicted the future.  I’m sure this app is still in production… Donald P. Bellisario was a genius.

8- #1 is Fred and #2 is that guy who drives his truck 50mph down our road blasting Metallica’s ‘Enter the Sandman’ everyday at 7am.  I don’t know his real name but I’ve taken to just calling him The Sandman, I always give him a one finger wave when he runs me off of the road as I walk my dog.  I hope he sees me waving and knows that we’re REAL good friends.