Groceries!

Grocery Stores

The grocery store has become a big part of our daily life.  Because – you know – we eat food and stuff.  And our kids need a million snacks a day.  In Finland there are really two main competing grocery stores – K Market and S Market.  They are both part of larger umbrella monopolistic corporations.  There are different “tiers” of each – for example there is the regular K-Market, a K-Supermarket, and so on.  Out in the suburbs there is often a giant, Costco-esque K-Citymarket.  S also has their own versions.  There is a K-Market about a five minute walk from us that has most of what we need.  For bigger trips we usually go to the Prisma (which is one of the versions of the S-Markets) in Keskustori.  The markets sell beer but no liquor and only low alcohol wine.  To get something a bit stiffer you need to go to an Alko, and there is one right by the Prisma.

Because there are only two real options you don’t have to shop around much.  I’d say that prices are more or less comparable to the U.S.  A little bit cheaper.  And the produce is generally a lot fresher.  There are a couple of foreign competitors.  Lidl is the main one.  It is a German grocery store.  And prices are generally a bit lower.  But so is quality. 

There are a couple of interesting oddities about grocery stores here.  First – at most stores you have to weigh produce yourself.  The produce has a number right underneath its pricetag.  You bag your produce and take it to one of the scales.  Then you just press the number that matches your item and the machine weighs it and prints a ticket.  It’s a super sensible system that it took us an embarrassingly long time to figure out.  The first time we tried we did not weigh a bunch of bananas and just took it to the register like we do in the U.S.  The clerk tried to explain it to us a couple of times before we just smiled and shrugged and left the store, abandoning our groceries.

You can buy some loose fresh herbs, but most are provided in a pot with soil in it at a very reasonable price.  I guess they expect that most people will want to grow their own.  Potatoes are in bulk and arranged by size.  You just scoop however many you want.  

Most stores have rows of bulk candy to scoop from.  They also have scissors that you are supposed to use to cut the leafy green parts off of your carrots.  We didn’t know to do that and just bagged our carrots with the stems attached, until an employee explained it to us, and said “you probably don’t want these…unless you are bunny rabbits!”  And then she laughed and laughed.  Like a belly laugh.  Like uncontrollable laughter.  You could tell that was the funniest joke she’d ever told.  I bet she was laughing about it after she clocked out at the end of her shift.  She’ll probably entertain her grandchildren someday about that time she zinged an American family by calling them all bunny rabbits. Many of the stores are cleaned by robot.

Our kids love juice (mehu) and the Finns have some of the best in the world.  Unfortunately it can be a little hard to find at the grocery store.  They have lots of juice.  But they also have lots of things that look like juice in a carton that looks just like the juice cartons, but are actually something different.  Our first day I bought strawberry juice, having seen the “mehu” on the carton along with pictures of strawberry.  But when we got home and opened it it was all thick and stringy, and like muddled strawberry.  So I looked at the carton again and saw that it said “mehukeitto” – juice soup.  Apparently it’s popular on top of porridge, yogurt, and ice cream.  The kids pretended to like it and we choked it down.  Another time I thought I was buying lemonade but actually bought a thin lemon flavored yogurt drink.  We didn’t try as hard to like that one.  And you do have to bag your own groceries.  It moves quick and is surprisingly stressful.

Most every store has one of these handy bottle returns.  Finland has one of the most successful bottle deposit and return programs in the world, with over 98% return rate.  (I imagine that tourists make up the other 2%).  You take your bottles and cans and feed them all into one machine.  At the end it spits out a ticket that you can redeem.  It’s only good at that store, so you have to plan ahead.  But the amount is usually pretty substantial.  (Each can deposit ranges from .15-.40 Euro).  We regularly find empty cans and bottles at parks, and I’ve taken to picking them up.  Why not?  During one of our returns a young person came up and handed me an extra can.  Maybe she was being nice.  Maybe she saw my stained sweat pants and torn bag and figured I could use some extra cash.  Maybe she saw me rummaging around the park trash can earlier that morning like a raccoon.  It’s hard to tell really.  But an average return nets us about seven Euros total.

Many grocery stores also have a Posti locker in the front as well.  Apparently you can get things delivered right to your home in Finland, but you have to be there to sign right when they get there, and it can be a pain.  So most people get them delivered to a Posti.  Once it is there they email you a code, and you go to the machine and type in the code, and the locker that has your item opens.  We used it once in Naantali when the landlord had left the key to our rental apartment inside.  And we used it again at the K-Market in Amuri when we ordered a Moomin toy for the kids.  It worked great.  I mark it down as something that isn’t better or worse than how things work in the states.  Just different.

By far the coolest thing about Finnish grocery stores is the orange juice.  Everyone we have been in has these big machines.  You select an empty bottle.  (There are three sizes, medium is about 4 euros).  Slide it under the tap, and pull the lever.  Then the machine halves and juices oranges for you, and in about five seconds you have a bottle of fresh squeezed orange juice.  It’s the coolest thing.  

We’ve done it way, way too often.  But c’mon America.  We’re the leader of the free world.  We should have one of these on every corner.  I took a video of one in action.  You're welcome.

Speaking of every corner, it feels like there is a grocery store here just about every corner.  We once counted three K-Markets within sight at the same intersection.  Much has been written about food deserts in the United States.  It feels like often in America, we identify and study a problem, and then proceed to do absolutely nothing to fix it.  (You know, like racism, sexism, poverty, and gun violence).  Like so many other things in Finland, food security seems like an issue that they identify, study, understand, and then solve.  How refreshing.

As I mentioned our local K-Market is about five minutes walk from us in Amuri, our home neighborhood.  I’ve talked about it a couple of times already.  So it’s probably time that we explore it fully.  Coming up next time.

Hei Hei