Welcome to another weekend bonus episode of the Tech Mem Ride Home. I'm Brian McCullough.

So remember that long read from Friday, the one about the supermarkets. I knew a lot of physical retail

was under threat from e-commerce, but do we have to worry about the grocery store too?

As I said, this was something I had never considered. So read the piece

because I got in touch with the author, Joe Fassler, to see what the story is with grocery stores and yes there are larger societal

and cultural and even cyclical shifts imperiling the traditional grocery

market but it's also tech and e-commerce too, of course.

A deeper dive into all of this, plus a look at the star of Joe's piece,

the grocery store architect who is trying to blow up the grocery store in order to save it.

Please enjoy.

So I mentioned your piece about the grocery industry in this week's long read segment.

And the reason that it was fascinating to me is like before

reading it I had never considered that supermarkets were a category of retail that was

imperiled. You know what I mean? Like in the whole retail

apocalypse like sure blockbuster videos are gone malls are going to go away. Maybe people

will still want to go to a store to try clothes on, maybe not.

But I always assume that if there was one sort of cockroach that would be around

after the apocalypse, it was going to be grocery stores.

And your piece made me think for the first time maybe that's not the case?

Yeah absolutely I think you're right I think when we think of the you know

so-called retail apocalypse it's it's Toys or us you know it's a lot of these big

big box stores that just you know can't can't compete with with Amazon but the fact and food has steady demand right it's not like

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