Why Grocery Shopping is Better in Amsterdam

To be fair, living in Europe and having grown up here, you still very much have the more car focused grocery stores. Mostly you’ll find them only on small towns or “suburbs” but basically whenever the population density is too low to put 10 different grocery stores in the area, the grocery stores will just get larger and add a huge parking lot.
Most of the times you can still pretty much walk there easily and since they are still in living areas, they are still friendly for bikes and pedestrians, but you can clearly see the difference to the more urban supermarkets.
My mom for example lives literally 200m away from a grocery store, but in the suburbs and since the next grocery store after that is 1km away, she rather buys food once a week with her car and it feels very normal where she lives. On top of that the grocery store where she lives closes at 8pm.
I live in the city and I have 4 supermarkets that I can reach by food in less than a minute, plus a vegetable store, a market on Sundays, a bakery, the last store closes at 12 pm and another 10 supermarkets if I would walk just for 5 to 10 minutes longer.
Where I live there are no parking spots at any of the supermarkets but my city still has those when you just leave the center far enough.
I always felt like the rural Europe is basically like a more human friendly version of North America.
Most people only get around by car because things are too far away, you can still reach them by bike tho and everyone younger than 18 does, you mostly only have the occasional bus that for many situations is useless and only used by students and you have big parking lots in front of grocery stores and everything else to make driving easier.
Like things are way better than in the US, but I still feel like I need a car to completely enjoy the area whenever I’m at my parents.
European City life is the greatest tho and nothing can beat that in my opinion!

Getting a pannier rack for my bike here in London has been a 100% game changer, can do the big shop every week with a backpack and a "bag for life" bungee corded to my bike

Something worth considering is the small or potentially large impact of labor laws and standards. Canada and the U.S. have weaker social safety nets, and my experience is U.S. centric, so it's more frantic getting to work because you have terrible work laws and standards, and no protections, especially for retail. European retail workers sit while bagging, whereas U.S. workers are often forced to stand and make themselves "look busy" as a cultural standard, making the idea of walking or biking completely untenable, especially since 30 minute breaks vary across states (my job only gives you one.). Sore feet, foot injuries, and plantar facilitis are common ways that workers destroy their bodies and it is disguised as "healthy", since a problem for sedentary jobs is too much sitting so people go for ergonomic desks. Thing is, the option to sit is at least available. I get dirty looks if I'm caught leaning or sitting, usually from older customers expecting to be serviced, that's how much we hate seeing retail employees as human or comfortable.
Add on to it the fact that you have a very limited number of sick days, your bosses will only sometimes let you use them, little to no vacation days, the shame and stigma of not working, being texted by your boss for the slightest misshaps or absences and expected to provide burden of proof (I have often been in a room with co workers who show up, have to leave early, and I feel disgusted because I would have rather them stayed home and not coughing on everything risking my health or customer health), no maternity or paternity leave or family support, brutal working hours and conditions, and retail most certainly is a nightmare contributing to our poor shopping experience. I sprained my ankle and had to beg for a chair I barely get to use because the other employees are desperate to sit. I carry topical anesthetic, and sometimes have customers come in when I have to apply it, and the reaction is often unwarranted health "advice" or disgust. We are buying too much food from overworked, usually hiding an injury employees with no social safety net, in gas guzzling cars. And before anyone asks, no it isn't a chain, which is usually more abusive, but a local family owned business, where everything is personal and people remember grudges.
Final point: Because of no protections we often just don't have enough time to make multiple grocery stops. Too burned out from the day to shop more than once or twice a week.

Some of these points I find to be interesting. I go to the store once a week, and it takes me about 10 minutes from getting out of my car to getting back into my car with all my food I need for the week. I believe this to be easier for me because I eat the same food everyday for the week for the past ~6 years with little variation. I also cook all my food on Sunday, besides my breakfast, and eat it throughout the week. So, while I enjoy many aspects of walkable neighborhoods that you describe in many of your videos, many don't fit with what I desire. I could eat something different everyday and cook it 'fresh', but I don't taste a difference. I also don't care for fresh from the pan food because it's generally too hot for me to eat. I will almost always wait 30 minutes after it's done cooking to start eating it.

That hand held scanner is honestly genius. Now I'm realizing how over-engineered that Amazon Go shop is.

Can you buy an AR? Nope. Nuff said

Bro, with all due respect, – I cannot call your food choices healthy. At least from what I see in the video.

I live in the Koreatown neighborhood of LA. One of the few walk friendly places here. I make it a point to do daily or semi-daily grocery shopping. We found we spend a lot less on food and throw away a lot less. In fact, when I broke my foot, our food budget went up nearly twice as much. Cars really are more expensive. Obviously that was us, it can different for others, and if I am being honest there was some depression food in there. However, I even remember our budget going down by around 25%-50% once I did the daily shopping thing.

I wanna live in Amsterdam so bad 😢

Going to AH and getting a half loaf of bread kinda blew my American mind. Being able to easily shop for one person while studying abroad was sooo nice.

For anyone pointing out that representing American grocery stores with Costco is disingenuous, you're not understanding the point. The grocery stores themselves are not much different from what we have here. The issue is the infrastructure around the stores. When land use is as highly segregated as in the US, most people are forced to drive to the grocery store. The act of getting in your car, driving to the store (probably hit some red lights along the way), parking, and then doing all that in reverse after you finally get to buy your groceries is the real problem. Of course we're going to buy things in bulk when it's such an inconvenient experience. It doesn't matter if that store is Costco or Trader Joe's, the experience of having to drive there or take an unpleasant and possibly unsafe bike ride there is not ideal.

It's similar in the UK. Around the 90s gazillions of out-of-town retail parks were built mimicking the US(?) but over the last two decades the high street has made a comeback as people moved to doing small regular shops instead of one huge shop at a megastore. Tesco, Sainsbury's and now Morrisons have a huge network of tiny shops ('local', 'metro') in close proximity instead of a flagship superstore out of town. Interestingly Walmart aka ASDA is still sticking to the massive carpark type deal.

I LIKE ALL TYPES OF GROCERY SHOPPING!

Omg my family and I lived near a Kroger and the results were HEAVENLY. I miss that about living in Cinci. Now our parents moved back to West Chester where we need to drive for everything. Ugh

But…. how DO you buy groceries?
Sorry, showing myself out right away.

I’m sorry, who goes to Costco for a weekly shop? I get his point but Costco is like a 3 times a year trip

Being in Winnipeg, this makes me miss hitting an AH after getting off the tram so damn much.

LMFAO, one of my first questions to my friend in Tokyo was, "Well what if you need to buy a lot at the grocery store?"

Vegetable Jewellers 🤣 yes I agree, wester countries are all part of corporatism keeping people spending forever to do things like shopping, the amount of things inside are massive keeping you inside looking forever for what u wanted… Almost like IKEA…

Hahahaha this is so funny – I never forget the first day I arrived in Canada, I plopped my stuff in a small hotel room downtown and went shopping for groceries, looking forward to my first dinner as part of my new adventure. So I walked around all of downtown and – COULDN'T FIND A DECENT GROCERY STORE…!!! I finally ended up at a 7-11 or Mac's Milk and got some pepperonis and chips, and that was it…

I like you’re content however this is a very biased take, you show multiple examples that support your claim in a city environment, and pick the most extreme example for North America in a suburban environment. In Toronto there are lots of small grocery stores, specialty shops, shops that only sell farmers goods, and also TONS of farmers markets that pop up in parking lots, squares, somewhere in the city all summer. I’ve travelled European suburbs and I’ve visited grocery stores that are practically identical to Nofrills, Metro, Sobeys and other North American grocery stores.

There's a grocery store in my dorm. However, I think that's pretty rare here in America.

I so much love Albert Hejin and those smal train station shops, the stuff they have there is so unbelivably awesome like the moist banana bread or the fresh almond pates.

When I bought my house I made sure that it was relatively close to grocery stores. I walk/bike every couple of days to pick up only what I need for a particular recipe. It gives me a purpose to bike. I like it.

Thanks!