We had driven past the corner shop with the bright orange signs many times and the name had intrigued me – The Good Chain. One Saturday morning, my children and I finally managed to check it out.
It turned out to be a smallish, but utterly captivating ‘super-market’ style fruits and vegetables store. To start with, they had wicker baskets loaded on wheels that my four-year-old son was delighted with – what a refreshing change from the usual shopping carts! So while he had a good time walking up and down with these, my daughter and I admired the large, candidly shot photographs of farmers that the chain does business with.
The store had displayed on neat charts, food kilometres that each of the vegetable and fruit varieties had travelled. My eight-year-old daughter had an interesting time guessing why locally grown stuff was good for her (and the environment!). I was taken quite by surprise too. I mean, I anticipated the whopping 600+ km for apples, but a 300 km+ for pomegranates? Don’t the villages around Bangalore have a single farm with pomegranates?
The store has fair trade practices in place and also distinguishes ‘bought from farmer’ and ‘bought from farmer’s friend’. My daughter of course wanted to fill our basket with produce from the farmer, when I explained why!
The half-hour that we spent at the store was surprisingly interesting and engaging – retail therapy!Do share your interesting shopping experiences too…
