Like sholio

[conuly]

I'm deeply curious as to whether or not you're familiar with veggie misters in the produce section. (Do click over to read the comments/answer the poll, at least.)

On a related grocery + environmentalism note, in NYC dairy products in grocery stores are most often sold from open refrigerated sections. I sometimes wonder why they don't all have doors or, as some stores do, clear plastic flaps to keep some of the cool in. Wouldn't that save the store money in the long run? (Our store used to, when I was a kid, sell all the eggs and milk from a refrigerated room. Brr! It was good to go in there on a very hot day, just stand there for a while.)

Comments

[sholio]

I do kinda wonder about the difference between the open coolers and the ones with doors. Our primary local grocery chain has both -- most refrigerated items (eggs, butter, lunch meat, etc) are in open refrigerated compartments, but the milk and other most-perishable dairy (whipping cream and the like) is behind glass doors, and so is the refrigerated beer.

What really wig me out, though, are the open, doorless freezer bins. You tend to get seasonal or rapidly-rotated stuff in those, like Thanksgiving turkeys or impulse-buy stuff like microwave burritos and french fries. I've mainly seen them in places like Wal-Mart. It always seems inefficient and also like it wouldn't keep things frozen, but maybe the cold air really does stay in there.

[conuly]

I have never seen open, doorless freezer bins and find the idea a little terrifying.

[sholio]

They're usually in the middle of the aisle and horizontal, with the top open. I also second the "nope" but I guess they must work or they wouldn't use them, at least you'd hope so ...

[conuly]

They do say cold air sinks. I guess.

midwestern US

[bibliofile]

The horizontal, open-air freezer bins used to be standard in grocery stores. I think stores started going with plastic hanging strips and then closed-door bins in the '90s, maybe? As ways to cut costs further. Meanwhile, when my flatmate and I couldn't sleep because it was too hot, we'd walk to the nearest grocery store and yes, spend time looking at the frozen sections.

Re: midwestern US

[conuly]

The 90s seems pretty late. I was doing the shopping by 1995. Maybe it's regional?

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

I think it's a legacy of old equipment and labor costs. Doors can break and repair bills aren't cheap. But in close to capacity areas, cooler blankets are a thing, mostly aimed at stores that only have a few of the lidded units.

It really depends on how kilowatt hours are billed and if there is upfront money/refund offsets. No idea about the return on investment, but often places aren't sure what products would work (see, legacy equipment) or if someone is trying to flimflam them.

[cesy]

I see upright freezers with doors, and horizontal freezers with no lids, in a lot of places. I suspect they sell more if people can see it without opening a door, and that may balance out the cooling costs. Refrigerated sections vary, larger supermarkets tend to have open sections, smaller ones tend to have sliding doors or opening doors. Smaller places are also more likely to have sliding lids on the chest freezers.

[crystalpyramid]

And if they sell more, it's ok if things go bad faster since they'll rotate faster.

[highlyeccentric]

I have HEARD of veggie misters, but never seen one!

[conuly]

Fascinating!

When I was a kid, I used to love running my hand under them when they were going.

[aim_of_destiny]

for context: i'm in germany, so all my grocery store experience is from here. i don't think anyone in their right mind has ever called the climate here 'dry'.

i've seen a veggie mister in maybe two stores in my life. they were both high-end grocery stores, in the 2010s.
vegetables aren't usually refrigerated here. you get both 'nude' and plastic-wrapped veggies (and i've noticed the 'organic' cucumbers always have the plastic wrap while the regular ones don't. go figure)

the vast majority of stores put sliding glass lids on their freezers. there's usually open upright cooling for some things (like deli meats, cheeses, etc.) but as often as not you get those with doors as well. quite often you'll see both in the same store, even.

when i was a kid (...in the 90s) there was no such thing as lids or doors on cold storage in grocery stores. iirc, the horizontal freezer units got replaced with lidded versions first, and the doors on upright cooling units started appearing... maybe 2000-2010? i may be remembering wrong.

[conuly]

The regular cucumbers are waxed, maybe?

[aim_of_destiny]

i... don't think they are? they're just regular cucumbers as pulled from the field, sometimes with extraneous bits and/or dirt still attached.

[conuly]

Then I got nuthin'.

The comment I just left sholio

[redbird]

"Seen, and disliked:

The groceries that have them mist things they really shouldn't--most obviously, packages that are wrapped in plastic, and things like onions and potatoes that are more likely to rot if kept damp.

I don't mind having to dry the vegetables and fruit I bring home from outdoor markets on a rainy day. I do mind having to dry supermarket produce. It's not easy to dry a head of lettuce, or bunch of herbs, on the kitchen counter."

Re: The comment I just left sholio

[conuly]

I've never seen a grocery store so incompetent it misted the onions, let alone anything in plastic! But if you've seen it, I believe you.

As for drying the darn things, I don't usually find that a problem, but if it IS a problem on a particular day I've used a variation of the Crescent Dragonwagon solution: fold up into a light towel or clean dishcloth, whirl over your head on the porch. For optimum results, sing some sort of battle song and pretend you're using a sling. (Skip that last step if you're prone to going overboard, or you'll end up with cilantro and dill all over the dirty ground.)

Re: The comment I just left sholio

[marahmarie]

The misting makes most produce (especially lacy green produce) rot faster, too, which is mostly why I resent it. That it's wet and must be bagged to keep it from dampening other things in the basket is bad enough. The stuff costs enough without going bad/slimy/moldy faster than it should.

All the stores I've shopped in over the last five or so years mist lacy green things and some other produce, so Winn-Dixie, Walmart, Publix, the organic market I live at while everyone thinks I'm in Publix.

All do or have done (the nearest WD closed; I don't shop the others) open milk/butter cases though just a few weeks ago my Publix put doors over the milk, though not the butter, while WD and Walmart do open freezer bins (WD's are down the middle of the main freezer aisle, Walmart's are throughout the back of the store back by the meat, dairy, and so on).

[wpadmirer]

I've never seen a store where the dairy products were enclosed!

[maureenlycaon_dw]

WinCo where I live (southern California) keeps all milk enclosed behind glass doors. But butter and yogurt are still in open horizontal bins.

[pauraque]

The grocery store near me used to have dairy and other refrigerated things in open cases, but recently (like, last week) had doors put in. So clearly someone was aware of the options and thought doors were worth the expense.

[conuly]

Good for them.

[thekumquat]

I'm in England. Eggs here aren't refrigerated in shops. Milk is sometimes behind doors (especially in stores that dont sell so much) but usually on cage racks in an area with cold blowing down. Lots of shops have recently invested in shiny glass doors on their meat and other fridges and lids or doors on the freezers - probably partly to save energy costs and also because the energy efficiency of buildings is public info. I've never seen veg misted here - the climate is damp enough - but have in posh French and German supermarkets and in UAE.

[conuly]

Eggs in the US are refrigerated because we wash the eggs before sale, destroying their protective layer, and also because we don't routinely vaccinate our chickens against salmonella.

[thekumquat]

Our eggs weren't refrigerated even before salmonella vaccination. The washing thing is odd as we never see visible dirt on our eggs any more - are they washed only more gently, I wonder? (wanderers off to the Internet...)

[monanotlisa]

LOL. See my answer in Sholio's DW.

[alexcat]

One of our loval grocery stores remodeled a few years ago and put in a cold room that houses all the veggies that need to be cooled. It's an open room but it is cold as heck int here. Another of our local stores has a mister... and when it's getting ready to mist, they have the sound of thunder to warn customers that the mist is getting ready to come out.

[rachelkachel]

Mine has the thunder, too. When it was first installed they had flashing lights as well, but thankfully they stopped using those.

[conuly]

Honestly, I think a thunderclap is going overboard. Perhaps a light chime?

[maju]

I loathe those misters! (And I see them a lot.) We live in a very humid climate so I really don't see the necessity, and I hate having to leave the vegetables out on the counter to dry off before I can put them away.

Two of our nearby supermarkets keep milk and other dairy products on open cold shelves, but the one we mostly shop at keeps all dairy products behind glass doors. I've had milk go off before the sell by/use by date from both, so it doesn't seem to make a difference whether there are doors or not.

[conuly]

I think NYC is pretty humid, but I don't find that my herbs and greens need that much drying before they go in the fridge....

[maju]

I really dislike putting fresh produce in the fridge if it's at all damp. Maybe that's just me though.

[senmut]

Re: Horizontal freezer boxes - They are a PILL but quicker to repair than the uprights. Having worked for WalMart, every one of them is supposed to be temp-checked regularly.

In regards to the milks and dairies... someone told me that if they are all on the same refrigerator line, they can partly regulate temperature between freezing, very cold, and merely cold enough by the top of door or plastic or lack of same over it. And all the dairy products have different 'keep at x temp' recommendations.

Don't know how much stock to put in that, though.

[cactuswatcher]

I remember employees spraying veggies with water by hand in the produce section of supermarkets years before there were automatic misters near me. I don't think they hand sprayed head lettuce which can quickly rot. Misters would keep the wrapped veggies cooler, if that was an issue. But yes I think I saw misters long, long ago.

As long as the milk and other most perishables are in an open section that is closed on the bottom and the four sides, the loss of cold isn't that dramatic. That would have worked better back when most people were getting milk, and dairy delivered to their door, and the big stores had no need to stack milk on racks up any walls, like you see these days. (The air-conditioned baseball park in Phoenix can have the roof open on extremely hot days for the same reason, hot air rises, cold air tries to stay low. When I was a kid, my mother had a used ice cream store freezer as her kitchen freezer. The top was mostly four large rectangular openings. Flippable lids covered each of the freezer openings completely but they were not attached to the freezer in any way and certainly did not seal the openings tight. There was no noticeable cold in the air until you reached down in.)

[darkoshi]

When I first read your post, I was thinking misters as in people, ie... "green giant".

It's a minor annoyance, but what I don't like about the misters is that I have to shake the water off the produce before putting it in a produce bag or in my cart, and it makes my hands wet so I have to wipe my hands on my clothes to dry them off.

One of the down-sides of doors on refrigerated & frozen sections is that they may mist up when the doors are frequently opened and closed, and then you can't see what's inside without opening the doors, making the problem worse. That's why I've always assumed that some sections don't have them - those being the sections that presumably get more frequent use.

[conuly]

One of the down-sides of doors on refrigerated & frozen sections is that they may mist up when the doors are frequently opened and closed, and then you can't see what's inside without opening the doors, making the problem worse.

True.

[marahmarie]

When I first read your post, I was thinking misters as in people, ie... "green giant".

I thought the same thing (not "green giant", though: "green Misters", literally green men going by the moniker of Mister. I was like, is this a new flavor of grocery employee? What do they do? *hand out green food samples* OMG)

So I re-read the post like five times, then had to read through a few comments to finally get what conuly meant.

[marahmarie]

It's a minor annoyance, but what I don't like about the misters is that I have to shake the water off the produce before putting it in a produce bag or in my cart, and it makes my hands wet so I have to wipe my hands on my clothes to dry them off.

Hear, hear. Not to mention I feel like I need to buy a salad spinner for things that aren't salad because otherwise I'm standing in my kitchen hand-drying leaves and stems with paper towels. It wastes time and money just to keep produce from going slimy/spoiling faster.

[rachelkachel]

Doors on coolers: my store used to only have doors on the freezer, and the cooler was just open. At night there were screens we had to pull down to insulate a bit more, but I'm sure it still wasted energy like crazy. A few years later they upgraded us to doors.

I assume it's a struggle between costs and convenience. For the same reason you don't want to put security devices on products unless you really have to - it's one more barrier to a sale. A small one, though, and they must have decided it was better to have the doors.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the commercial grocery stores have them - Safeway, QFC, probably Wal-Mart, though I don't shop there. Costco doesn't have them; it has a refrigerated room which is kept too cold, so the produce tends to go bad pretty quickly. The local farm stores don't have either sprinklers or refrigerated rooms; their produce is the freshest and best, but also the priciest.

[conuly]

Ack, too cold is worse than not cold enough!

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

So true; it's pretty-much freezer-burned before you buy it.

I'm trying to commit to only buying local produce and free-range eggs this year anyway. Even if it's more expensive, I want to support the local food-producers, because they're the ones who'll be producing the food if the Olympic Peninsula ever gets shut off from the mainland by natural disaster and/or martial law.

If our well had a solar pump and a battery (which could be obtained,) I could grow as much food here as I needed no matter what. I've planned for that, but it would take me a couple years to really tool up for it, especially if I was doing it all on my own. But unless it was really necessary, I'd much prefer to buy eggs, produce, etc. from the local folk who are better than I am at raising them - which is not a very high bar.

[conuly]

You particularly expecting martial law to be imposed in the next few years? I know things are bad in the government, but. Or you just like to hope for the best and plan for the worst?

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

If we get into a war with Russia or China, the Pacific Northwest will be the front line. We have Whidbey Naval Air Station on Whidbey Island, the nuclear stockpile on Indian Island, Bangor nuclear sub base, the Naval shipyard in Bremerton; plus the Strait of Juan de Fuca is both our border with Canada, and where all our international shipping comes through to Seattle and Tacoma. The Olympic Peninsula has both a lot of potential bottlenecks, where shutting down a single road would block all east-west traffic, and a very long international border made of nothing but water, that can never be effectively secured because it's only about 25 miles across to Canada. So, yes, I do think that martial law, or some aspects of it, could easily be imposed on my community, and my community would be likely to take it fairly quietly. I'd take it quietly myself, and play my Fishin' Wild Life credentials for all they were worth - which is more than one might think; people respect the hat and jacket.