My first trip to the supermarché

Since almost all stores are closed on Sundays in France, I was told it'd be a good idea to get my grocery shopping done on Saturday. Taking that advice, I went to Carrefour (probably the French equivalent to Super Target or Walmart, but on a smaller scale). Getting off the metro, there was no mistaking where the store was because a mass of people all carrying a rolling grocery tote/caddy seemed to head in the same direction-- directly to the Carrefour entrance.

In the store, it was rather chaotic, but beyond that, things were well organized, there were plenty of choices of brands (three full aisles of

cheese, two full aisles of yogurt!), and a lot of in-store marketing

signage and tools--maybe even more than we see in some stores in the States.

Grabbing a rolling caddy myself, I wandered through the store and started shopping. After saying "Pardon / Excusez-moi" a few too many times, I finally got used to weaving in and out of the crowded aisles, and was on my way!

This Carrefour was rather new, and it had some neat technology updates to help with the shopper and the staff. The first thing I noticed was the electronic price tags. All items stocked on the shelf could easily be read by the shopper and could easily be changed by the store if there was a price change or promotion. It also, I'm sure, saves tons of paper because I'm so used to seeing the millions of yellow 'low price' tags plastered near every product at King Soopers!

The second thing I noticed was that a lot of shoppers had scanning devices, similar to the size of a TV remote control that they were using to scan every item they placed in their cart. Later on, I realized that there was a station at the front of the store called Rapid'Ticket, where shoppers could sign up to use the device to scan all items they put it in their cart. The even cooler thing is that when they were ready to check out, they simply went to a special cashier line (which was also a lot shorter than the regular line on a busy Saturday) and they got their bill within seconds. Also, since everyone seems to bring their own bags or rolling carts, they didn't even have to unpack their items-- they could simply just charge their card, get their receipt, and they were on their way. I'll have to try it next time I go.