Amuse bouche... Ethnic Aisle
Declan was the kind of supermarket owner who liked to be on the floor. He knew other supermarket guys who spent most of their time in the office, with the door closed, and maybe a few TV screens showing what was happening on the floor, but not Declan.
There was a couple having an argument in aisle five. The husband had a bottle of what Declan now called “western” soy sauce in his hand, while the wife had a giant bottle of what Declan now knew as the real McCoy. It was the same price as what the husband had, but three times as big and much nicer. Declan knew his soy sauce at this stage.
Declan had started stocking the giant bottles of soy sauce a few months earlier. The Filipina nurses working in the old-folks home across the road had requested it. They were awful nice, those girls, and very loyal customers. The small supermarket needed loyal customers, and Declan had discovered that so long as he kept the stocks high of oxtail, aubergine, green beans and spinach, they kept coming back. If he wasn’t the kind of guy who was always on the floor, he mightn’t have noticed, and he’d never have eavesdropped that they’d also buy mung beans and papaya and shrimp paste, if he had them in stock. He had them in stock now.
Two of the cheekier nurses asked Declan to source a specific brand of soy sauce and when he got it in, they brought him some lumpia, these only gorgeous spring rolls. They also said that they knew some Thai nurses in the regional hospital that would definitely make the trip to Declan’s supermarket if he got in a particular type of curry paste and sticky rice. Declan thought rice wasn’t supposed to be sticky; but you live and learn. Particularly in the supermarket game.
Declan had the immigrantnurse market sewn up across the county by now; they came from all over. He even had a biteen of an African section on the go, and what he called his “authentic” products were almost taking over what he used to called the “foreign” aisle. The huge bottles of soy sauce, the spring roll wrappers, the different rices, sauces, weird sweets, and cans of the sweetest fizzy drinks he’d ever tasted, were slowly taking over the shelves.
He only had a small offering of the European-produced stir-fry sauces and jars now. Not even the Irish regulars really wanted them any more, not when they could have the more exciting stuff. The wife was winning the soy sauce argument, he noticed, if only on the basis of value. And because she’d told the husband that Declan also did a line in good-value Asian beer.