The death of the supermarket is a tragedy, even for foodies like me

Next year will mark 70 years since Britain’s first supermarket started trading, when the “London Co-operative Society” threw open its doors in east London. Housewives tentatively picked up baskets and began selecting items from the shelves, rather than waiting for the shopkeeper to serve them. Little did they know that a revolution had begun.

Since then, supermarkets have multiplied and grown bigger, but now their seemingly unstoppable march is faltering. A trio of manufacturing giants – Unilever, Mars, and Reckitt Benckiser – have announced that they will start selling items directly to consumers through a digital platform, set to launch in the UK next year. They plan to make hundreds of household favourites available at a much lower cost, some up to a third cheaper, since the brands will be cutting out the middleman.

On the face of it, this sounds like good news: lower prices, and the supermarkets’ overweening power is challenged at last.

For years the chuntering classes have bemoaned these behemoths: supermarkets kill off high streets, encourage waste with their BOGOF offers and fussiness about fruit shapes, and bankrupt farmers by their brutal business practices. I admit to being among those chunterers. I use my local butcher, village shop and market and gripe about visiting the supermarket.

But I’m a hypocrite, because in reality I’d be lost without it.

On Saturday, with friends arriving for the weekend, I planned to steer clear of the supermarket and use the village shop and market instead. Yet when I looked at my list – dog food, candles, wrapping paper, fresh fruit, a pumpkin – I realised that there was only one place where I could get it all, reasonably priced, in 40 minutes flat, without getting a parking ticket or a hernia.

Most obviously, supermarkets save us time and are open long hours, unlike high-street shops, which, too often, lock the doors in your face five minutes before closing time. They are cathedrals of choice, too: you can select economy or upmarket versions, shop ethically, eschewing brands whose products contain rainforest-wrecking palm oil, for example, and browse 30 different varieties of toothpaste. No wonder Boris Yeltsin, used to the privations of communism, said on a visit to a store in Texas in 1989 that “there would be a revolution” if the Russians knew what they were missing.

Yes, supermarkets encourage overspending: you pop in for a few basics and emerge with ingredients for paella, an intriguing new herb and some posh chocolates. But impulse buys add – literally – spice to our lives. Online shopping permits no such spontaneity. There are no gleaming arrays of plump fruit, no dazzling displays of cakes. It’s a dull, solitary experience: capitalism at its most efficient but joyless.

Supermarkets, by contrast, are sociable places. Living in the countryside and working from home can make spontaneous social interactions a rarity, but on the occasions when I don’t encounter a friend in the food aisle, I can rely on the cashier for a friendly chat.

The demise of supermarkets might spark scant sympathy, even schadenfreude, but, like old-fashioned pubs, cheesy comedians, and other phenomena we loved to hate, we will miss them when they’re gone.