Brits nip to the shop to buy milk. What do Americans buy?

[Fordian]

As in, we nip down the local Tesco metro to buy milk, bread, wine or beer.

What would an American nip down to buy?

And how far away is if?

Mine's a 2 minute drive.

@BertieBotts I've never really got the hang of buying milk in mainland Europe.

Is refrigerated milk as rare as hen's teeth?

I regard a trip to a big grocery store (overseas or otherwise) as a bit of a tourist activity. I just get 80% of our food delivered or walk to a small place to top up.

I live at the top of a hill where two roads meet at the top but form a V and so due to the bend in the roads they are between a quarter and half a mile apart at the bottom. 500 metres down one road is a Co-Op which is like a large corner shop. You can pick up all the basics like bread, milk, butter, fizzy drinks, ice cream, frozen chips, a small selection of vegetables, crisps, cakes and a small collection of cleaning products. You don’t have a wide choice though with them only carrying one brand of most sauces. They also tend to be more expensive than most large supermarkets though most Co-Ops have a small hot food counter where you can get breakfast rolls, sausage rolls and Bridies (semicircular meat filled puff pastry).

700 metres down the other side is a large supermarket where we can get anything.
Alcohol can only be sold between 10am and 10pm (Scotland) at any supermarket, corner shop, off license (liquor shop) and pub for takeaway. Pubs however can sell it to drink on the premises till 1am.

If we are just going for bread, milk, sandwich fillings or any small amount of shopping we say we’re nipping out for messages.

Well, when I lived in Alaska my nearest shop was 17 miles away so "popping to the shop" was not in my vocabulary. However, taking the rowing boat out to catch a salmon or halibut for supper was a frequent thing!

To be equally facetious, yes butter knifes, kitchen knives, swiss army knives and acid too in its varying forms ... We have a knife problem here, which has been addressed with a ZERO tolerance policy ie caught with a knife in the street its prison ...plus im struggling to remember when a knife slaughtered 16 kids to death in 5 minutes.

London there is a corner shop a minute walk away I usually buy spices, garlic, bin bags and freddos there. I used to get the paper too but now have an online subscription now

Two minute drive from my home to the local (chain) store. Milk, bread, eggs....you know, just stuff.

Yes I remember that while on honeymoon and so expensive.

We give too much attention to Americas ways.
Over the years, none have been good. Let’s stop American ways. We’re nearer to France and don’t seem to have the same attraction to France.

That is so cool!

I live walking distance to many shops but am just not a 'popper outerer'. I'll go to great lengths to make do with what I have rather than go out for just 1 or 2 things. My partner is the opposite and has been known to go out 3 times over the course of 1 meal prep, because he keeps forgetting things.

I live in a small town and you should have seen the brouhahah ten years ago when the Dollar Tree came to town. Talk about your NIMBY's. Petitions, letters to the editor and an overwhelming identity crisis. What kind of a town do we want to be? What if people drive through and see it? What will they think of us?

We give too much attention to Americas ways.
Over the years, none have been good. Let’s stop American ways.

This is comedy gold.

Well, they're not wrong. Equally the US has given too much to England, not just our ways but also our talent and treasure.

😱😂😂

Americans have supermarkets and small neighbourhood shops just the same as we do. Some distances may be longer. Don't tell me you drive 2 minutes down the road!?!?!
As for booze buying, it is only relatively recently you can buy alcohol in the supermarkets. You used to have to go to the off sales or to a licensed grocer which was a specialist shop. I am speaking about up to the 2000s.So only for the past 20 years have you been able to buy alcohol almost everywhere. And haven't you noticed that alcohol is fenced off in the supermarket after 10.00pm and before 10.00am as it is not allowed to be sold then? Pubs used to close at 9.00pm - even in the 1990s in some places. And when I started drinking in pubs legally in the 1980s, many pubs wouldn't serve women, and if they did, a woman couldn't buy beer or drink their drink anywhere but in the lounge or snug! No women's toilets either, had to use gents or go next door to local restaurant!!

The presence of small neighborhood shops in the US very much depends on where you are. They have long disappeared from the area where I live, unless you count "convenience stores" that are always part of a chain and whose primary purpose is to sell gasoline.

As for driving, I asked DH to time the drive to our closest grocery store; it's a few seconds less than three minutes. It is certainly walking distance. But we have been having days where the temperature is over 100 F and the heat index even higher. No way are we going to walk in that heat. I've been getting my exercise by walking up and down the stairs to adjust the air conditioning.

Just wanted to add you can't but guns in my local supermarkets.
Not every State has easy purchase laws for them.

I’m British and live in walking distance to shops but have never nipped to a shop for milk (I don’t drink it) or bread <loses citizenship>

@Mirw Licensing laws are different in different parts of the UK. In England you’ve been able to buy alcohol in supermarkets for a long time, certainly since the 80s when I started buying. They may have had to have a separate checkout but that was no longer the case by the early 90s. And most supermarkets in England have been able to sell alcohol anytime they’re open to the public for nearly 20 years. In Scotland I believe off-license sale are restricted from 10 - 10.

Whether you walk or drive in the US is very much weather related. When I lived in Los Angeles near the coast, I walked all the time. The weather was almost always beautiful. Even an hour walk was really nothing and I just made walking part of my schedule. It was wonderful.

where I live now, we get regular warnings in both the summer and the winter to limit time outdoors to no more than a couple of minutes because of the extreme temperatures. It has been 105 degrees with high humidity and a max uv index very frequently this summer. In the winter we will get warnings about 2 minutes of time outside causing frostbite to any exposed skin. Walking is not an option regardless of distance. Why do we live in this place that must be one of the circles of hell? Nearby family, affordable housing, and amazing public schools. We also have quite nice supermarkets with very fresh produce and good quality meat because much of it is grown locally.

Walking distance also depends on local infrastructure. I've been places where the nearest shops are definitely less than a 5-minute walk, but there are no pavements and it's genuinely unsafe.

This is very true for where I live in the US. Our neighborhood has no sidewalks, so to walk to the store, you have to walk in the street. So much of the US is designed for cars rather than feet.

I was waiting for someone to reply to their uneducated comment. We don't sell machetes and acid in our grocery stores, but they sell guns and wonder why kids get shot at their desks in schools?

Anyway. I lived through an American autumn/winter one year and was fascinated by their shops. There was no such thing as 'popping', you had to plan a 30 minute shopping trip even just for milk and tea bags. Their produce was crappy though so it required 3 shops and a farmer's market to get some decent vegetables that tasted right. Petrol stations had snacks and occasionally little cartons of milk but even they were a good 10-15 minute drive away.

Er, the only grocery store that sells guns, in my experience, is Walmart.

In my area, one issue is that the main commercial roads are basically dual carriageways that are difficult to cross. And of course, if you live too far from the shopping areas. I can walk, though. Transit oriented planning and walkability are priorities for new development.

In the suburbs the supermarkets do tend to be huge and take forever, and cater to the once a week style of shopping.

How dare you say tesco metro everyone knows its big tesco or little tesco.

I’m presuming you live in some quaint Scottish backwater. The law allowing alcohol to be sold in supermarkets was passed in 1962. If local licensing permits, alcohol can be sold (and is) 24 hours a day, certainly in England. And when I started drinking in the early 1970s, I don’t recall any pubs that refused to serve women, segregated them or didn’t provide women’s toilets.