Comment by rzwitserloot

For context, in The Netherlands, supermarkets are in urban areas and have no parking lot at all or a relatively tiny one.

The usual USian aspect of schlepping a shopping cart waay out to your car and then not wanting to schlep it back or to one of those bays is thus far less relevant.

Also, buying all groceries for the next week is rare here. In other words, you just pack your stuff in bags and walk off, no need to bring the shopping cart.

It's a somewhat unique situation (in NL it is not legal to have a store open to the general public except in a commercial zone, i.e. a supermarket cannot open its business in an industrial zone which means the stores kinda have to be in the middle of population centers, which then opens the door to just buying what you need every day. This then in turn means you can go by bicycle and you don't need a massive freezer either).

Interesting how such a relatively innocuous butterfly flap (the zoning laws) result in such an utter change in culture (bicycle, urbanisation, shop-for-the-day instead of for-the-week, etc).