It's not so much 'the way they were', rather, I'd prefer to live in a small town with a butchers, bakers, and grocers, so that I'm spending my money in the local economy, and that I'm getting higher quality produce, and back to the original post, shops that are within reasonable walking distance. The number of towns or villages in my area that have this are vanishingly small.

In fact, my medium sized town (20-30,000 people) has no butchers or bakers left. It also does not have a town centre supermarket. It does however have McDonalds, Burger King, Starbucks, Costa, kebab shops, and so on. You can probably guess correctly, that my local town centre is like ghost town.

It is extremely depressing that the UK is becoming like this, whilst at the same time planning rules and regulations (or lack thereof) are encouraging the centralization of shopping habits into large supermarkets in the chase for profits by the house builders.

Well, McDonalds, Costa, etc. provide jobs to locals, especially young people. That's the local economy as much as other shops.

Independent butchers and grocers have mostly disappeared because they are expensive and less convenient. Places were you can still find some are usually either 'posh' or where the local demographics has special meat/dietary requirements, shall we say...

The advantage of an independent butcher is that you can order in advance or ask them to source/prepare special things (in my experience that's the only way to find fresh lamb kidneys, for instance). But that is less and less the case, and people are less and less interested. And, again, it is much more expensive.

Those big chains drain money from the local economy though. Small independent stores only send the cost of supplies/restocking out of the local economy. Chains mean there is continuously less money circulating in the town and requires people who import money from other local economies. Having chains in your town means that within a generation or two, the town will be effectively dead and hardly ever grow.

> Having chains in your town means that within a generation or two, the town will be effectively dead and hardly ever grow.

This is not true in the US. There are lots of places with chains (everywhere?) that are growing.

This is true for suburbs because the money comes from outside of the local economy since those people mostly commute to work. For actual small towns, nowhere near a large city, it's quite a different story, almost reminiscent of a 3rd world country.

> Those big chains drain money from the local economy though

Exactly, all revenue goes back to HQ, and then off to somewhere else.

In some cases being part of a large company means the smaller branches that don't barely break even stay open and it's "good" for those towns in boom years.

But as soon as there's an economic downturn, they are the first stores to be closed.

> Well, McDonalds, Costa, etc. provide jobs to locals, especially young people. That's the local economy as much as other shops.

McDonald's and the rest provide very low wage jobs to locals while leveraging their economies of scale to undercut local competitors on price, while all the profits go into the balance sheet of a company that's headquartered far away, sometimes in a different country.

They are precisely not the local economy as much as those other shops for that reason.

> McDonald's and the rest provide very low wage jobs to locals

They don't provide lower wages than independent shops for similar positions, it's all above board, and they are happy to hire students. I am not convince that they price competitors out, either.

The industry is hard and opening a restaurant or coffeeshop is very hard. I think the thing is that the like of McDonald's and Costa are expert and know how it works, while the person who "always dreamed of opening their own coffeeshop" might not be realistic about what's required.

Also, these days people work far away for customers that are possibly all over the world. They use their money to buy products that come from all over the world. So what does 'local economy' mean? Providing local jobs is good whoever does it.

I think McDonald's are often franchises so they are local busineses even if of course they have to pay to the "mothership".

> McDonald's and the rest provide very low wage jobs to locals

I know this is about the UK, but just as an FYI, in the US, small service sector employers provide an even lower wage because they rarely offer tax advantaged benefits that big businesses can offer, such as subsidized health insurance premiums paid with pre tax income, and paying for retirement savings/public transit/daycare/life insurance/etc with pre tax income.

It is amazing the advantages big businesses have that can afford the time and money expenses of the paperwork for providing those tax advantaged benefits.

Interesting. In my country (Poland), pretty much most of the benefits and perks are taxed as income, so there is no tax advantage in paying employees with them instead of cash.

Yes, the US is extremely corrupt in how it tilts working for a big employer more advantageous over a small employer.

We weren't always like that, the laws started changing in this direction maybe 10 years ago. Before that, everyone with a decent job was getting a company car, an now company cars are only given for people who actually travel a lot on the job, and everyone else prefers the extra cash instead of the company car.

BTW the laws weren't changed to level the playing field for small companies, it was just our equivalent of IRS fixing loopholes to bring in more tax money.

I must be fortunate then, as my closest local butcher that have to drive to, is generally cheaper than my regular supermarket.

Supermarkets aren't exactly strangers to price fixing and ripping off customers. Once you've driven off the local competition, you can set your prices to whatever you want. My area is known for high petrol prices, controlled by guess who? Local supermarkets. Drive a few miles and it's 5p per litre cheaper.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2007/dec/08/supermarket...

https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/results/why-its-so-hard-to-prove...

McDonald's jobs are dead end and low pay, suitable only for kids. Butcher, baker, etc. are skilled life-long careers.

France has really got it right, in my opinion. I don't know how much they subsidize local business, or what their incentives are for training, or if it's just their cultural attachment to good food, but I've traveled across France and never seen a village of over 300 people that didn't have a butcher, a green grocery / dairy shop and at least two kinds of bakeries. Of course there's always a huge Carrefour within driving distance, but even that is stunningly high quality compared with even supermarkets in other countries in Europe (let alone the wretched quality of counter service at supermarkets in the US).

Well, actually France is one of the most successful markets for McDonald's.

France does not subsidise local business. In fact France is not business-friendly at all.

The French like quality food (and they also like McDonald's) and thus there is a viable market for it. That's all. It's the same in Spain or Italy, for instance.

Looking forward or Amazon deliveries to my lounge, and generative AI TV shows that go forever. Also AI generated events such has the superbowl. Everyday!