Latino Foods No Longer “Ethnic”

Grocery stores across the country are moving typically “Latino” foods out of the ethnic food aisle and mixing them in amongst the other, culturally void foodstuffs. You, of course, already know of Wal-Mart’s new Supermercado chain, which aims at catering to Mexicans and Mexican-Americans throughout the Southwest. ‘Specially if they’re fat and low to the ground. Another Wal-Mart company, Sam’s Club, is set to open up Mas - a series of wholesale markets targeted towards the Latino consumer.

In the South, Publix supermarkets (where shopping is a pleasure) are opening Publix Sabor stores in Florida and Georgia to cater to Cubans, Puerto Ricans and other Latinos. Of course, Miamians have always enjoyed shopping at Cuban-owned Sedano’s supermarkets.

Many of these stores also feature signage in both English and Spanish to accommodate Latino shoppers.

This new type of market wasn’t created simply out of love of Latinos; it’s meant to draw the estimated 34% of Latino grocery shoppers who look outside their primary chain grocery store in search of specific foods. 

Which we think is a good thing. As one Wal-Mart spokesperson put it, it’s vital to their business and to their image among consumers to be able to modify stores to fit the area they serve - like offering a hitching post near a large Amish population in Ohio. We have always felt that the label “ethnic foods” was a little odd. It seems to say that anything that isn’t white and essentially American is an “other,” and will somehow always be foreign and strange and not fit into the mainstream. So we’re glad that Latino food is no longer seemed as something that exists among an alien, fringe group or an unknown other lurking among the grocery shelves and asking for stranger concoctions like “frijoles, “tortillas” or “esteak.”

Why not call it the “Global Food Aisle” if one needs to section off foods according to cultures and countries, y’know?

Hispanic foods moving out of the ethnic aisle [MSNBC]