Selling Fruit and Veg Before Supermarkets

 

At your General Meeting on 1/2/ 2025, John Barnao gave a fascinating and personal account of the history of greengrocers:

The arrival of the big, air-conditioned shopping centres in the 1970s resulted in a decline in many traditional, neighbourhood businesses.

This trend towards ‘shopping under one roof’ began a movement which today continues to impact local butchers and milk bars, as well as other ‘older-style’ retail traders.

John took a historically-based, nostalgic look at the lay-out and culture of the small, family-run, mainly-Italian fruit shops that were once commonly found in most shopping strips.

There was particular emphasis on the expansion of these businesses during the Banana Boom of the 1920s which arose from a newly-discovered process that controlled ripening using ethaline gas. 

Characteristic of this era of fruit shops was their simplicity and the colourful ‘pyramid stacking’, used to display the produce.

The presentation included slides of suburban, country-Victoria and NSW shops, highlighting the use of decimal vs imperial  price tags, weighing equipment, period-signage, leather aprons, cash registers and the now-redundant, solid wooden boxes.

Source: John Barnao, 2025