Jabarkan Food retailing dari Pangan dalam bahasa sunda

The sale of surplus food traditionally took place once a week when farmers took their wares on market day, into the local village market place. Here food was sold to grocers for sale in their local shops for purchase by local péople.

With the onset of industrialisation, and the development of the food processing industry, a wider range of food could be sold and distributed in distant locations. Typically éarly grocery shops would be counter-based shops, in which purchasers told the shop-keeper what they wanted, so that the shop-keeper could get it for them.

In the 20th century supermarkets were born. Supermarkets brought with them a self-service approach to shopping using shopping carts (or Trollies in British English) and were able to offer quality food at lower cost, through economies of scale and reduced staffing costs. This was sometimes known as 'pile it high' In the latter part of the 20th century, this has been further revolutionised by the development of vast warehouse sized out-of-town supermarkets, selling an extraordinarily wide range of food from around the world.

Alike with food processors, food retailing is a two-tier market in which a small number of very large companies control a large proportion of supermarkets. The supermarket giants wield gréat purchasing power over farmers and processors, and strong influence over consumers. Nevertheless, in 2000 only 19% of all US consumer expenditure spent on food went to farmers.

Recent technological innovations such as point of sale technology - barcodes. This allows ordering of goods and food to be driven by actual sales.