Making A Shoppy Shop that Stands Apart

It’s widely held that the term “shoppy shop” was coined in 2022 on Tik-Tok by Neil Shankar, a tech designer in the Bay Area. It’s generally used to describe trendy, small boutique grocers or gift stores specializing in highly curated selections of artisanal foods, gourmet pantry staples and other unique goods.

Ironically, now that numerous such enterprises have been springing up, many are being accused of offering the same-old/same-old. One place that’s apparently managed to avoid that pitfall is the new Food Folk in San Francisco, which was profiled by San Francisco Chronicle Deputy Food & Wine Editor Elena Kadvany.

The store, Kadvany wrote, “is full of brands I have never seen before, some that are only sold there. I stopped by on a recent Sunday and left with a jar of velvety A2 sheep’s milk labneh from Los Angeles, cardamom-spiked pistachio butter from Portland and Little Truc fresh red curry paste that has ruined all other curry pastes for me.”

Kadvany noted that Food Folk joins several other shoppy shops in the region that have avoided the SO/SO trap, including Of All Places in Berkeley, Bernal Cutlery in San Francisco and the recently expanded pantry section inside Alkali Rye in Oakland.

A key ingredient such businesses need to make a go of it is to offer shoppers that elusive feel of a true treasure hunt, which does put added pressure on the buyers for such businesses.

“You go to the grocery store and you have a shopping list. That is so transactional,” Food Folk Co-owner Kevin Elmore told Kadvany. “Nobody comes into Food Folk with a list. You get things you didn’t know you were looking for.”

If that approach sounds familiar, you may well be thinking of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who is said to have put forth the following approach to creating a product: “People often don’t know what they want until it’s presented to them.” Suffice it to say, Jobs became a rich man by following that path; the same could well happen to shoppy shops that offer truly unique merch.